42 A HUNDKED YEARS 



fork. My mother set to it with her fingers, and after- 

 wards declared it was the sweetest fish she ever tasted. 

 When she finished the woman brought her a pail of 

 water to wash her hands in. 



When people chanced to have a bit of meat they 

 could not make what we should call broth, because they 

 had no pot barley and no turnips or carrots, onions or 

 cabbage, to put in it; so they thickened the water in 

 which the meat had been boiled with oatmeal, and this 

 was called in Gaelic eanaraich (broth). It was placed 

 in the middle of the table, and everyone helped them- 

 selves with their horn spoons. 



Perhaps a few of my readers are aware that almost 

 within my own recollection the blacksmiths on our 

 west coast did all their own smithy work with peat 

 charcoal. Coal was rarely imported before 1840, and 

 all the oak had been cut down, turned into charcoal, 

 and used by Sir George Hay in his small furnaces or 

 bloomeries towards the end of 1500 and the early years 

 of 1600, so there was nothing to fall back on but peat 

 charcoal, which I have always been told was quite a good 

 substitute. I can just recollect the Gobha Mor (the 

 Big Blacksmith) at Poole we. He was the last smith 

 who used it, and with whom died the knowledge and 

 skill required to make it. 



I wonder also if it is known that on our west coast, 

 before tar was imported from Archangel, the inhabitants 

 produced their own tar. When the late Lord Elphin- 

 stone bought Coulin in Glen Torridon he used a great 

 deal of the old native Scots fir in the building of the 

 lodge. One day, after a large number of the trees 



