260 SUTHERLAND MONSTER. 



More could never tolerate any restraint, and his answer 

 was begun almost before Lord Reay had finished his 

 handsome offer. 



" Donald (said he), you may put Fionavon in your 

 paunch, for wherever the deer are, there will John 

 More be found." 



This conversation was in Gaelic, in which language the 

 peculiar phraseology is more piquant than can be rendered 

 in English. 



Donald Mac Currochy Mac-Ean-More, who lived 

 latterly at Hope, was another very noted poacher, in 

 Sutherland. Numerous anecdotes are told of this man; 

 but they refer rather to the great enormities he was in the 

 habit of committing, than to his lighter trespasses amongst 

 the deer. His acts of violence and injustice were so 

 unusual and savage as to render him an object of universal 

 abhorrence. 



His family name was Macleod. He deliberately mur- 

 dered his nephew, that he might possess himself of the 

 adjoining lands of Eddrachilles ; and he afterwards put to 

 death several of his friends, whose revenge he anticipated. 

 He was an expert archer ; so ruthless a villain, and so 

 ready to slay any one that offended him, and, indeed, 

 every one whom he could attack, whether friend or foe, 

 that at a period when the law was quite inoperative in the 

 remote corners of the Highlands, he became the terror of 

 the entire country. The greater part of his time was spent 

 in the Dirrie-more forest, where he was very successful 

 with his long bow. 



His nephew, when attacked by him, took refuge in a 

 straw-covered hut, in an island on an inland loch; but 



