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

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
of Lome and the Lynn of Morven, and noted in ancient
times for the fertiHty that gave it a Celtic name meaning
" The Great Garden."
On this Island stood Castle Coeffin, stronghold of a Viking
prince in the days when the suzerainty of Norway extended
over all this countryside. In the inlet below the Castle this
prince kept his war galleys in con.stant readiness. He
neither allowed his galleys to rest, nor his arms to rust.
With this prince lived his sister, the fair Beothail, who is
spoken of in the folk-tale and legendry of Argyll and the
Isles as having been of a disposition as gentle as that of
her brother was merciless. " Her footsteps were as the
music of songs," says an old Gaelic proverb of Beothail
so ready was she to temper the winds to the lambs shorn
by her brother's fierceness.
Beothail pined away and died of grief on Lismore :
—
her
lover, one of the most intrepid of all the sons of Lochlann,
had been slain when on a rieving expedition to a foreign
land. Her remains were interred in one of the two knolls
situated close to Castle Coeffin. But Beothail never ceased
from crying in her death-sleep, for she desired that her
kinsfolk should exhume her, and bear her upon the northern
tide for burial in Lochlann.
In course of time, her father, the King of Lochlann,
requisitioned a vessel to sail for Lismore, to carry home
her remains. She was exhumed right duly. Her corpse,
before shipment, was washed in the sacred well of St.
Moluag, the Patron Saint of Lismore and of the neighbouring
Isles. On its arrival in Lochlann, it was re-interred
with Viking ceremony in the burial-place of the kings and
their kindred.
But the earthly frame of Beothail was restless ; and there
was no accounting for its restlessness until it was discovered
that one of her toes was missing ! Thereupon the King of
Lochlann directed that forthwith the vessel should return to
Lismore, so that a search might be made for the bones of
the missing toe. In the well, in which the corpse had been
washed, the bones were found. And from that day until
now this well has been known by a Gaelic name meaning the
Well of Beothail's Bones. Not until
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the bones of her toe