Tune in Russia
Clockwise from far left, King Edward VII and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia who was murdered.
Inch Kenneth and the Gribun rocks beyond. Members of the royal family aboard the imperial yacht. and Staffa and Fingal’s Cave.
Macleod of Fiunary and an English woman whose husband held an official position in St Petersburg. Both encouraged her to travel to Russia where she met someone who introduced her to a member of the Russian Imperial Family.
However, according to Ross of Mull tradition, the Russian Royal Family was cruising in Scottish waters; they came ashore near Gribun where during a walk met Catherine and her family. Taken by her natural charm and pleasant manner, they invited her to return with them to Russia. Her parents agreed feeling that she would have greater opportunities there than on Mull.
Whatever the true story is we will never know, but Catherine, the blacksmith’s daughter from Gribun, served three Tsars and was nanny and governess to their children; this is why Alexander II was able to speak fluent English whenever he visited London. He even picked up some Gaelic from Catherine and could sing a few songs in the language!
When the Crimean War began in 1853, Catherine, now an old lady, decided she could not live in the palace while Russian troops were
killing her countrymen, so she asked if she could retire. Sad to let her go, the Tsar asked if there was anything he could do. ‘Nothing’, was her reply, ‘except to order your army commanders to show mercy to any Highlanders wounded or taken prisoner’. This he did.
After the Crimean War ended and shortly before she died in 1858, Catherine wrote to her family in Mull to tell them that she had lent a considerable fortune to a Col Michael Kiriakoff of the Emperor’s Guard at St Petersburg. He was to return it to them in full, but it never reached Mull.
Interestingly the Oban Times tried to help her relatives by publishing articles and letters on the subject, but the whereabouts of the Russian fortune remains a mystery to this day. When Catherine was dying it is said that the Tsar came to her bedside every day to read to her from the Gaelic Bible from which she had taught him.
The Imperial Family never forgot her and some years later, according to the Oban Times of July 2, 1892, Tsar Alexander III ordered a length of tweed from her old home on the Ross of Mull to remember her by.