“Aye, but I have that, though she’s a poor frail auld body an’ never gangs further frae the hoose than the byre an’ the hen-yaird. If ye want to hear more aboot thae birds an’ the auld stories forenenst them, she’d mak’ you welcome, an’ we’d be glad an’ prood to offer ye tea: an’ I’ll just tell ye this, that ye’ll gie her muckle pleasure if ye’ll hae a crack wi’ her in the Gaelic, an’ let her tell her auld tales in’t. She’s Hielan’, ye ken: tho’ my faither was oot o’ Forfar, Glen Isla way. She’s never got hold o’ the English yet varra weel, an’ to my sorrow I’ve never learnt the auld tongue, takin’ after my faither in that, dour lowland body as he was. I ken enough to follow her sangs, an’ a few words forbye, just enough to gie us a change as ye micht say.”
I gladly accepted the shepherd’s courteous offer; and so it was that an hour later we found ourselves at Scaur-vàn, as his croft was called, from its nearness to a great bleached crag that rose out of the heather like a light-ship in a lonely sea. By this time, his prognostications—or those rather of the wheeling and wailing lapwings, and the mountain-flying rooks—had come true. Across the wide desolate moors a grey wind soughed mournfully from the south-west, driving before it long slanting rains and sheets of drifting mist. I was glad to be out of the cold wet, and in the warm comfort of a room lit with a glowing peat-fire on which lay one or two spurtling logs of pine.
A dear old woman rose at my entrance. I could see she was of great age, because her face was like a white parchment seamed with a myriad wrinkles, and her hands were so sere and thin that they were like wan leaves of October. But she was fairly active, and her eyes were clear—and even, if the expression may be used, with a certain quiet fire in their core—and her features were comely, with a light on them as of serene peace. The old-fashioned white mutch she wore enhanced this general impression, and I remember smiling to myself at the quaint conceit that old Mrs. Logan was like a bed-spirit of ancient slumber looking out from an opening of frilled white curtains.
It was pleasant to sit and watch her, as with deft hands she prepared the tea and laid on the table scones and butter and grey farrels of oatcake, while, outside, the wet wind moaned and every now and then a swirl of rain splashed against the narrow panes of the window, in whose inset stood three pots of geranium whose scarlet flowers caught the red flicker of the fire-flaucht and warmed the grey dusk gathering without.
Later, we began to speak of the things of which her son John and I had talked on the moor: and then of much else in connection with the legendary lore of the birds and beasts of the hills and high moorlands.
As it was so much easier for her (and so far more vivid and idiomatic) she spoke in Gaelic, delighted to find one who could understand the ancient speech: for in that part of the country, though in the Highlands, no Gaelic is spoken, or only a few words or phrases connected with sport, sheep-driving, and the like. I had won her heart by saying to her soon after the tea—up to which time she had spoken in the slow and calculated but refined Highland-English of the north-west—Tha mi cinnteach gu bheil sibh aois mhòr ... ‘I am sure that you have the great age on you.’ She had feared that because I had ‘the English way’ I would not know, or remember, or care to remember, the old tongue: and she took my hand and stroked it while she said with a quiet dignity of pleasure, Is taitneach leam nach ’eil ’ur Gàidhlig air meirgeadh ... (in effect) ‘It is well pleased I am that your Gaelic has not become rusty.’
It was after the tea-things had been set aside, and old Mrs. Logan had said reverently, Iarramaid beannachadh (‘Let us ask a blessing’), that she told me, among other legendary things and fragments of old natural-history folklore, the following legend (or holy Christmas tale, as she called it) as to how the first crows were black and the first doves white.
I will tell it as simply but also with what beauty I can, because her own words, which I recall only as the fluctuating remembrance from a dream and so must translate from the terms of dream into the terms of prose, though simple were beautiful with ancient idiom.
Thus she began:—Feumaidh sinn dol air ar n’-ais dlùth fichead ceud bliadhna, which is to say, ‘We must go back near two thousand (lit: twenty hundred) years.’