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TRADITIONS

OF STRATHGLASS.
BY COLIN CHISHOLM.

X.

WHEN a boy, I was coming down from Glencannich with an old man who had the reputation of being one of the best Seanachies in the district. He delighted in impressing on young people the necessity of knowing the history, legends, and songs of the former inhabitants in the district. Crossing Torr-beatha, a rising ground that separates Glencannich from Strathglass, he pointed out a cairn at the north-east end of Blar-an-lochan, which he said was built to the memory of a Strathconan man, killed at that spot. The tradition he related regarding him is that a party of freebooters stole a herd of cattle from Strathconan. As soon as missed, the owners followed hot haste in pursuit. They overtook the thieves, with their "creach," on Torr-beatha. The leader of the Strathconan men, Mac Fhionnla Oig, it appears, was a brave man. He at once challenged the freebooters to turn the cattle or prepare for fight. They choose the latter alternative. Mac Fhionnla Oig engaged their leader, and instantly killed him, when another of the thieves levelled his gun at the victor, and shot him dead on the spot. Thus, in an instant, the leaders of the two parties were both dead on the top of Torr-beatha. The freebooters disappeared in all haste. The men in pursuit sent one of their number home with the sad news of the death of their leader. On the following day more Strathconan men arrived in strong force, and with the assistance of Strathglass and Glenstrathfarar men they carried the body of their dead hero across the high hills of Glencannich, and the still higher hills of Glenstrathfarrar and Glenorrin, to his native Strathconan. My infor mant stated that a sister of Mac Fhionnla Oig came along with the funeral party, and as soon as they raised the bier on their shoulders, she composed and sung the following plaintiff verses :

Oh! mo la deurach dubh,
Eh! mo la deurach dubh,

Oh! mo la deurach dubh,

Mu 'n toir a bha 'n deis a chruidh.

Oh! mo la deurach dubh,

Eh! mo la deurach dubh,

Oh! mo la deurach dubh,

D' fhag iad m' fhear fein a muigh.

Oh! mo la deurach dubh,

Eh! mo la deurach dubh,

Oh! mo la deurach dubh,
'S lion iad a leine a d' fhuil.

Oh! mo la deurach dubh,
Eh! mo la deurach dubh,
Oh! mo la deurach dubh,

'S truagh nach be 'n de an diugh

Having passed the ridge of Torr-bheatha, and descending the south side of it, we came in sight of the Clachan, or Cill-Bheathain, the burying ground in the upper part of Strathglass. My aged fellow-traveller took off his bonnet, and solemnly recited the pious oli salutation :

Dhia beannaich an Clachan,
Far am bheil tasgaidh na tire,

Far am bheil m' ullaidh agus m' araic,
Agus m' ailleaganan priseal.

Passing Raon-Bhraid, my companion told me that, long ago, a woman went from this farm to the adjoining one of Easter Invercannich for the purpose of borrowing a griddle, wherewith to bake the Christmas bread. The snow was deep on the ground at the time. Although the distance between the two farms is only about half a mile, she felt fatigued, and sat down to rest at a place called Raon-ceann-a-ghlas, after which she resumed her walk, reached Invercannich, got the griddle, and retraced her steps homewards. On coming to the spot where she had halted on the outward journey, she was horrified to observe an infuriated wolf burrowing with all his might in the snow and earth, at the very place where she was so recently sitting. What was she to do? A battle for life was imminent, and there was not a moment to be lost. In this terrible plight the courageous woman determined to use the only weapon within her reach, and, raising the griddle, she, with all her strength, by a well-directed blow from the sharp edge, struck the ferocious animal on the small of the back, broke its bones, and cut the body in two. Some two or three months afterwards the same brave woman became the happy mother of a son, who grew up to be a famous hunter. It is said that a very rough place on the shady side of Glencannich, called Bacaidh-namMadadh, used to be infested with wolves; but the hunter alluded to succeeded in destroying them all.

