Matheson Collection > Popular tales of the west Highlands > Volume 1

INTRODUCTION. Ixiii
little more than the purchase of a wife ; and in this the
story may be a true picture of the past.
Men are bound with the binding of the three smalls
— waist, ankles, and wrists — tightened and tortured.
The conqueror almost invariably asks the conquered
what is his " eirig," an old law term for the price of
men's blood, which varied with the rank of the injured
man ; and when the vanquished has revealed his riches,
the victor takes his life, and the spoil ; his arms, combs,
basins, dresses, horses, gold and silver ; and such
deeds may have been done. The tales which treat of
the wars of Eirinn and Lochlann, and are full of
metrical prose, describe arms and boats, helmets, spears,
shields, and other gear ; ships that are drawn on shore,
as Icelandic ships really were ] boats and arms similar
to those which are figured on old stones in lona and
elsewhere, and are sometimes dug out of old graves and
peat mosses. I believe them to be descriptions of real
arms, and dresses, manners, and events.
For example, the warriors always abuse each other
before they fight. So do the heroes of Ossian ; so do
the heroes of Homer ; so do soldiers now. In the Times
of the 29th of December 1859, in a letter from the
camp at Ceuta in this passage : —
" While fighting, even when only exchanging long shots, the
Moors keep up a most hideous howling and shrieking, vituperat-
ing their enemies in bad Spanish, and making the mountains re-
sound with the often-repeated epithet of ^ perros ' (dogs.) To
this the Spaniards condescend not to reply, except with bullets,
although in the civil war it was no unusual thing to hear Carlist
and Christina skirmishers abusing each other, and especially in-
dulging in unhandsome reflections upon each others' Sovereign."
Again, the fights are single combats, in which indi-
viduals attack masses and conquer. So were the
Homeric combats. What will be the story told in