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

GHOST TALES AND HAUNTED PLACES
not have sent my remains home through the deep snow. If
1 had told my daughter, maybe she would have locked the
room on me, and God forbid that my bones should be at
such a distance from home, and be buried among the Gall na
Macliair, among the Strangers of the Plain !
The singular predilection Highlanders have for their own
country, and especially for their place of birth, is shown in
the following tale, still told in Perthshire, of an old man
who once tenanted a farm at the base of Schiehallion. In
his latter years he went to reside with a son, who had taken
a farm a goodly distance farther down the country. One
morning the old man went out, and was missing for a considerable
time. When he returned eventually, he was asked
to explain his prolonged absence. " As I was seated by the
river," he replied, " the thought came to me that, maybe,
some of the waters from Schiehallion, and the sweet
fountains that watered the farm of my forefathers, might
be passing by me, and that, if I bathed, they might touch
my skin. So I stripped; and from the pleasure of being
immersed in the pure waters of Schiehallion I could not
"
tear myself away !
The Ghost-Haunted House of Inverawe.
In July, 1932, Fort Ticonderoga, situated at the junction
of Lake George and Lake Champlain, between the States of
New York and Vermont, was the scene of an interesting
ceremony, when the old French flag with its fleur-de-lys
waved once more over its ruins, and a bronze tablet in
memory of the Marc^uis de Chartier de Lotbiniere, the
French engineer who designed the fort, was unveiled by
Mme. de Lotbiniere, wife of the present head of that family.
According to the report of this ceremony in The Times,
delegations of French Canadians and of officers of the
Canadian Black Watch, whose parent regiment suffered so
heavily in the first attack on Ticonderoga in 1758, were
present, when Major-General Bullard accepted the tablet on
behalf of the LTnited States.
Ticonderoga was the scene of one of the fiercest attacks
301