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RORIE MORE'S CLAYMORE.

stition derived from the Norwegian ancestry of the house."[1] Sir Walter describes it as "a pennon of silk, with something like round red rowan-berries wrought upon it."[2] In the gallery I saw Rorie More's claymore, "of a prodigious size," as Boswell called it. He wrote this some years before he heard from old Mr Edwards that Johnson, when an undergraduate of Oxford, "would not let them say prodigious at college, for even then he was deli-

ARMOUR.
ARMOUR.

ARMOUR.

cate in language." If it is not prodigious, nevertheless it is a real claymore or great sword, for that is what the Gaelic word means. Unfortunately the point is broken off. The sight of it did not console me for my disappointment at finding that Rorie More's bed is no longer in existence, with the inscription above it, "Sir Roderick M'Leod of Dunvegan, Knight. God send good rest." I would rather have seen it than a dozen swords, whether great or small.

Johnson slept in the Fairy Bedroom in the Fairy Tower. The legend runs that this part of the castle was built 450 years ago by

  1. Pennant's Voyage to the Hebrides, 1774, p. 295.
  2. Lockhart's Life of Scott, iv. 304.