178 ST. KILDA FROM WITHOUT 



by an isthmus, across which the hounds of a great 

 huntress, 'The Greatly -Savage, Soft -skinned, Red- 

 haired Muiream,' ran deer from Conagher to the Butt 

 of Lewis. 



The lady whose fame Captain Thomas, R.N., in an 

 interesting paper published in the Proceedings of the 

 Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, traces in the 

 legends of both islands like Samson in the Temple 

 of Dagon, met her end in a way that did no discredit 

 to her reputation, ' the dead which she slew at her 

 death being more than they which she slew in her life.' 



Her husband, the king's fisherman, was out in his 

 boat, and had just caught a sturgeon, when a party of 

 marauding Irish set upon him, stole his fish, and, on 

 his mildly protesting, belaboured him with it within an 

 inch of his life. 



No one who has' not seen such a club brought into 

 active play is likely quite to realise what a formidable 

 weapon a big fish in the hands of an angry man can 

 be; nor, having seen it, as it was once the writer's 

 fortune to do, is likely soon to forget the sight. 



We were driving from the Baltic port of Abo, 

 through pine woods and boulder-strewn mosses, cut up 

 by streams aiyi white lakes, and dotted here and there 

 with cultivated patches and the log huts commonly 

 used in Finland for smoke-drying the crops, to a 

 fishing-ground a hundred miles or so inland. A couple 

 of hours of daylight had been wasted in an unsuccessful 

 attempt to stalk some Cranes, which had flown over us 

 with necks, not bent backwards between the shoulders, 



