I A Gossip on a Sutherland Hill-side 283 



green and silver victim attached to it. I never saw 

 them catch anything else ; but if you, O tourist, 

 will go and spin a butter-fish for lythe — {Merlangus 

 pollachius) — you will there first discover what sport 

 trolling can be. The people are to a certain extent 

 right in keeping to the little Merlangus carbonarius, 

 for they can be caught to any amount, and are 

 easily dried for winter store. Deep-sea fishing is 

 not an art to be learned in a day ; but as soon as 

 Glasgow wants more cod and ling she will certainly 

 get them. If you care neither for painting nor 

 fishing, you may get legend and history enough on 

 the West coast to amuse you well. Of course you 

 will hear how Macleod of Assynt betrayed Montrose ; 

 but do not believe them when they tell you that 

 his only reward was a few bolls of meal ; he got 

 twenty thousand * gude punds Scots ' and the 

 captainship of the garrison of Strathnaver for that 

 little piece of business. He was, it is true, sent to 

 Edinburgh as a prisoner at the Restoration, but he 

 made light of it, — so light, indeed, that his levities 

 called down the anathemas of Bishop Burnet, who 

 is indignant that the great entertainments he gave 

 in prison should have made him friends enough 

 among the great to permit of his escape, untried 

 and unpunished. 



The fact is, that certainly down to the latter 

 part of the seventeenth century, and, I suspect, 

 very much later, there was no such thing as ' law ' 

 in the west and north of Sutherland. Every semi- 



