Flannan Isles

   FLANNAN ISLES, a group of seven islands, in the parish of Lewis, county of Inverness. They lie seventeen miles north-west of Gallan Head, in Lewis, and are supposed to be the Insulæ Sacræ of ancient writers, and to have been the residence of the Druids from the number of Druidical remains still found upon them. The largest islet has an area of about eighty acres, and the second in size perhaps twenty acres, and both are noted for fattening sheep; the rest are of much smaller dimensions, and altogether unoccupied. Various kinds of sea-fowl resort hither; and when, on the arrival of a boat, they come out of their holes, they are described as covering the surface of the islands, and giving them "the appearance of a meadow thickly enamelled with field-flowers." Though this group is much dreaded by mariners, it would seem that the danger of approach is not great.