CAM CHREAG AND BEINN DOIREANN. 75 



Beinn Doireann. — Our second expedition was to Beinn 

 Doireann, a mountain of considerable dignity and presence, lying 

 to the north-west of the scene of our former adventures. Our 

 way on this occasion lay in the opposite direction, the road which 

 winds north-westward among the mountains to Kingshouse and 

 Glencoe leading us directly to the base of the Ben, which we 

 could see before us all the way — a kingly figure, standing among 

 his comrades of less pronounced characteristics, his dark robes 

 ermined with mists and a cloudy crown upon his lonely brows. 



Beinn Doireann has other claims on the interest of the visitor 

 which even the enthusiasm of the botanist could not overshadow. 

 He is as kingly a figure in the poetry of the Highlands as in the 

 surrounding landscape, and is particularly associated with the 

 name of the most celebrated of the modern Gaelic bards, Duncan 

 Ban Macintyre — fair Duncan of the songs, as he is called in his 

 own poetical language — an utterly untaught, unlettered genius 

 whose songs are full of the wild spirit of Highland minstrelsy, 

 caught by the poet from the wonder of natural sounds among 

 these lonely hills and misty corries, the broken echoes of which 

 alone our lowland ears can catch. Born in the Breadalbane forest 

 of the Black Mount, he was familiar from childhood with the 

 characteristics and legendary lore of the region, and his poem on 

 Beinn Doireann, where he lived for some time as forester to the 

 Earl of Breadalbane, is considered one of the finest efforts in 

 modern Gaelic poetry. His descriptions of natural beauty are 

 strikingly direct and simple, and Jefferies himself could not vie 

 with this untutored son of the mists in his descriptions of the 

 looks, haunts, and habits of the wild red deer, sung not only to 

 the pibroch, but actually in a measure imitating with subtle skill 

 its various movements. 



The mountain gets its Gaelic name, it is said, "from the 

 singular fact that it prognosticates coming storms by sounds 

 caused by the winds moaning among the rocks " — a legend still 

 held sacred by some natives of the district ; whether this be the 

 case or not, certain it is in our opinion that it richly deserves its 

 name, which means the " mountain of storms," if it offers to all 

 travellers the inhospitable treatment it was our misfortune to 

 experience. Curiously enough, during our stay we did not once 



