Gairloch in North-West Ross-Shire: Its Records, Traditions, Inhabitants, and Natural History, with a Guide to Gairloch and Loch Maree, and a Map and IllustrationsDixon, John H. (John Henry)
History
Gairloch in North-West Ross-Shire: Its Records, Traditions, Inhabitants, and Natural History, with a Guide to Gairloch and Loch Maree, and a Map and Illustrations
Dixon, John H. (John Henry)
Gairloch (Scotland) -- Guidebooks; Gairloch (Scotland) -- History; Ross and Cromarty (Scotland) -- History
Some little time after this, when the snow was melting off the
mountains, he lifted his arrow bladder on his back, sent word for Big
Donald, son of the son of Ranald MacRae from Inverinate, and they walked
as one together across Kilaolainn. Old Alastair Liath of Carr
accompanied them. They walked through the mountains of Loch-carron. They
came in by the mountains of Kenlochewe. They came at a late hour in
sight of Loch Tollie, and they took notice of MacBeath's castle in the
island, and of a place whence it would be easy for them to send their
arrows to the castle. There was a rowan-tree alongside the castle, which
was in their way, but when the darkening of night came they moved down
to the shore in such a way that the heroes got near the bank of the
loch, so that they might in the breaking of the sky be opposite MacBeath
when he came out.
[Illustration: ON CRAIG TOLLIE.]
When MacBeath came out in the morning, the other man said to Donald Mor,
"Try how true your hand is now, if it is not tremulous after the night;
try if you can hit the seed of the beast, the hare, so that you make a
carcase of him where he is, inasmuch as he has no right to be there."
Donald shot his arrow by chance, but it only became flattened against
one of the kind of windows in the kind of castle that was in it.
When the man from Carr saw what happened to the arrow of the man from
Inverinate, he thought that his companion's arrow was only a useless
one. The man from Carr got a glimpse of one of the servants of MacBeath,
carrying with him a stoup of water to boil a goat buck, which he had
taken from Craig Tollie the night before; but, poor fellow! it was not
he who consumed the goat buck. Old Alastair Liath of Carr threw the
arrow, and it went through the kidneys of him of the water-stoup.
MacBeath suspected that a kind of something was behind him which he did
not know about. He thought within himself not to wait to eat the goat
buck; that it would be as well for him to go ashore--life or death to
him--as long as he had the chance to cross. He lifted every arrangement
he had, and he made the shore of it. Those who would not follow him he
left behind him; he walked as fast as was in his joints, but fast as
MacBeath was, the arrow of the son of Big Donald fixed in him in the
thickest of his flesh. He ran with the arrow fixed, and his left hand
fixed in the arrow, hoping always that he would pull it out. He ran down
the brae to a place which is called Boora to this day; and the reason of
that name is, that when MacBeath pulled the arrow out, a buradh, or
bursting forth of blood, came after it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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