ediately beside where we opened our quarry, there was a little
solitary shieling: it was well-nigh such an edifice as I used to erect
when a boy--some eight or ten feet in length, and of so humble an
altitude, that, when standing erect in the midst, I could lay my hand on
the roof-tree. A heath-bed occupied one of the corners; a few grey
embers were smouldering in the middle of the floor; a pot lay beside
them, ready for use, half-filled with cockles and razor-fish, the spoils
of the morning ebb; and a cog of milk occupied a small shelf that
projected from the gable above. Such were the contents of the shieling.
Its only inmate, a lively little old man, sat outside, at once tending a
few cows grouped on the moor, and employed in stripping with a
pocket-knife, long slender filaments from off a piece of moss fir; and
as he wrought and watched, he crooned a Gaelic song, not very musically
mayhap, but, like the happy song of the humble-bee, there was perfect
content in every tone. He had a great many curious questions to ask in
his native Gaelic, of my comrade, regarding our employment and our
employer; and when satisfied, he began, I perceived, like the Highlander
of the previous evening, to express very profound commiseration for me.
"Is that man also pitying me?" I asked. "O yes, very much," was the
reply: "he does not at all see how you are to live in Gairloch without
Gaelic." I was reminded by the shieling and its happy inmate, of one of
my father's experiences, as communicated to me by Uncle James. In the
course of a protracted kelp voyage among the Hebrides, he had landed in
his boat, before entering one of the sounds of the Long Island, to
procure a pilot, but found in the fisherman's cottage on which he had
directed his course, only the fisherman's wife--a young creature of not
more than eighteen--engaged in nursing her child, and singing a Gaelic
song, in tones expressive of a light heart, till the rocks rang again. A
heath bed, a pot of baked clay, of native manufacture, fashioned by the
hand, and a heap of fish newly caught, seemed to constitute the only
wealth of the cottage; but its mistress was, notwithstanding, one of the
happiest of women; and deeply did she commiserate the poor sailors, and
earnestly wish for the return of her husband, that he might assist them
in their perplexity. The husband at length appeared. "Oh," he asked,
after the first greeting, "have you any salt?" "Plenty," said the
master; "and y