Sutherland and the Reay country

FOLK LORE. 1 27
enough that she performed no cure for love of gain. But
the maxim about the powerful being always envied by the
powerless found no exception in this case, and the poor
woman was attacked by a veritable scoundrel of the name
of Gordon, who "burglariously and feloniously" attempted
to lighten her of her cherished talisman, and so hard was
she " put to " that she actually threw it into the lake crying
"Mo nar, mo nar" (Anglice " for shame, for shame") and
from that time to this the lake bears the name of Loch Monar.
Though the talisman was thus lost to sight it became to
memory dear, for it was soon found that the lake would now
under rather peculiar conditions do the work of the talisman
to all, save persons of the name of Gordon ! How his clans-
men must have execrated him for being foiled by a woman.
Now for the conditions. The believing patient has to come
to the lake, bathe, dress, deposit a piece of silver and be out
of sight of it ere sunrise. Though the coins thus deposited
were protected by the threat that whosoever took them away
also took the depositor's disease, very very few coins are now
to be seen within its margin.
It is the speciality of at least one woman ija Sutherland-
shire to extract any dust or specks which may have
accidentally got into a person's eye. She tells that she
requires to know into which eye the speck has got and what
the sufferer's name is, that then she proceeds alone either
before sunrise or after sunset, to a well opening to the north,
utters a few words of Gaelic, takes a mouthful of the water
in which when she puts it out again she invariably finds the
troublesome speck. When asked as to how she got such
peculiar power, she quite willingly tells that the Gaelic
words which seem to constitute the charm were told her by