Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/277

 Ghost Lights of the West Highlands. 253

reason another rock down at the shore below Cairn Cottage is called Carraig na Soluis."

In Norwegian folklore the grave mounds of heroes emit lambent flames that guard the dead and treasure buried with them.^ There is one story from the district of Ledaig which has the appearance of having originated in connec- tion with some such belief. It is as follows :

" When I was a little girl living in A., my sister and I went down to the shoemaker Cowan to get our boots mended. It was about the end of spring, the days were getting long, and it was not late when we were coming home. When we came to the burn where it crosses the road, there was some water lying on the moss, a sort of pond at the road- side. As we looked at it there was a very big horse — oh ! the size of that horse — and he was drinking the water, and a very tall gentleman with a hat that size [showing by her hand a height of about three feet from the ground], I noticed he looked very dressed and grand, and I think his horse was a chestnut in colour. From his heiorht and size altogether I knew he was no ordinary man or horse either. Whenever my sister saw it she ran as fast as she could and left me alone, so I took my eyes off the man and his horse. When I looked again he was not to be seen in any place, and had disappeared so quickly and mysteriously that I made for home as fast as I could. When we reached home we told my father what we had seen, and he said : ' Oh, it would only be one of the kings going to visit the Druids at the Carn Bhan.' You see, this cairn is only a short distance further on, near the road where we saw him. There is a little graveyard upon the hill at the back of where we then lived, and there are a number of stones lying in it, for they say that there were buried there seven kings. They would often be going and coming to the Carn Bhan to visit the Druids, and I think the spirit (Gaelic tannasg) of one of

' Folk-Lore, vol. v. p. 295.