Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/198

Rh miscellaneous pieces of the wreck; but he wanted all inclination to render any assistance, even if it were possible. So the unfortunate crew all perished, and perhaps it was as well for poor Niel’s carcase that such was the case. The most of the bodies were, sooner or later, cast up by the sea, and were interred by the people of the island, without much ceremony, close by the shore, and a little above the place where they lost their lives. A few erect stones still mark their graves.

As for Niel—the treacherous guide, the unfaithful pilot—he received such attention at the hands of the grateful people whose property, if not lives in many cases, he was the means of saving, that he was far better off than if he had been left in his old hut. He speedily recovered his health, having experienced no evil effects from the voyage. Ever after this adventure he went by the soubriquet of Niall a Chabhaidh (properly Cathaidh) which means Niel of the snow-drift.

In the course of time Niel married and became the father of a family, and the head of a tribe known in North Uist as ‘Sliochd Niel a Chathaidh’ (the race of Niel of the snow-drift). Many of them emigrated, but not a few of them are still to be met with in North Uist. Niel is a family name amongst them.

The men of Lewis have at all times been celebrated as seamen. They take to the sea as to an element that is, in a manner, natural to them. It would appear that they retain in their veins, especially in the northernmost parts of the island, a large mixture of the blood of those famous marauders of the north, who, for so many generations, were the terror and the scourge not only of the British Isles, but of the whole of the western sea-coast of Europe. The trade was only natural, therefore, to their kinsmen or descendants in the island of Lewis, whom we find every now and then indulging in the same discreditable, though to them noble and enjoyable pastime upon a small scale. In those good old times, known to us now only through the uncertain channel of tradition, any gentleman of notoriety, or any daring fellow who could command influence among his neighbours, could have no difficulty whenever