IN THE HIGHLANDS 181 



of oatmeal to keep the people alive, and those cargoes 

 were seldom, if ever, paid for by their poor recipients. 

 One has only to look at the sites of the shielings even 

 some miles from the sea, where great heaps of shells 

 tell their tale. Shell-fish boiled in milk was a great 

 stand-by in those days. I sometimes wonder that they 

 did not carry the milk downhill to the coast, rather than 

 cany the shell-fish up to the hills. 



I remember my old faithful servant, George Maclennan, 

 telling me a story which shows how scarce anything in 

 the form of bread was even in comparatively modern 

 times. George's father was the postman at one time 

 who carried the Lews and Poolewe mails through Creag 

 Thairbh to Brahan Castle and Dingwall, fully sixty 

 miles, and a good part of his salary consisted of bolls of 

 oatmeal. Consequently his house often had meal in it 

 when the neighbours' houses were empty. George as a 

 boy was for some reason wandering over the wild moors 

 up on the Fionn Loch side when he met a very old man, 

 whom even I can remember, who was there with his cows 

 at the shieling near the Airidh Mollach. The old man 

 seemed very faint, and he admitted to the boy that he 

 had not tasted anything in the form of bread for some 

 days, living entirely on milk and the trout he was able 

 to catch with his rod. George had a good supply of oat- 

 cake in his pocket, and he gave it to the old man, who 

 was more than grateful. 



Shell-fish must have been good strong food if there 

 was something to take along with it, for I was always 

 told that the finest and strongest family of young men 

 ever known at Poolewe — Gillean an Alanaich (the Lads of 



