Beyond dragon, who three years later became King of 

 the Blue the West, read the Rune of the Stars that are 



called the Great Bear ' and took their name 

 upon him, and from the strongest and purest 



and noblest of the land made Knighthood, 

 such as the world had not seen, such as the 

 world since has not known. 

 



Very different, a cruder legend of the Pole- 

 star, the drift of which I heard some months 

 ago from a fisherman of Ross, 'foregathered 

 with ' in the Sound of Morvern. 



One day, Finn, before he was born the 

 King of the West, a thousand years earlier 

 than that and maybe thousands more on the 

 top of that thousand, went hunting a great 

 bear beyond the highest mountains in Ross 

 and Sutherland. It came to the Ord, and 

 then, seeing there was no more land, it went 

 into the sea with an awesome plunge, like Ice- 

 land in the story before it swam away from 

 Scotland, so that the fish were knocked out of 

 the nets and the fishing cobles were thrown on 

 the shores like buckies, and the tides ran like 

 hares till they leaped into the sea again at the 

 rocks of Wick and over Cromarty Cliffs. 

 Aye, it is said a green wave ran right through 

 the great Kirk at Inverness ; and that away 

 across the lands of Mackenzie and Chisholm, 



324 