I heard the authorship of the pious salutation alluded to about the clachan attributed to Cailean Mac Alastair, a very old man, who lived long ago at Lietry, Glencannich. I was told that at the funeral of one of his children at Clachan, when the coffin was laid in the earth, he said, "This is the fifteenth coffin I have laid in this grave." He was reported to be the wisest man in the district. Let the reader judge for himself. He married five times, and succeeded in admirably adapting his own to the temper of his five different wives.

It is said that an old woman, who nursed one of the Chisholms of Comar when he was a baby, remained in the family until he became a full-grown man. Whether he consulted his nurse on the choice of a wife, I do not know. Anyhow, when he married the lady of his choice, and took her home to Comar, her ladyship did not seem to come up to the nurse's standard of perfection. The old woman believing, however, that she could improve the young lady, was good enough to remain among the domestics for the purpose of carrying her theory into practice. After a few attempts to shape and mould the views and ways of the laird's lady, the old nurse became convinced that she had a will of her own and was determined to act upon it. About a year after the marriage his wife presented the Chisholm with an heiress. To obtain the opinion of the nurse of the new arrival, the infant was handed to her, and this is how the cruel woman saluted it:

'S toigh leam fein do leth a leinibh,

Bho do mhullach gu d' bhonn,

Ach 's truagh nach robh an leth eile dhiot,

Na theine dearg do dharach donn.

The English of which is "I love the half of you, baby, from the top of your head to the sole of your foot; but I regret the other half of you is not burning in a blazing fire of brown oak."* This verse having been recited to the mother, she ordered the nurse not only out of the house, but out of Strathglass. She was transported to the plains of Morayshire, where the Chisholm sent men with wood to build a house for her reception. When the old crone entered the new residence in her penal settlement of Morayshire, she surveyed its internal construction with an anxious eye. Gazing at its couple-trees, her heart gladdened at finding herself surrounded with Strathglass timber, and she addressed her new abode thus:

'S tocha leam do mhaidean croma,
Na da-thrian na'm bheil am Moireamh,
Airson gun d' fhas iad an coille Chomar,
Frith na'n damh dearg 'us donna.

Meaning "I prefer thy crooked couple-trees to two-thirds of all in Morayshire, because they have grown in the wood of Comar, the haunt of the red and the dun stags." Before parting with the builders of her new house she made them bearers of a mark of gratitude to her patron, the Chisholm. This is how she began her message of thanks to him :—

'S truagh nach robh Loch-mhaol-ardich,

Far an orduichinn i 'm Moiramh,
A fad 's a leud, sa lom, sa larach,
Aig mo ghradh fo eorna soillear.

"I regret that Lochmulardich is not where I would order it, in Moray, its length, breadth, site, and area,† growing bright barley for my love, the Chisholm."

(To be Continued.)

Mr

THE HON. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, Ex-Premier of Canada, and Mrs Mackenzie, passed through Inverness on Monday last, on their way to Caithness. and Mrs Mackenzie have been travelling here and on the Continent of Europe for the last two months, and we were very pleased to learn from himself that he has been greatly benefitted by his trip, and his appearance unmistakably indicates the fact. By the time this shall have appeared in print, he is to be back in Inverness for a few days, and we hope that he will thoroughly enjoy the surroundings of the Highland Capital.

THE GAELIC CENSUS.-Though we have given this month eight pages more than usual, to enable us to present the reader with a report of the Annual Assembly of the Gaelic Society, we are obliged to hold over a valuable communication by Mr Fraser-Mackintosh, M.P., on the Gaelic Census; as also the Rev. Alex. Macgregor's next chapter on "Flora Macdonald." We are glad to find that Mr Fraser-Mackintosh has been successful in getting an address agreed to, in the House of Commons on Monday last, for a tabulated return of all the Gaelic-speaking people of Scotland, by counties, parishes, and districts, under the Census of 1881.

*The oak is supposed to burn hotter than any other wood

+ The area of Lochmulardich is about four miles.

Literature.

A LIFE PURSUIT. By WILLIAM ALLAN, Author of "Rose and Thistle," &c.

Sunderland: Hills & Co.

