190 A HUNDEED YEAKS 



and they were all of the Seana chaoirich hheaga (little 

 old sheep) breed, with pink noses and very fine wool, 

 quite different from the modern black-faced sheep, 

 much less hardy, and accustomed to be more or less 

 housed at night. They were far less numerous than the 

 goats, and when the people migrated to the shielings 

 they took their sheep and goats with them. These had 

 to be carefully herded by the children all day, to keep 

 the lambs and kids from being carried off by the eagles 

 and foxes. At night at the shielings the sheep and 

 the goats were driven into bothies and bedded with 

 bracken or moss, and when these bothies were cleaned 

 out in the spring they contained a large accumulation of 

 excellent manure for the potatoes. I well remember 

 an old man telling me that when out with the 

 cattle he used in dry summers to set fire to old, useless 

 turf dykes and use the peat ashes for his " outfield " 

 potatoes, and that sometimes he grew better potatoes 

 thus away up in the hills than he could grow at his home 

 in the glen below. But who could be got to do this 

 sort of land cultivation nowadays ? It is therefore 

 useless to talk of cultivating these green spots among 

 the hills, which were only forced to produce what would 

 now be considered very poor crops of corn ! At that 

 time there was no alternative but either to do this 

 or starve. There is, I think, a very mistaken idea 

 afloat that these Highlanders of the olden times were a 

 lazy lot, instead of which they were, in my opinion, just 

 the very contrary. I know as a fact that the fathers of 

 several of the old Poolewe men I knew so well as a lad 

 used to go in their small fourteen-foot boats in stormy 



