We have been using our Castle art to create Gaelic Poetry using the vocabulary we have been learning.  Our poems were written as if we were the castle; how we felt, what we looked like.  We wrote the poems out and then used Chatterpix to record our poetry.  Here is Caitidh’s poem:

Is mise Dùn Naomhaig,             I am called Dunyvaig,

Tha mi làidir, tha mi stoirm,      I am strong, I am stormy,

Tha mi dubh agus donn,            I am black and brown,

Tha mi seachd ceud bliadhna,    I am seven hundred years old,

Tha mi fuar agus fliuch,             I am cold and wet,

Tha mi brònach, tha mi garbh,    I am sad, I am wild,

Tha mi mòr, tha mi fada,           I am big, I am long,

Tha mi dorcha.                         I am dark.

As part of our Dunyvaig topic we have been learning about what castles looked like at that time and some of their key features.  We looked at lots of examples of castles and used what we knew to create our own impressions of Dunyvaig Castle using pen and pencil and oil pastels.  You can see some of the results below.

BY HOLLY

BY ELLEN

BY ORLA

We have been learning the gaelic song Birlinn Ghoraidh Chróbhain as part of our Dunyvaig learning.  Godred Croven was one of the earliest settlers on Islay and probably used Dunyvaig as a base.

When the mighty Norwegian King Harold Hardrada was killed in battle in 1066, his Chief of Staff was Goraidh Crobhan (Godred of the white hand), who escaped and made his way to the Island of Islay, where his reputation as a clever and fearless warrior had gone before him. Men flocked to join him, and he was victorious in his battle with Fingal, King of Man and the Isles. He also fought successfully against Malcolm Canmore.  In our animation you can see him travelling a Birlinn to Islay from the Isle of Man.

Ghoraidh Chróbhain is best known on Islay in a legend where he cleverly kills a dragon that was eating people and cattle, so we decided to have him slay a sea monster in our video, xan you spot it?   He died in 1095 as a result of the plague that was sweeping the area and is said to be buried on Islay.

We used stop motion animation to film the story of the song, and also recorded us singing along.  We hope you enjoy the animation!

Here are the words:

Hóbhan na hóbhan hó, hi horó na hùbhan,
Hóbhan na hóbhan hó, Air Birlinn Ghoraidh Chrobhain

The towers of Man we leave away,
Old Erin’s hills we hail O,
On Islay’s shore her course we lay
Though billows roar and rave O.”

On Monday 20th   August we went to Dunyvaig. We met Darko Markovic who showed us around the site. First he showed us a burned down house, which they said might have been used for fighting.

After that we were shown a rock with a hole in it which was filled with water. They thought it might have been for taking shells off scallops. Then we went to the front of the Dunyvaig castle where we saw two destroyed houses. We were also told the back story of Dunyvaig castle and we were told that it was good at defending attacks because of its placement and the material it’s made of.However one day it got destroyed by cannons and muskets.

Next we went and started to clean some dirt off a dug out rectangle next to a destroyed house and a sea gate used for boats to get in and for people living in Dunyvaig to escape in an emergency.

We put the dirt in buckets and then when the buckets were full we would give them to some people doing the dig and they would empty the buckets then give us the buckets back to fill up again. To do this we were separated into groups. My group was in a rectangle and the over group was like a curved rectangle. In both of the groups we had our own areas to clean bits of dirt, and we were protective over our areas as we made a competition and whoever filled up their buckets first would win, but we didn’t have time to fill up our buckets completely.

After walking down to a table next to a tent which was used to put in things they were using to dig or things they found in the dig someone showed us some things that they had found in the dig, such as a piece of wood that could have been used to put string through and some rocks from the time of Dunyvaig. After seeing the rocks and other items which were handed around we left the Dunyvaig site and went back to the school. I really enjoyed it.

On Monday 20th August P6/7 from Port Ellen went to Dunyvaig castle. It was a really fun adventure and we saw lots of artifacts. The first they showed us was a piece of a cannon ball. They passed around little bones in a bag and there was three other bags, in the next bag was a piece of pottery the pottery had a wavy pattern on it. In the next bag there was very fragile shells so we had to be carefull the shells were clean but they still had a bit of brown round the bottom rim. In the last bag there was musket ball out of a musket gun; the bullet was small and round, a little bit smaller than a normal bullet. The cannon ball was all rusted over and broken in half we got told they wouldnt be a perfect circle it would just have to be the right size to shoot out a cannon. Overall the day was good and it was a good adventure.

Aaron and Jack