page_title: Description of the Western Isles of Scotland
section_title: Publications
hierarchical_section_title: Description of the Western Isles of Scotland / Publications
caption_attribution_description: Location of Flannan Isles, Outer Hebrides, Scotland
context_page_description: Description of the Western Isles of Scotland is the oldest known account of the Hebrides and the Islands of the Clyde, two chains of islands off the west coast of Scotland. The author was Donald Monro, a clergyman who used the title of "Dean of the Isles" and who lived through the Scottish Reformation. Monro wrote the original manuscript in 1549, although it was not published in any form until 1582 and was not widely available to the public in its original form until 1774. A more complete version, based on a late 17th-century manuscript written by Sir Robert Sibbald, was first published as late as 1961. Monro wrote in Scots and some of the descriptions are difficult for modern readers to render into English. Although Monro was criticised for publishing folklore and for omitting detail about the affairs of the churches in his diocese, Monro's Description is a valuable historical account and has reappeared in part or in whole in numerous publications, remaining one of the most widely quoted publications about the western islands of Scotland.
context_section_description: Monro's work was first published in Latin in 1582. It forms eleven short chapters of George Buchanan's Rerum Scoticarum Historia ("History of Scotland") with all of the islands listed, although with much omission of the detailed island descriptions. The genealogy section was included. In 1603 the portion in Scots relating to the islands was published in Certayne Matters concerning the Realme of Scotland edited by John Monipennie of Pitmilly in the parish of Kingsbarns, Fife. Following Buchanan, this version gives many of the island names in Latin. Thus Monro's "Heddir Iyle" (Heather Isle) is Monipennie's "Ericca". The section was republished in the 1612 Scots Chronicles, in which the acknowledgement of Monro's authorship was omitted.
  The original version of Monro's text has been lost, but a copy made in 1642 by Sir James Balfour of Denmilne and Kinnaird, is still extant. Three sections relating to Islay and Lismore, Tiree and Coll, and Harris were omitted, possibly by careless copying. Some 40 years later Sir Robert Sibbald copied out a complete transcript that included sections missing in Balfour. Entitled Description of the Occidental i.e. Western Isles of Scotland by Mr Donald Monro who travelled through the most of them in Anno 1549 it was acquired by the Advocates Library in Edinburgh in 1733. Walter MacFarlane created a third manuscript in 1749, either from a debased original or directly from Balfour as it has the same defects.
  Monro's work first came to a wider public when the incomplete version of Description was published in 1774 by William Auld of Edinburgh, along with some supplementary writing about the Hebrides. The full title was Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, called Hybrides; by Mr Donald Monro High Dean of the Isles who travelled through the most of them in the year 1549. With his Geneologies of the chief Clans of the Isles. Description and Genealogies were published together by Archibald Constable of Edinburgh in 1805, which was the first time Monro's work had been published as a stand-alone volume. Miscellanea Scotica, published in Glasgow in 1818 included Description in volume 2 and the Genealogies in volume 4. In this version Description is given the date of 1594 in error. An edition of the 1818 text limited to 250 copies was published by Thomas D. Morison of Glasgow in 1884.
  The shorter list was re-published (without the Genealogies) by Peter Hume Brown in his Scotland before 1700, from Contemporary Documents in 1893 and for the first time the text was subject to scrutiny by a professional historian. Walter MacFarlane's text was published by the Scottish History Society in 1908 as part of his Geographical Collections. Eneas Mackay of Stirling included Description and Genealogies in tandem with Martin Martin's 1703 Description of the Western Islands of Scotland in a 1934 publication. R. W. Munro's 1961 re-publication includes the full text of the Sibbald manuscript (MS), a comparison with the shorter Balfour/Auld versions, the recovered text of Monro's description of the Council of the Isles at Finlaggan, George Buchanan's preface to Description in Rerum Scoticarum Historia and scholarly accompanying material.
  Some of the discrepancies between the additions are discussed by R. W. Munro. The 1612 version by Monipennie certainly loses both accuracy and detail. For example, his publication has the Flannan Isles "halfe a mile towards the west equinoctiall" from Lewis, whereas the original quoted by the Auld version has them "50 myle in the Occident seas from the coste"— in fact they are 33 kilometres (21 mi) west of Lewis.
caption: Location of the Flannan Isles relative to the Outer and Inner Hebrides
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