‘Och! sir,’ groaned Eachainn, in great agitation, ‘the tàsg! the tàsg!’
‘The what? you confounded idiot!’
‘I’ll tell you, sir,’ replied the Highlander, with great solemnity, ‘the tàsg, she’ll shust be a death bird, and the warning’ll never fail to come true—’tis awful, ’tis shust awful!’
‘Weel, confound me,’ said Gillespie, who was now tired and heated, and panting with his exercise, ‘confound me if I can make out the creature. He’s no wanting in gumption either, but what havers are these he has got in his noddle?’ Then addressing his companion, he said, ‘Weel, now, I have listened to all your nonsense, and now you must tell me in plain words what you mean by all this blether and talk about your trian-ri-trian and your tàsg.’
To this appeal Eachainn did not reply for some minutes, but dismounting, he hobbled up the best way he could to the very spot where the bird had stood when shot at, and picking up the few feathers which had been started, stood looking at them with an anxious expression, amounting almost to horror. Then turning to the gauger, he replied, in a voice broken with agitation—‘I thocht, sir, that everybody know that the tàsg is a spirit bird, and she’ll always be coming to the mans when they’ll be going to die. She’ll come different to different peoples. Old Murdo Urquhart, the fisherman, saw her shust like a grey gull, and that very night he took ill, and died in two or three days. And Barabal N’ic’Ivor, she’ll be the bonniest lassie in the place, saw the tàsg shust like a beautiful white dove, and surely poor Barabal she’ll knew she’ll be going to die, so she made her death shift, and indeed it was very soon she was wearing it. The tàsg’ll always be coming in the gloamin’, she’ll fly low and slow like, and she’ll no make any noise with her wings, but if you’ll shoot at her, you’ll shust get nothing but a small handful of feathers.’ Here the guide paused a moment, and looking first at the feathers he held in his hand, and then in the face of the gauger, he continued, ‘I’ll be thinking, sir, that you’ll no be living very long. I am shust afraid the tàsg will be coming to you like a trian-ri-trian. Och, sir! indeed I’ll be very sorry for you, surely, surely.’
‘Look to yourself, man. You say it is my tàsg, but I don’t see how you make that out; why shouldn’t it be your own tàsg as well as mine?’
‘Mine, sir?’ exclaimed Eachainn. ‘No, no; I did not shoot her. If you’ll shoot her, she’ll be your own tàsg surely, and nobody’s else, and she’ll be shust like a duine-uasal’s tàsg, a long-legged bird, and she’ll shust come like the Southron, at certain times, and then she’ll shust speak a craik, craik kind of talk, and that’ll not be Gaelic; it’ll be the Gaelic that the mavis and the blackbird will be speaking. A lad like me will no get a gran’ tàsg like her. Oh! no, a crow, or a duck, or a sgarbh, is more like what I’ll be getting.’
The gauger, seeing the anxiety of Eachainn to decline the honour of the tàsg, was commencing to rally him about it, but in the earnestness of their conversation, they had not observed the change in the appearance of the weather which had been gradually taking place; their attention was now, however, called to it by feeling some heavy drops of rain, and they soon saw that a severe storm was looming. They ceased talking, and used their breath and energies to better purpose, by hurrying forward as fast as they could. In spite of their utmost exertions, the storm soon overtook them, and in half-an-hour they were both drenched to the skin. Eachainn took it very philosophically, for to the well-developed, hardy ‘son of the mist,’ an occasional shower-bath was no hardship. He was too well acquainted with Nature in all her changing moods to care much when she frowned. But the poor, town-bred gauger was in a pitiable plight, as he plodded along in a most unenviable state of body and mind, vowing he should catch his death of cold. In about an hour and a-half they arrived, to the intense relief of Gillespie, at the hamlet of Dunvegan, and gladly availed themselves of the hospitality of Somhairle Dubh, at the hostelrie, or change house of the village.
The worthy hostess of the
DUNVEGAN HOTEL