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

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
intruder of what would happen to him if he blew the bugle
a third time.
Thereupon the intruder fled from the cave ; and never
thereafter was he able to direct either himself or any other
person to its entrance. When he told his neighbours of
this experience, they assured him that the place he had found
must have been the Great House of Alba.
Cave of Smoo.
Donald, the Wizard of Reay, had learnt the Black Art at
a school in Italy, where the Devil Himself occupied a
professorial chair. When the school ' ' went down
at the
end of each term, there was always a great commotion,
since the Devil insisted on claiming the last scholar as his
own. Now, the Devil made a lunge at the Wizard of
Reay, in an endeavour to retain him.
" Take the hindmost ! " retaliated the Wizard, drawing
the Devil's attention to his shadow. So, the Devil seized
the hindmost ; and that, they say, is how Donald, the Wizard
of Reay, managed to escape. When he returned to Scotland,
it was soon observed that he threw no shadow,
however strong might be the sunlight. And that was the
explanation for it.
One day Donald went to keep an appointment with his
late professor in the Cave of Smoo. There they quarrelled
violently; and Donald took to flight. They say in
Sutherland that the hoof marks of Donald's horse may be
seen by the entrance to the Cave of Smoo to this day. But
Donald himself was not all that one might have desired.
In support of this, the natives of Reay used to point to a
ring down by the shore, to which he fixed his victims at
ebb-tide, so that the flowing tide might drown them. And
they say, too, that he always retained the power of being
able to visit Italy in a night, and return to Scotland ere
dawn—often covered with snow or frost, proving that he
had journeyed across the snowy Alps.
Donald also had the faculty of inducing the faeries to
accomplish for him all sorts of irksome tasks. He always
174