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

the peat-fire flame
Ghost of a Spanish Princess.
Among the many places in Western Argyll that are said
to be haunted is the strip of land separating the old buryingground
of Keil, in Morven, from the waters of the Sound
of Mull. Both in Mull and in Morven tradition has it that,
when the warlike MacLeans sent to the bottom of Tobermory
Bay that wandered galleon of the Armada known as
the Florida, there was a Spanish princess aboard. The
])rincess was one of the many who perished.
Now, it is said that her body was recovered later, and
that it was interred at Keil. A year or two ago, I had it
from some of the natives of Morven, with whom I have a
certain filial association, that, some time after the destruction
of King Philip's proud fleet, there came to Morven a Spanish
vessel, in order to bear the princess's remains to her native
land. During the exhuming of her body, however, some of
her finger bones were lost; and at times the ghost of the
princess may be seen, as it flits between Keil and the shore
of the Sound of Mull, seeking the lost finger bones. And
I actually have met folks in Morven, who have encountered
this ghost, and who avoid that piece of territory lying
between Keil and the Sound of Mull, except in the broadest
of daylight.
The Haunted Coffee-house.
If any place in the Hebrides be haunted, that place is
Obbe, in South Harris. In the sruth, or " stream," of Obbe.
not far from the derelict wharves constructed during the
regime of the late Viscount Leverhulme in his ambition to
succeed in Harris where he had been thwarted in Lewis,
there is a house that was burned down several years ago,
while occupied by a certain Mr Wilson, who was Lord
Dunmore's factor in Harris. About fifteen years ago this
house was rebuilt by one, Kenneth Campbell, who was the
farmer at Rodil at that time. To this day the house is known
in the Islands as the coffee-house, since it was erected
originally by the late Dowager Countess of Dunmore, with
a view to providing coffee and the like for the lobster-
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