The peat-fire flame : folk-tales and traditions of the Highlands & Islands

THE TEAT-FTRF FLAME
often that he would not venture across the threshold after
dark.
The islet of Hestamul, situated not far from Creagorry,
in Benbecula, and close to the South Ford, is identified as
the place whereon, according to lore current in the Outer
Hebrides, the Slnagli deposited the fair daughter of a
French king, after she had been ' spirited ' over leagueless
wastes of air, and had endured untold hardship at its hands.
As a result of the harsh treatment this princess received,
she died on Hestamul ; and she was interred there in
presence of a great convention of the Islesfolk—so the story
goes.
Wraith of a Spanish Princess.
The previous folk-tale recalls a similar one associated
with Keil, the old-world burial-ground of Morven, overlooking
the Sound of Mull and the lofty mountains of that
Island. In the days when it was customary for the spirit
of the last person interred to take upon itself the duty known
as grave-watching, until the next interment should occur,
two men living in Morven entered into a pact that whichever
of them survived would keep watch in the burial-ground
at Keil. One night the survivor, during his vigil, witnessed
the wraiths of the departed rise from their lairs. Among
them was the wraith of his friend, and one that seemed
to lag a little behind the others when they were mustering
for their aerial excursion. On addressing the latter, he
learnt that it was the wraith of a Spanish princess about to
visit her native haunts on earth.
Now, there is a tradition in Morven that there was buried
at Keil the body of a Spanish princess believed to have been
killed aboard the galleon, Florida, when in 1588 that unit of
the Spanish Armada was blown up by the MacLeans in
Tobermory Bay, only a few miles distant across the Sound
of Mull.
" The War is against Clan Ranald."
In Skye and in South Uist there is current a folk-tale
relating to the strange manner in which a settlement was
reached in a dispute that had arisen between Clan Ranald
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