Nether Lochaber The Natural History, Legends, and Folk-lore of the West Highlands

The "Annus Mirabilis" of Dryden--1870 a more wonderful Year in its way than 1666--Winter--Number of Killed and Wounded in the Franco-Prussian War--Battles of Langside, Tippermui...

Signs of a severe Winter--The Little Auk or Auklet--The Gadwall--Falcons being trained by the Prussians to intercept the Paris Carrier Pigeons--Ballooning--The King of Prussia's...

November Rains: 1500 tons per Imperial Acre!--Rainfall in Skye--An old Gaelic Apologue--The Drover and his Minister--Grand Stag's Head--Scott as a Poet--Mr. Gladstone and Scott-...

Along the Shore after Birds--An Otter in pursuit of a Fish--Tame Otter at Bridge of Tilt: Employed in Fishing--His hatred of all sorts of Birds--"The Otter and Fox," a translati...

Aurora Borealis--Unfavourable weather for Birds about St. Valentine's Day--The Water-Vole in the Rhi--In the Eden in Fifeshire--In the Black Water, Kinloch Leven--Does it feed o...

The Beauty of the West Highland Seaboard--Dr. Aiton of Dolphinton--Dr. Norman Macleod--Specimen of Turtle-Dove (Columba Turtur) shot in Ardgour--The belief on the Continent of i...

Seaweed as a Fertiliser--Homer, Horace, Virgil--November Meteors--Gaelic Folk-Lore--A Curfew Prayer--A Bed Blessing--A Cattle Blessing--Rhyme to be said in driving Cattle to Pas...

The Delights of Beltane Tide--Bishop Gawin Douglas--His Translation of the Æneid--The Fat of Deer--"Light and Shade" from the Gaelic--Mackworth Praed--Discovery of an old Flint...

Warm showery Summer disagreeable for the Tourist, but pastorally and agriculturally favourable--Xiphias Gladius, or Sword-Fish, cast ashore during a Mid-summer Gale--Garibaldi d...

October Storms--Cablegram Predictions--Indications of coming Storms--Geordie Braid, the St. Andrews and Newport Coach-driver--The Naturalist in Winter--Drowned Hedgehogs: Spines...

The weather [March 1868] with us here still continues wonderfully genial and mild: taken all in all, the season may be noted as in this respect perhaps without precedent in our...

With occasional gales of wind and blustering showers [October 1868], that, from their chilliness and snellness, you suspect to be sleet, although you don't like as yet exactly t...

In looking over some old papers the other day [October 1868] we stumbled on some sheets of Gaelic MS. that had lain neglected for years, and every existence of which, indeed, we...

We were early astir on the morning of the 5th November [1868]; with little thought, be sure, of Guy Fawkes or the Gunpowder Plot, intent only on witnessing, if we might be so fo...

Conscious at last that pouting and inordinate weeping became him not, and that, being constantly on the "rampage," like Mrs. Joe Gargery, was hardly consistent with his place in...

That the people of Lochaber and the Western Isles should be rejoicing in the advent of heavy rains [August 1869], and seriously glad at the reappearance of clouds in the heavens...

During a week's pleasant and gentle thaw [February 1870], we had hoped that the worst of winter was come and gone; but to our no small disappointment the genial interregnum has...

One swallow doesn't make a summer, says the proverb, and unless one fine day (the 19th) makes a spring, we haven't for the last six weeks [February 1870] and more had a single h...

For several years past [March 1870] the spring fishing with "long lines" in our western lochs has been so unsuccessful as to be hardly worth the while engaging in it. At our ver...

With the exception of a slight drizzle on Saturday the last ten days have been wonderfully fine for the season [February 1870]. Seldom, indeed, have we been so near realising th...

Though by no means everything that we could wish it, the weather of the last fortnight [July 1870] was a decided improvement on that of the preceding, and people have managed to...

We have just had a week of the finest weather imaginable, dry, bright and breezy, and with uninterrupted sunshine. The greater part of our hay crop has, in consequence, been sec...

If of late we had to admit--somewhat reluctantly be it confessed--that it was "wet, very wet," even for Lochaber, we have it in our power now at length [1st August 1870] to stri...

However unproductive the herring fishing season may be quoad herrings, and this has so far been the worst of a series of bad seasons [September 1870], it rarely fails to provide...

