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

ANIMAL LORE
counties of Scotland. That as late as the seventeenth
century wolves were a menace in these parts is shown by
the fact that here, as elsewhere in Scotland, the practice
developed of burying the dead on islands, in order to
protect the graves from the depredations of wolves.
A little more than a decade ago a memorial was erected
at Lothbeg, in Sutherland, on which is engraved this
inscription :
TO MARK THE SPOT NEAR WHICH (ACCORDING TO
SCROPE's " DAYS OF DEER-STALKING ") THE LAST
WOLF IN SUTHERLAND WAS KILLED BY THE
HUNTER, POLSON, IN OR ABOUT THE YEAR 1700.
THIS STONE WAS ERECTED BY HIS GRACE THE
DUKE OF PORTLAND, K.G. ; A.D. 1924.
According to William Scrope, the story of Poison is that
he and two young men (one of whom was his son)
discovered near a heap of stones a cavern, which turned out
to be the lair of a wolf. The son crept into the lair by a
narrow fissure in the rocks, and there found a number of
cubs. These he immediately began to kill when suddenly, to
his father's horror, the infuriated dam came bounding home
to her den, having heard the feeble cries of her cubs. As
she dashed into the entrance, Poison is said to have caught
her bushy tail, and to have held her fast, with the fore-part
of her body wedged in the narrow fissure leading to the
cavern.
When the son within the cavern inquired of his father
what was excluding the light, the old hunter exclaimed :
" If the root of the tail break, vou will soon be knowing
"
that !
Scrope tells us that in the end Poison succeeded in
mortally wounding the wolf with his dirk.
A Fox's Sagacity.
Although to-day the fox is not so common in the Highlands
as he has been, our folk-tales are loud in extolling his
wisdom and cunning. There is a tale told of a sagacious
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