Lairds of Glenlyon

34 THE LAIRDS OF GLENLYON.
one bulk, which dammed the whole water in several places
thereof, and hindered the whole fishing of the said river for
the space of last year. Wherefore the said Robert Camp-
bell, day and date thereof, said place where the said Captain
John Crawford and said workmen are now working at said
work, made civil interruption, and desired them and the
rest of their company to desist and cease : * * * And
in like manner protested against the said Captain John
Crawford, for cutting of the said woods and laying the same
in great heaps, and keeping a great fire thereat, and burning
of the same in manifest contempt and prejudice, &c. And
in like manner forbad these things now done on Druim-
an-lochane, in Milton of Eonan in Glenlyon, between three
and four hours in the afternoon. * * * " The mention
of the great fires kept in the woods will explain to the
Glenlyon men why the stocks of fir, which they disentomb
from the moss for their winter light, are mostly all charred,
and, as the date is known, it affords an excellent mark for
determining the growth of the moss itself. The " civil in-
terruption " of the legal instrument was not quick enough
in its operation to please the Glenlyon people. The dam
was broken, and the sawmill set on fire one fine summer
evening, and I have heard in boyhood a song in which it
was commemorated : — " Mar loisg iad na daimh chrochdach
air bord a mhuilinn shabhaidh" — i.e., "How they burned the
wide-horned oxen on the boards of Crawford's sawmill ; "
it being oxen that he used, instead of horses, for dragging
the wood. Crawford had made himself extremely unpopular.
His sawmill was erected at first on the same stream with
Eonan's mill ; and, as the water was not sufficient to keep
the two going together, many an unlucky wight had long