_Flounder._—According to Sutherland tradition, the wry mouth of the flounders (_Leòbag_, as it is called in the north) arose from its making faces at the rock-cod. A judgment (which children, who make faces, are liable to) came upon it, and its mouth remains as it then twisted it. In Tiree and Iona the distortion is said to have been caused by St. Columba. Colum-Kil met a shoal of flounders and asked: “Is this a removal, flounder?” “Yes it is, Colum-Kil crooked legs,” said the flounder. “If I have crooked legs,” said St. Columba, “may you have a crooked mouth,” and so the flounder has a wry mouth to this day. _Lobster._—The three animals that dart quickest and farthest in the sea, according to a popular and perhaps truthful rhyme, are the lobster, mackerel, and seal. “The dart of lobster, the dart of mackerel, and the dart of seal; and though far the lobster’s dart, farther is the mackerel’s dart, and though far the mackerel’s dart, farther is the seal’s dart.” _Serpents._—A serpent, whenever encountered, ought to be killed. Otherwise, the encounter will prove an omen of evil. The head should be completely smashed (_air a spleatradh_), and removed to a distance from the rest of the body. Unless this is done, the serpent will again come alive. The tail, unless deprived of animation, will join the body, and the head becomes a _beithis_, the largest and most deadly kind of serpent.[63] A person stung by one should rush to the nearest water. Unless he reaches it before the serpent, which also makes straight for it, he will die from the wound. Another cure for the sting is water in which the head of another serpent has been put. There was a man in Applecross who cured epilepsy by water in which he kept a living serpent. The patient was not to see the water. Farquhar, the physician, obtained his skill in the healing art from being the first to taste the juice of a white serpent. He was a native of Tongue, in Sutherlandshire, and on one occasion was met by a stranger, who asked him where he got the walking-stick he held in his hand. The stranger further got him to go to the root of the tree from which the stick had been cut, take a white serpent from a hole at its foot and boil it. He was to give the juice without touching it to the stranger. Farquhar happened to touch the mess with his finger, and it being very hot, he thrust his finger in his mouth. From that moment he acquired his unrivalled skill as a physician, and the juice lost its virtue. A week previous to St. Bridget’s Day (1st February, O.S.) the serpents are obliged to leave their holes under ground, and if the ground is then covered with snow they perish. In the popular rhyme relating to the subject the serpent in Argyllshire and Perthshire is called the ‘daughter of Edward,’ but in Skye _an rìbhinn_, the damsel. In both cases the name is probably a mere euphemism suggested by the rhyme to avoid giving unnecessary offence to the venomous creature.