n Mull--Inveraray Castle--The
sacred isle--Appin--Macdonald's gratitude--Notes on the
Trossachs--Lochfyneside: Macivors, Macvicars, and
Macallisters--Red Hector--Macphail of Colonsay--Tales from
Speyside: Tom Eunan!--Shaws and Grants--The wishing well--Ossian
and Macpherson--At the foot o' Bennachie--Harlaw--Lochaber
reivers--Reay and Twickenham--Rob Donn--Rev. Mr. Mill of
Dunrossness.

GAIRLOCH FOLK-LORE.

I do not think anyone interested in local history and antiquities could
find a greater treat than that furnished by Mr. Dixon's _Account of the
Parish of Gairloch_. That romantic and lovely district is fortunate in
having found a historian of unlimited enthusiasm and untiring industry.
There is not a single dry page in his long and detailed narrative. Many
of the legends he tells are known to me from other sources, but I am
certain that no Scotch compiler (Mr. Dixon, let me say, is English) has
written of them with such enjoyable sympathy and poetical ardour. I have
been assured by local authorities that the facts adduced by Mr. Dixon
are invariably reliable. That I can well believe; but what is still more
rare, Mr. Dixon's facts are everywhere made to gleam and glitter in the
radiance of romance. Let me narrate, in concentrated form, one of the
legends which this clever writer has alluded to in more than one of his
chapters.

PRINCE OLAF AND HIS BRIDE.

In the ninth century of the Christian era, one of the islands that in
such picturesque fashion dot the surface of Loch Maree, was honoured by
being the abode of a pious hermit, despatched thither from the sacred
isle of Iona. His presence there, implying as it did austerity,
perpetual worship of Heaven, and the reading of devout treatises,
inspired veneration in the minds of the obstreperous tribes around. They
felt themselves better from having such a good man near them. Wherever
in these old times of war and gore, a saintly pioneer established
himself, the kingdom of chaos and night was pushed back for miles around
his cell.

The Picts of the ninth century revered this man, and his fame was known
also to the predatory seamen who came buccaneering among the islands of
the West. A Viking of royal blood, Prince Olaf, in the intervals of his
sea-roving, hied sometimes to the hermit's retreat, for instruction and
spiritual blessing. The young man, as tradition alleges, was not beyond
the need of guidance, for his temper was of the