as of embattled hosts, or to a crying and a White 

 lamentation more desperate than the cries of Weather, 

 men and a lamenting as of that mysterious 

 and dreaded clan, the Grey Children of the 

 Wind. The wind, in truth, is almost always 

 to be heard, near or far. Sometimes the eye 

 may learn, where the ear fails : as when one is 

 in a glen or strath or on a shore or moor, and, 

 looking up, may see smoke rising from the 

 serrated crests or the curving sky-lines, like 

 the surf of vast billows — to realise soon, that 

 this volcanic apparition means no more than 

 that vast volumes of driven snow are being 

 lifted by the north wind and whirled against 

 and over the extreme mountain - bastions. 

 Troth chaidleas *s a ghleann an t-aile, ' when 

 the air sleeps in the glens,' goes a Gaelic 

 saying, ' you may hear the wind blowing in the 

 high corries mar chaithream chlar,' like the 

 symphony of harps. 



Then, too, it is rare that the snowy 

 wilderness is without voice of mountain 

 torrent, for even when frost holds the hill- 

 world in a grip so terrible that the smaller 

 birds cannot fly in the freezing air, there are 

 rushing burns of so fierce a spate that the 

 hands-of-ice are whirled aside like foam, and 

 the brown wave leaps and dashes from rock to 

 rock, from granite ledge to peaty hollow, 



329 



