LOCH AWE - 45 



Inverness, and we did not deal much in local myth. 

 True, he told me why Loch Awe ceased — like the 

 site of Sodom and Gomorrah — to be a cultivated 

 valley and became a lake, where the trout are 

 jsmall and, externally, green. 



' Loch Awe . was once a fertile valley, and it 

 belonged to an old dame. She was called Dame 

 Cruachan, the same as the hill, and she lived high 

 up on the hill-side. Now there was a well on the 

 hill-side, and she was always to cover up the well 

 with a big stone before the sun set. But one day 

 she had been working in the valley and she was 

 weary, and she sat down by the path on her way 

 home and fell asleep. And the sun had gone down 

 before she reached the well, and in the night the 

 water broke out and filled all the plain, and what 

 was land is now water.' This, then, was the origin 

 of Loch Awe. It is a little like the Australian 

 account of the Deluge. That calamity was pro- 

 duced by a man's showing a woman the mystic 

 turndun, a native sacred toy. Instantly water broke 

 out of the earth and drowned everybody. 



' This is merely a local legend, such as boatmen 



