CHAPTEE XVIII. 



NoTember Rains : 1500 tons per Imperial Acre ! — Rainfall in Skye — An old Gaelic Apologue 

 — The Drover and his Minister — Grand Stag's Head — Scott as a Poet —Mr. Gladstone 

 and Scott — An old Lullaby from the Gaelic. 



With the exception of two, or at most three, tolerahly fine 

 days at the beginning of the month, December [1870] has been 

 hardly less rainy and generally disagreeable than November 

 itself, and this, although in November a fall of 18 inches — 1500 

 tons of rain water to the imperial acre — was duly registered. A 

 recent communication from Skye went to show that in the matter 

 of rainfall that island is far ahead, not only of Lochaber, but of 

 every other station in the kingdom — a pluvial pre-eminence which 

 we had really thought belonged to ourselves, but which, claimed 

 for Skye on the impartial authority of the rain-gauge, we give up 

 ungrudgingly, simply exclaiming with Meliboeus in the VirgUian 

 eclogue — 



" Non equidem invideo, miror magis." 



(In sooth I feel not envy, but surprise.) 



"With such a rainfall as is claimed for Skye, one only wonders how 

 it is that the inhabitants of the island seem not to suffer a whit 

 because of it. As a rule, they are a robust and remarkably long- 

 lived people ; and, what is even more surprising, they are exceed- 

 ingly good-humoured and cheerful — the pleasantest people in the 

 world to meet with, whether at home or abroad. There is an old 

 Gaelic apologue current in Lochaber, which may perhaps have some 

 bearing on the point : — " It was long, long ago that, in the grey 

 dawn of an intensely cold January morning, after a wild night of 