THE reading of Mr Allan's new work has afforded us unalloyed pleasure. The history of a life, however uneventful to outward seeming it may appear to be, cannot fail to be instructive; how much more so the history of an eventful life faithfully told. But Mr Allan's book is more than a history in verse of a life of mere adventure; it is the history of a life of purposeful toil, of honest long continued striving-often in spite of discouragement and apparent defeat-after fortune; a term which, with the author, means infinitely more than mere wealth. It is, too, the history of a successful life, success achieved in a manner which leaves no regrets behind, a history, moreover, written by the man whose life it is, for there is little if any attempt in the book to disguise the fact that "Mor the Scot," whose life is narrated, is Mr Allan himself.

The plan of the work is natural and simple. After a description of Mor's father and mother, written with the reverential hand of a son, in whose loving memory the one has become a hero and the other a saint, we have an account of Mor's birth, baptism, boyhood, and education—of his apprenticeship, and of his first campaign as a toiler, ending in apparent defeat. Then follow several cantos, describing a vision which had the immediate effect of reviving the hero's dead courage, and to which he ascribes the inculcation of the principles of Honesty, Justice, and Truth, which were his guides ever afterwards. Mor rises from the chair in which he had received his ghostly visitors with new hope, and once more seeking employment, is successful.

By and bye comes the American Civil War, and the blockade of the Southern Ports, affording opportunities for the employment of men of nerve and ability which Mor takes advantage of: for we next find him on board a blockade-runner. He runs the blockade at least twice successfully, but is ultimately captured and sent to prison in Washington. When he regains his liberty he returns to Britain, "not richer but far wiser than before." Soon after this a more extended sphere of labour opens to him, to be followed by one still more extended, and then comes victory and its fruits, by which we take it, is meant the enviable position which Mr Allan by his ability and energy has now earned for himself.

We have endeavoured thus to shadow forth the plan of the book, but no mere sketch can give an idea of the merit of the work itself. It is full of word-pictures of the happiest and most graphic kind. As already indicated, the portrait of Mor's father is drawn with a loving and reverential hand. He is a man who is suddenly reduced by innocent misfortune from wealth to comparative penury. But this is not dwelt on-little more than a casual reference being made to the fact. The moral and mental aspect of the man finds a larger place in his son's memory, and we are told that

Detesting cant, no hate to those he showed,
Who sought for heaven by a different road,

a feature of his character which would perhaps not be quite satisfactory to his minister, an old Presbyterian divine, who is in a subsequent canto described as

Wrapt in cold Orthodoxy's vestiture,

He preached flame-terrors as sin's only cure,
And sought by fear-creating tales to shape
For every soul a simple fire-escape-

Bound in his blind belief that God was one
Who cursed all those that worshipped not his son
By Presbyterian version of his creed.

Mor's first teacher was Eppie Tamson, who is thus happily and doubtless truthfully described, although in a very short time the changes in our educational system will perhaps make the description appear grotesquely

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In a note Mr Allan says that objections may be urged against the unreality of the cantos describing his dream and its immediate issues, but we are satisfied that no reader would wish them out of the book, for these cantos contain some of Mr Allan's finest lines. It is winter, and Mor, unemployed and despairing, returns to his cold home in that mood when Thoughts of death arise, that tempt the unhinged soul To spurn the world and gain the restful goal.

And he and his surroundings are thus described :

Mor, workless and purseless, friendless and crushed,
Sat by the dead fire, and the room was hushed,

He heard a death-voice in the wailing tones

Of the night wind's sudden and fitful moans.

He started and thought some spirit had tapped
As the keen hard hail on the window rapped.

Sleep comes and enshrouds the outer senses of the dispirited worker, but the spirit is awake and receives its comfort in the vision which follows, and when the sleeper awakes it is with new strength and courage, and to make new and successful efforts.

The cantos devoted to the blockade-running portion of Mor's life are perhaps the most spirited in the book. The arrival of the blockaderunner at Porto Rico leads up to a splendidly written canto on the cruelties of the Spaniards in Mexico, where

Beneath the ruthless Spaniards' blighting breath,
An Empire vanished in a storm of death,

and in Peru, where-

O'er the peaceful country swiftly rolled
A wave of murder and a cry of gold;

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