[A hill near Loch Maree is named Ben Ailleagan: a jewel.
Jewels in general figure but little in Highland lore; but the jewel of Gemshid pales before the three-fold diamond of Ben Stack.]
ii.—The Spectral Hosts.
Part of the estate of Embo, recently bought by the Duke of Sutherland, consists of an open moor sloping almost to the sea. On this piece of ground spectral hosts have been repeatedly seen charging and repulsing each other, and people crossing the moor have been noticed by others to be surrounded by these armies, of which they themselves saw nothing. It is most common before sunrise, and may be supposed (though the country people think it uncanny) to resemble the figures seen by travellers in the Erzegebirge.—(Miss Leslie, Dornoch.)
iii.—AltnaHierinn, or The Burn of the Maiden.
One of the march burns here has this name because tradition says that a girl was once murdered beside it; under what circumstances I do not know. She haunts it still; and this spring a spectral dog and man were observed near it. All parties agree that on the spot on which her blood was spilt the snow never lies; it is exposed summer and winter, night and day, to the angry eye of heaven.—(Peggy Munro, Achlach.)
The Sea.
In 1806 a number of people were drowned at the Mickel ferry (between Ross and Sutherland) owing to overloading the boat. On the anniversary of this accident nothing could have induced our gamekeeper to draw his net in a little arm of Skibo, and near the said ferry. I do not know what he was afraid of; perhaps of some misfortune to himself, certainly of bad luck in his fishing, or he may have had some lingering fear of drawing in a dead body.—(D. M.)
The sea, they say, does not always cast up those who have been drowned either by accident (as falling from a rock or pier) or by stress of weather; but the corpse of one murdered and thrown into it is sure to float ashore. "The sea will not keep what it did not seek."—(Matheson, Clackmore.)
