l62 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



waves, and were very soon over the Minch near Loch Inver. 

 They got to the entrance of the harbour, near the new stone 

 house ye ken it ? on the right and the skipper says, " We're 

 a'richt now ; if the deil himself withstands me I will lose the 

 third ! " He did lose it, and though so near home, the boat 

 only got ashore in little bits ! She was altogether broken up ! 

 The men were all saved." 



The little inn at Inchnadamph now came in sight, with its 

 few ash-trees shining in the general outlook of water and mist. 

 Roderick found time, however, to tell us that the former land- 

 lord once shot a hare, on a mountain side, overhanging a little 

 cottage near. The animal escaped wounded ; but the woman 

 who tenanted the cottage, Elspeth McKenzie, became ill and 

 took to her bed. Daily she grew worse for some months, and 

 Roderick had himself seen her when "very ill whateffer." At 

 length she died, and the woman who came to perform the 

 necessary offices found her legs riddled with shot, the small shot 

 shining yet blue in them. 



With such tales will an aged gilly beguile the way for the 

 angler in Assynt, if the sportsman possess the art of gaining the 

 man's confidence. These stories were told the writer in July 

 last, and testify to a marvellous mass of superstition and 

 tradition overlaying the Gaelic mind, on which the super- 

 structure of religion is built almost exclusively, in outlying dis- 

 tricts, by careful study of the Word of God. It is this Bible 

 reading which has given the Scottish character the steadfastness 

 and gravity which it has possessed since the days of the Cove- 

 nanters. 



The mention of Altnoi burn reminds us that another kind of 

 witchcraft nourished there this summer, as we were wont to 

 cross it, in order to fish Loch Awe, attended by a stalwart 

 young gilly of very impressible age, and halted at times to dash 

 the whiskey in our flask with the sparkling streams that eddied 

 over the brown rocks, and caused the golden gravel at their 



