194 A HUNDRED YEARS 



simply fearful. On Sunday, as soon as breakfast was 

 over, every hand set to work preparing for the grand, 

 popular, open-house cold luncheon, to which all * the 

 upper crust ' and the clergy were invited. When I 

 remember the condition of the Tigh Dige lower regions 

 in those days, before, during, and after the Sacrament, 

 and the cruel hard labour involved in feeding everybody, 

 I should thank God that I was then merely looking on 

 with amazement, and glad it occurred only every third 

 year. 



*' Yet I was something more than an onlooker, for 

 I had to form part of the wonderful out-of-door congre- 

 gation that assembled daily in that most charming 

 Leabaidh na ba baine ! The bed is close to the Parish 

 Church, being an exact oval in shape, lined with the 

 finest short grass, and able to hold, it is said, three 

 thousand people. In the bottom of the deep oval hollow 

 at one end was the clergyman's preaching-box, giving 

 him shelter from the sun and rain. Wind could not 

 blow there, and even a weak voice would float over 

 the whole hollow clearly. In front of the pulpit the 

 Communion-tables extended to the farther end of the 

 bed, the soil was pure drifted sand dating back thousands 

 of years, and so porous, that were rain to fall for a month 

 not a drop would be seen, while the sheep kept the grass 

 as short as a mowing machine could do. I should be 

 surprised indeed if a stranger passing along the road, 

 which merely separates the Leabaidh from the church, 

 on hearing, say, three thousand voices floating up out 

 of this wonderful deep hollow, and chanting beautiful 

 ancient Gaelic psalms, could help being perfectly 



