with common and other names that would be White 

 unfamiliar there among the far hills, or, at least, Weather. 

 to the old mountaineer, for whom the hill- 

 birds were the best of company. For the 

 curlew, for instance, though he knew the 

 common Scots name, Whaup, he had the good 

 name An t-Eun Chaismeachd, 'the bird of alarm' 

 — how good a name (though perhaps equally 

 applicable to the grey plover, the green 

 whistler, or the lapwing) must be obvious to 

 all who have walked the moorland or travelled 

 the hillside. And where an islesman or a man 

 of the mainland coasts would, for swiftness, use 

 a comparison such as cho luath ri sgadan, ' as 

 swift as a herring,' he would say, cho luath vis 

 nafeadag, ' as swift as the plover.' 



White Weather, he said, was always first 

 ' called ' by the linnet, the ' heather Untie ' so 

 loved of Scots song-writers, to which he gave 

 several names (' out of a good ten that will be 

 known to any one whatever '), one a curious 

 blend of Scots-Gaelic, Shilfe-monaidh (i.e., the 

 moor - chaffinch), another a pretty name, 

 Breacan-Beithe, 'little speckled one of the 

 birch.' But even he, for all his hill-wisdom, 

 could not tell me why it is that when the 

 lapwing come again after the great winter-end 

 storm about mid-March, welcome pioneers of 

 the Spring that is stealing slowly up through 



333 



