244 HISTORY OF THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 



This appears to be the occasion referred to by Sir Walter 

 Scott in his Tales of a Grandfather, when he states that 

 some of the old persons in Lewis, who were alive in his 

 time, talked of a very old woman living in their youth, 

 who used to say that she had held the light while her 

 countrymen were cutting the throats of the Fife Adven- 

 turers. Parenthetically, it may be remarked that the 

 leisurely process of despatch which the cailleactis story 

 suggests, hardly tallies with the well-grounded statement 

 that the prisoners were permitted to return home in 

 safety. The gruesome picture of a shambles arises before 

 the mind's eye rather than the deportation of the van- 

 quished across the Minch. But the old woman's tale 

 may have been true in isolated instances, or in the 

 case of those who refused to submit to the terms of the 

 Lewismen. 



Sir Walter also relates a romantic incident in connexion 

 with the dispersion of the Fife men which should find a 

 place here. The wife of one of the principal colonists fled 

 from the scene of violence to a wild desert, called the 

 Forest of Fannig. In this wilderness, she became a 

 mother. A native, who happened to be passing, saw 

 the mother and child, who, through exposure, were at the 

 point of death. Taking compassion on them, he killed 

 his pony, cut it open, removed the entrails, and placed 

 the mother and infant inside, the warmth of this novel 

 receptacle serving to keep both alive. He then succeeded 

 in removing them to a place of safety, where the woman 

 remained until she found her way home. The sequel to 

 this incident is also told by Scott. The woman who 

 had undergone the remarkable adventure just described 

 became, by a second marriage, the wife of a leading 

 citizen of Edinburgh, her husband being a Judge of the 

 Court of Session. One evening, while looking out from a 

 window of her house in the Canongate, just as a storm 

 was coming on, she overheard a man in Highland dress 

 say in Gaelic to a companion : " This would be a rough 

 night for the Forest of Fannig." The latter was a never- 



