396 NETHER LOCHABER. 



Lochiel. While of his numerous fleet a single galley showed more 

 than a foot and a span (troidh agus reis were the words of the 

 narrator) of gunwale unsubmerged, Ruric was unsatisfied, and to 

 complete his ill-gotten freight he resolved on the plunder of the 

 opposite district of Appin, the smoke of whose dwellings could be 

 seen, and the lowing of whose numerous herds could be heard 

 (when the summer morning was still and the Linnhe Loch was 

 calm) by the pirate prince from the battlements of the castle of 

 Mearnaig. One morning Ruric anchored his galleys in the Sound 

 of Shuna, and landing, erected his tents on the green knoll now 

 occupied by Appin House. With this spot as his head-quarters, it 

 was his intention to plunder the district north and south of him at 

 his leisure, believing that he would meet with as little opposition 

 here as he had already met with elsewhere. The inhabitants 

 of Appin, however, were partly on their guard, and determined to 

 resist, and if possible chastise, the invader. And first conveying 

 their old men, women, and children, with their flocks and herds, 

 into the fastnesses of the upland glens, they resolved to watch the 

 movements of the Norsemen, ready to fall upon them whenever a 

 favourable opportunity should offer. That same night, as some 

 cattle herds, acting as scouts, were on the hill immediately above 

 the tents of the invaders, one of them directed the attention of his 

 companions to a huge granite boulder with so slight a hold of the 

 hill crest, that, with some little labour, it might be let loose at any 

 time a terrible messenger of wrath amongst the tents of the 

 enemy below, whose shouts of laughter at that moment, and 

 snatches of rude song, proved that they had feasted plentifully and 

 had no apprehenson of immediate death or danger in any form. 

 After much labour, the herdsmen managed so to dig about and 

 undermine and loosen the boulder in its bed on the hill-face, that, 

 on a given signal, their united strength sufficed to tilt it headlong 

 over the steep, leaping and thundering on its terrible path. The 



