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

FOLK-TALES OF HIGHLAND HOSPITALITY
occupied it. By this time the wind had fallen considerably.
Down to the shore of Loch Dunvegan they ran to launch
their birlinn. And, when steering seaward, they noticed that
the kiln was a mass of shooting flames. Donald Gorm and
his men were well out of MacLeod's reach by this time ; and
eventually they reached their beloved Uist without scaith.
A Tale of Old Glen Strae.
This is a story of long, long ago, since the first scenes of
it were enacted before the MacGregors were ousted by the
trickery of their Campbell adversaries from their ancestral
home in Glen Strae, and when the Lamonts, those stouthearted
and resolute Lairds of Cowal, were still in residence
at Castle Toward, their ancient stronghold at the eastern
entrance to the Kyles of Bute.
It so happened that, in the days of his early manhood,
young Lamont and a single companion from Cowal were
hunting in the Forest of Etive, through which, it is said,
they were passing on their way to Inverlochy ; and whom
should they meet in the valley below—the Greyfir Shoulder
—but Glen Strae's son and heir, who along with one or two
of his followers was on a similar errand. MacGregor and
Lamont agreed to pursue the chase together. When it was
toward dusk, and the mists were deploying among the
barren, lofty places of Argyll, they and their retainers
betook themselves to Kingshouse Inn. Here they resolved
to put up for the night ; and here an unhappy episode ensued,
for young MacGregor and Lamont had a violent c|uarrel,
which terminated only when the former fell to the ground
under the weight of Lamont's dirk. Lamont, when he
perceived that he had murdered his fellow-huntsman, in
order to escape immediate vengeance at the hands of
MacGregor's followers, straightway fled into the nightenshrouded
mountains.
Lamont, in his anxiety to return to Castle Toward lest his
enemies should encompass him, found himself at a dark,
morning hour in Glen Strae, nearly twenty miles away from
Kingshouse as the crow flies, and certainly very much
farther by the route which he needs must have taken. Not
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