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

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
was on their Island that the hickless CharHe first set foot
on the ancient Kingdom lost to him by the imprudence of
his ancestors.
Little Alan at Sheriffmuir.
Belief that a sian {seun) or charm protected one against
harm or injury was very prevalent in the Highlands and
Islands during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; and
innumerable folk-tales are told of the manner in which men
were " sianed " or " charmed " when on their way to fight
for the Stuarts during the '15 and '45. When, during the
Rising of 1715, Alan MacDonald of Clan Ranald was on
the point of leaving South Uist to join the Earl of Mar and
the Highlanders at Perth, an old woman put a charm on
him. And this charm would have shielded Little Alan (as
Clan Ranald was called) from all scaith, had he not incurred
her displeasure by insisting upon taking away with him a
young lad from the clachan of Stoneybridge, contrary to the
wish of his widowed mother. In vain the widow implored
Clan Ranald to leave the lad behind ; and so she vowed that
Clan Ranald would never return from the wars. Hastily
she baked two bannocks, a big one and a little one. And
she asked her son which he would have—the big one with
his mother's curse, or the little one with her blessing. The
lad chose the little one, with the blessing.
The widow gave her son the little bannock and her
blessing, and also a bent sixpence
" Here is a crooked sixpence, seven times cursed, my
son ! " she said. " Let it avail thee in battle against Little
Alan, and thus merit thy mother's blessing, for otherwise
you will be having her curse upon you."
And so the lad accompanied Little Alan of Clan Ranald
to Sheriffmuir, against his mother's wish.
At the outset of the battle the bullets were showering
down like hail upon Little Alan, and making no impression
on him. And they say, too, that, for every blow he received
from the enemy, he retaliated with ten. When the battle
raged most fiercely, and neither the Hanoverians nor the
Jacobites seemed to be gaining any ad\antage. the widow's
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