Blair Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 1

XXX INTRODUCTION.
all." "They came into his mind," he said, "sometimes
at night wlien he could not sleep, — old tales that he
had not heard for threescore years."
He had the manner of a practised narrator, and it
is quite evident that he is one ; he chuckled at the
interesting parts, and laid his withered finger on my
knee as he gave out the terrible bits with due
solemnity. A small boy in a kilt, Avith large round
glittering eyes, was standing mute at his knee, gazing
at his wrinkled face, and devouring every word.
The boy's mother first boiled, and then mashed
potatoes ; and his father, a well grown man in tartan
breeks, ate them. Ducks and ducklings, a cat and a
kitten, some hens and a baby, all tumbled about on the
clay floor together, and expressed their delight at the
savoury prospect, each in his own fashion ; and three
wayfarers dropped in and listened for a spell, and
passed their remarks till the ford was shallow. The
light came streaming down the chimney, and through
a single pane of glass, lighting up a track in the blue
mist of the peat smoke ; and fell on the white hair
and brown withered fiice of the old man, as he sat on
a low stool with his feet to the fire ; and the rest of
the dwelling, with all its plenishing of boxes and box-
beds, dishes and dresser, and gear of all sorts, faded
away through shades of deepening brown, to the black
darkness of the smoked roof and the " peat corner."
There we sat, and smoked and talked for hours, till
the tide ebbed ; and then I crossed the ford by wading
up to the waist, and dried my clothes in the ìAdnd in
Benbecula.
Another man of the same stamp, Patrick Smith,
lives near the sound of Barra ; and a third, " Donald
MacDonald MacCharles Maclntyre," in Benbecula ;
and I heard of plenty more, whom I had not time to