LOCH AWE 55 



far advanced in years and is a schoolmaster in the 

 neighbourhood of Rannoch.' 



Sir Walter says that ' the feeling of supersti- 

 tious awe annexed to the catastrophe could not 

 have been improved by any circumstances of 

 additional horror which a poet could have in- 

 vented. But is there not something more moving 

 still in the boatman's version : ' they were never 

 seen again . . . they were not found indeed till 

 this day ' ? 



The folklorist, of course, is eager to know 

 whether the boatman's much more complete and 

 connected narrative is a popular mythical develop- 

 ment in the years between 1820 and 1890, or 

 whether the schoolmaster of Rannoch did not tell 

 all he knew. It is unlikely, I think, that the siege 

 of Seringapatam would have been remembered so 

 long in connection with the Black Officer if it had 

 not formed part of his original legend. Mean- 

 while the earliest printed notice of the event with 

 which I am acquainted, a notice only ten years 

 later than the date of the Major's death in 1799, is 



