By Andrew Anderson BBC Scotland News

The tiny church was packed with mourners

This morning, a line of cars stretched along that road as far as the eye could see.

Inside, 1,500 mourners gathered to pay their final respects to Archie and Murdina MacPherson, their children Andrew and Hannah and grandfather Calum Campbell.

As the time of the service drew near, cars were left at the side of the road and mourners walked the last few hundred yards to the tiny Roman Catholic church.

Like last week when the family were swept to their deaths, a gale blasted across the island - nature is no respecter of grief.

Hundreds packed onto the pews of the church and across on the other side of the car park, hundreds more were inside the church hall where a video link relayed the funeral mass to them.

Piper's lament

Even so, dozens more had to stand outside finding what shelter they could. Some huddled close to a television satellite van to see and hear the service.

It was led by two Roman Catholic priests and two Church of Scotland ministers. Andrew MacPherson was a Protestant, the rest of his family and his father-in-law were Roman Catholics.

Prayers were said for the family, the community and for those who had taken part in the desperate search last week; the police, volunteers, coastguards and helicopter crews.

The five coffins lay together before a packed congregation

The service ended with a Gaelic hymn S�n do Lamh, a Moir� and then a piper's lament was heard which even the winds could not blow away.

Hundreds of mourners spilled out onto the hillside and five coffins were carried from the church.

The most poignant, the two white caskets for a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl.

The cort�ge made its way first to a nearby cemetery for the burial of Mr Campbell.

From there, it travelled to South Uist for the burial of all four of the MacPherson family, its route taking it over the road where the sea had swamped the family as they tried to escape their flood-threatened home last week.