74 NETBER LOCHABER. 



rare fish than it is now, for it has a Gaelic name, '^ Buachaille-an- 

 Sgadain," the Herring Herd or Herdsman. It was probably 

 comparatively common in the good old times, when even our more 

 inland western lochs swarmed annually with herring shoals, and so 

 large was the capture, that the salt to cure them, on which there 

 was a considerable duty at the time, was frequently retailed over 

 a vessel's side at a shilling the lippy. The late Colonel Maclean of 

 Ardgour, who attained a great age, with intellect clear and un- 

 impaired, and who was most particular and exact in all his 

 statistics, has repeatedly assured us that, in his younger days, 

 say a hundred years ago, fifty thousand pounds worth of herring 

 used to be captured annually in Lochiel alone. We don't suppose 

 that for many years past herring to the value of a tenth of 

 that sum have been caught in all the lochs between the Mull of 

 Cantyre and the Point of Ardnamurchan. 



The reader probably knows what ringworm is — a fungoid 

 eruption on the skin, not uncommon in the spring and early 

 summer in chUdren and young people of plethoric habits. There is 

 a very wide-spread belief over the West Highlands and in the 

 Hebrides that ringworm can be readUy cured by rubbing it over 

 and around once or twice with a gold-ring — a woman's marriage 

 ring, if it can be had, being always preferred. In our younger 

 days we recollect seeing the cure applied on more than one occa- 

 sion, whether with the desired result, or ineffectually, we do not 

 know — we probably little thought in those days of kilts, cam- 

 manachd, and barley bannocks, of inquiring. For many years we 

 had neither seen nor heard anything either of the disease or of 

 its popular cure, until, by the merest accident, it came under our 

 notice a few days ago. Riding home one evening last week, we 

 observed two little girls and a sturdy long-legged Jiafiin lad 

 sitting patiently in front of a cottage, the door of which was shut 

 and locked. The youngsters, rather better dressted than usual, had 



