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

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
better condition, as I have seen you before at the head of
your army, upon the green of Glasgow :
all I can do is to
continue faithful to you while I live, and I am willing to
leave my wife and children and follow you wherever you
incline going.' "
The Vindictive Seaforth.
Let me draw this volume to a close with a brief folk-tale
associated with the sandy foreshore at Barrisdale, on Loch
Hourn, that used to be renowned for its oyster-beds.
At the time of the Rising, one of the MacKenzies of
Seaforth, who is said to have exercised suzerainty over this
part of Knoydart, frequently toured his domain in search
of young men of military age, and capable of bearing arms.
There lived at Barrisdale at this time an aged widow, from
whom he already had taken seven sons to fight in his wars
and feuds. All these sons were killed eventually. When
next Seaforth visited this district, the widow reproached
him for his having robbed her of everything she had in life,
but challenged him to deprive her of that stretch of the
foreshore so rich in oysters and other shell-fish, from which
she derived much of her diet. Local lore has it that, in
retaliation for this rebuke, Seaforth directed a number of
his men to proceed to the foreshore with ploughs, to turn
up and destroy the oyster-beds ; but it is said that, despite
Seaforth's vindictiveness, the widow survived at Barrisdale
for many a day.
She used to mention that the three most dreadful
experiences of her life were the cold fog of November, the
frost that comes in May, and the sight of the vindictive
Seaforth.
During the feuds that obsessed the Highlanders in olden
times, it was no unusual occurrence for one clan to seek
revenge on a neighbouring clan by ploughing up or otherwise
destroying beaches noted for their abundance of
shell-fish. There is a tradition in the Parish of the Small
Isles that a band of men, hostile to the MacDonalds of Clan
Ranald, thus devastated the shell-fish beach fringing the
Singing Sands of Laig Bay, in the Isle of Eigg.
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