Bàsadairean are still well understood in South Uist and Eriskay. One person in Eriskay described them to me:
“A really wet place. Ground where the sheep would go through. It was a bit dangerous, a bàsadair. You’d need to be careful not to go through it. You’d go down. It was dangerous for man and beast. They’re up high in the mountain. There weren’t many but there were a few. There was one place down behind the mountain called Bàsadair Point.”
Another lady tells me that Bàsadair Point is behind Ben Stack, where the Royal Navy caught Reubadair na Stac, the Stack plunderer.
I asked Coinneach Manson in Smerclate in May if there were any bàsadairean in the area. “There aren’t at the moment,” he said, “but there are plenty of them in winter!”
Sùil-chruthaich means the same thing, and is used by some where others use bàsadair.
Calum Laing (Tha Cuimhn’ Agam) tells the story of how a bàsadair at Waterloo spelled the end of Bonaparte’s reign:
“Bonaparte was putting his faith in the cavalry on that bloody day. “We stood,” Ronald would say, “in a long line facing the edge of a hidden channel that reminded me of the Drimsdale ditch, every one of us boldly ready, waiting with a shining bayonet on our guns. They tumbled towards us wildly; they didn’t see the marshy bàsadair until they were fatally stuck in it. Those of the great French army who remained alive dispersed and fled. The world was left in peace.”
The Faclan bhon t-Sluagh database returns 5 examples of bàsadair used in Lewis.