m THE HIGHLANDS 229 



dead horse till its bones had been picked clean by him 

 and the doggies, who, aware of Jock's unfair competition 

 with them for horse-flesh, never could see him without 

 an uproar and a try at his bare legs ; and but for his great 

 skill in pelting them with stones they would have made 

 Jock give up eating their beloved banquet. I was once 

 assured by a looker-on that as he was passing by a dead 

 horse at the roadside he saw Jock's bare legs in the air, 

 their owner's head and shoulders out of sight feasting on 

 some tit-bits far up inside the horse's ribs. I quite 

 believe this disgusting story, which probably helped to 

 promote the building of our present asylum palaces and 

 the gathering into them of all poor insane Jocks and 

 Jimmies." 



In the sixties I had an old acquaintance of the name 

 of Colin Munro, who was a very well educated man and 

 had practised as a solicitor for many years in our county 

 town of Dingwall. Somehow or other he came into 

 money, and invested it in a very large sheep farm near 

 me, called Innis an lasgaich (Fisher Field). He had 

 not taken up his abode there very long, and had got a 

 nice byre of cattle, when suddenly the cows went all 

 wrong, and instead of milk all that could be drawn 

 out of their udders was a horrid mixture of blood 

 and pus. 



His servants declared some old woman had bewitched 

 the cows, and that the only way to counteract the harm 

 done was to get a still more powerful witch from a dis- 

 tance, who would undo what the local witch had done- 

 So they told Colin Munro the name of a competent woman, 



