The Ay, the sea's just like the grey road : the green 

 Tides. roa d an' the grey road, they show no tracks. 

 The wind an' the tides, they just come an' 

 they just go. ' Blind as the wind,' ' blind as 

 the tide ' . . . ay, it may be ; but not so blind 

 as we are, for they know their way, an' 

 brightest noon an' darkest night, an' summer 

 an' winter, an' calm an' storm, are one an' the 

 same to them." 



It is long ago now since I heard these words 

 from old Sheumais Macleod, but I am certain 

 (so deeply did they impress my childish 

 imagination, and sink into a child's mind) that 

 I repeat them almost exactly. I had no 

 hesitation in believing in Gorm-Dhu and 

 Luath-Donn, and the rest, and took these 

 names to be real names of actual creatures, as 

 Daoine- Vhara (folk of the sea) for seals, or as 

 piocach for the brown saithe I was wont to 

 watch swimming amid the fronds of the 

 seaweed, or as sgadan for the flashing herring 

 whose shoals so often made a dazzle in the 

 offing beyond the strait, and whose radiant 

 scales glorified as with gems the nets hauled 

 up in the moonshine or in the pale rose and 

 cowslip-yellow of August dawns. 



And, in truth, I am not much the wiser 

 now. There is no great gain in wisdom in the 

 knowledge that the tides are not mysterious 



40 



