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

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
Clan Ranald of the Isles speedily forsook Dun Borve,
carrying the coracle; and he could be seen in the act of
paddling himself away and away, out o^'er the loch. And
never again, either on moorland or on machar, or by the
shore of sea or loch, was the Captain of Clan Ranald seen
in human form in Benbecula.
The Strangers of the Plain.
Mention of death and the death-shrouds reminds one of
the fact that, if there were one thing elderly or aged
Highlanders and Islanders dreaded more than another, it
was the idea that they might die among strangers, and at a
distance from their homes. The extent to which this notion
still prevails among them is shown by the exertions, both
physical and financial, they often make to bring home,
sometimes from very far away, the corpse of a relative, so
that it may rest finally with the dust of their forbears.
Few happenings were regarded as more calamitous than that
one should be consigned to the earth among strangers, and
away from the care and sympathy of relatives.
An incident illustrative of this is mentioned by General
Stewart of Garth in his Sketches. A Highland woman, aged
ninety-one, and possessed of all her faculties, had left her
home in Strathbraan to visit a daughter residing in Perth.
A few days after her arrival at Perth, she developed a mild
fever. A heavy fall of snow at this time c[uite discomposed
her; and, when she was told that a heavier fall was expected,
her anxiety increased so considerably that she decided to slip
away during the night, and make for her home in Strathbraan,
some twenty miles off. In the morning the daughter
discovered an empty bed. Not until a couple of days afterwards
did she learn what had happened. Her mother sent
word that she had set out at midnight to trudge home
through the snow, and that she did not halt, even to draw
breath, until she reached her own threshold. When interrogated
later as to what had induced her to set out on so
perilous an adventure at her time of life, she responded :
" If my sickness had increased, and I had died, they could
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