as once I heard a prosaic roadmender unpro- White 

 saically and with kindly sympathy allude to Weather, 

 the winter-bleat of the snow-famished deer. 

 And that other bleating : of sheep left upon 

 the hills, and overtaken by the White Weather. 

 How goes the sound, the translated echo of 

 their mournful iteration, that is now a long 

 ul ulation of lament and now a rising and falling 

 bleating as of confused words ? The same 

 roadmender I speak of said after himself 

 lamenting in sympathy tha 'mfuachd a muigh 's 

 a staigh an diugh . . . * the cold is outside and 

 inside to-day ' that it went like this : Tha sinn 

 cearr, tha sinn cearr, tha sinn cearr 's gunfhios 

 againn ! . . . ' We are astray, we are astray, we 

 are astray and have lost our bearings 1 ' 



Up here everything may have a snow-change 

 'into something rich and rare.' It was in a 

 hill-solitude, in white weather such as this, 

 that, for example, I heard from an old shepherd 

 names for the eagle, the corbie, and the 

 ptarmigan that I had not elsewhere heard, nor 

 have seen in print, though for long now I have 

 been collecting all whenever and wherever 

 chance permits the Gaelic and Lowland names 

 of birds and animals. The corbie he called 

 An t-Eun Acarachd, the Merciless, literally, 

 ' the bird without compassion/ no doubt with 

 thought of its love for young lambs or its 



