The wind that blows on the feet of the dead came calling loud across the Ross as we put about the boat off the Rudhe Callachain. The ebb sucked at the keel, while, like a cork, we were swung lightly by the swell. For we were in the strait between Eilean Dubh and the Isle of the Swine; and that is where the current has a bad pull--the current that is made of the inflow and the outflow. I have heard that a weary woman of the olden days broods down there in a cave, and that day and night she weaves a web of water, which a fierce spirit in the sea tears this way and that as soon as woven. So we put about, and went before the east wind: and below the dip of the sail a-lee I watched Soa grow bigger and gaunter and blacker against the white wave. As we came so near that it was as though the wash of the sea among the hollows bubbled in our ears, I saw a large bull-seal lying half-in half-out of the water, and staring at us with an angry, fearless look. Phadric and Ivor caught sight of it almost at the same moment. To my surprise Macrae suddenly rose and put a rosad upon it. I could hear the wind through his clothes as he stood by the mast. The rosad or spell was, of course, in the Gaelic; but its meaning was something like this-- _Ho, ro, O Ron dubh, O Ron dubh!_ _An ainm an Athar, O Ron!_ _’S an mhic, O Ron!_ _’S an Spioraid Naoimh._ _O Ron-à-mhàra, O Ron dubh!_ Ho, ro, O black Seal, O black Seal! In the name of the Father, And of the Son, And of the Holy Ghost, O Seal of the deep sea, O black Seal! Hearken the thing that I say to thee, I, Phadric MacAlastair MhicCrae, Who dwell in a house on the Island That you look on night and day from Soa! For I put _rosad_ upon thee, And upon the woman-seal that won thee, And the women-seal that are thine, And the young that thou hast; Ay, upon thee and all thy kin I put _rosad_, O Ron dubh, O Ron-à-mhàra! And may no harm come to me or mine, Or to any fishing or snaring that is of me; Or to any sailing by storm or dusk, Or when the moonshine fills the blind eyes of the dead, No harm to me or mine From thee or thine! With a slow swinging motion of his head Phadric broke out again into the first words of the incantation, and now Ivor joined him; and with the call of the wind and the leaping and the splashing of the waves was blent the chant of the two fishermen-- _Ho, ro, O Ron dubh, O Ron dubh!_ _An ainm an Athar, ’s an Mhic, ’s an Spioriad Naoimh,_ _O Ron-à-mhàra, O Ron dubh!_ Then the men sat back, with that dazed look in the eyes I have so often seen in those of men or women of the Isles who are wrought. No word was spoken till we came almost straight upon Eilean-na-h’ Aon-Chaorach. Then at the rocks we tacked, and went splashing up the Sound like a pollack on a Sabbath noon.[11]