IN THE HIGHLANDS 227 



Baa-a-o-u !' The town folks got used to this noise, but 

 once when our father took us over to a Circuit Court, the 

 Court had hardly begun ere the Judge asked what 

 unearthly noise was that. He could hear nothing for it, 

 and ordered the noise to be removed. We happened, 

 luckily, to be on the loose, and soon twigged there was 

 fun ahead, for there were the gaoler and the town officers 

 in full rig dragging ' Baa-a-o-u ' down the gaol stairs 

 and off to the old bridge that was washed away in the 

 1848 flood. The ingenious builders had contrived to 

 build a wee cell in the spring of one of its arches, with a 

 foot square iron grated hole for air and light. On 

 shovelHng away the road gravel above, an iron-plated 

 padlocked door appeared in a few minutes. The door 

 was thrown open, ' Baa-a-o-u ' was rammed by force 

 into the cell, and the door relocked and gravelled over. 

 Everything was just the same as before, except for the 

 incessant * Baa-a-o-u-ing ' issuing from the grated cell 

 window. The sound gave far more pleasure to us boys, 

 I really believe, than a band of music would have done, 

 and I have no doubt that ' Baa-a-o-u ' remained in that 

 cosy cell till the judges left Inverness. 



" Before asylum times one of the many wandering 

 lunatics belonging to the district used to prowl about 

 Dingwall groaning, a martyr to toothache. Good- 

 natured Dr. Wishart persuaded Jock to come to his 

 surgery in town, though he himself lived at his farm of 

 Uplands, near Tulloch, and offered to cure Jock's 

 malady. So Jock was brought to the surgery and per- 

 suaded to show the wicked tooth. In a second it was 

 extracted, but the doctor, nippers and tooth in hand 