The weather [October 1870] with us here on the West Coast continues wonderfully mild and open for the latter end of October. Were it not, indeed, for an occasional sprinkling of...

The "Annus Mirabilis" of Dryden--1870 a more wonderful Year in its way than 1666--Winter--Number of Killed and Wounded in the Franco-Prussian War--Battles of Langside, Tippermui...

Signs of a severe Winter--The Little Auk or Auklet--The Gadwall--Falcons being trained by the Prussians to intercept the Paris Carrier Pigeons--Ballooning--The King of Prussia's...

November Rains: 1500 tons per Imperial Acre!--Rainfall in Skye--An old Gaelic Apologue--The Drover and his Minister--Grand Stag's Head--Scott as a Poet--Mr. Gladstone and Scott-...

Snow continues to accumulate on the mountain summits [December 1870], which all around, from Ben Nevis to Ben Cruachan, and from the peaks of Glen-Arkaig to Benmore in Mull, now...

Along the Shore after Birds--An Otter in pursuit of a Fish--Tame Otter at Bridge of Tilt: Employed in Fishing--His hatred of all sorts of Birds--"The Otter and Fox," a translati...

A finer winter [January 1871] never was known all over the West Highlands and Hebrides. Some tempestuousness is to be looked for at this season, and some tempestuousness we have...

Aurora Borealis--Unfavourable weather for Birds about St. Valentine's Day--The Water-Vole in the Rhi--In the Eden in Fifeshire--In the Black Water, Kinloch Leven--Does it feed o...

A fall of snow on Monday, followed by keen frost during three consecutive nights, rendered the past week [March 1871], as to mere cold at least, the most wintry of the season; b...

The Beauty of the West Highland Seaboard--Dr. Aiton of Dolphinton--Dr. Norman Macleod--Specimen of Turtle-Dove (Columba Turtur) shot in Ardgour--The belief on the Continent of i...

With an occasional fine day [August 1871], the past fortnight must, we fear, be characterised as having been upon the whole wet--very wet, a stranger would say--and not a little...

With such fine weather as we enjoy at present, September [1871] is one of the pleasantest months of the year. Harvest operations are now in full swing, and the redbreast--having...

Ichabod! the glory is departed [November 1871]. The gorgeous autumnal hues, which were so beautiful when we penned our last, have already passed away. In the first fierce breath...

After a month's cold, clear weather, with dry, parching, northerly winds--the finest heather-burning season that ever was seen--a considerable rainfall during the past week has...

The vernal equinox has come and gone, unaccompanied this year [April 1872], as it was unheralded and unannounced, by anything like the storms that from the earliest times have b...

the earnest gaze of the most distinguished astronomers of the period, its brilliancy began steadily to decline, changing its colour in a very remarkable manner as it became fain...

Along the west coast the weather is now [May 1872] as mild and May-like as you could wish; the swallow twitters gaily in the sunlight, and when he ceases his zig-zag flight for...

While mild and May-like enough in the valleys and along the coast line, the weather [May 1872] is reported as having more of March than May about it on the uplands, owing to the...

Of no place in existence, perhaps, is the old adage, in its most literal sense, truer than of Lochaber, that "it never rains but it pours" [June 1872]. When we last wrote rain w...

The best thing, perhaps, that can be said of our summer up to this date [July 1872], is that it has, upon the whole, been amiable and summer-like; has, after the manner of a lov...

A fortnight's incessant rain [September 1872]--rain descending at times in solid sheets--not only wets the ground and puddles the roads, but makes one's very brains feel soft an...

The strength of insects, proportionably to their weight and size, was probably the first characteristic in the minor world to arrest the attention and call forth the admiration...

From a utilitarian point of view, at least, the ancients seem to have looked upon the sea and all its products--exclusive, of course, of its myriad inhabitants of finny tribes--...

The Delights of Beltane Tide--Bishop Gawin Douglas--His Translation of the Æneid--The Fat of Deer--"Light and Shade" from the Gaelic--Mackworth Praed--Discovery of an old Flint...

Warm showery Summer, disagreeable for the Tourist, but pastorally and agriculturally favourable--Xiphias Gladius, or Sword-Fish, cast ashore during a Midsummer Gale--Garibaldi d...

"With occasional gales, by no means out of place or untimeous at this date [October 1873], with the sun already in its retrogression, almost half-way back through Scorpio, the w...

When a prophet's vaticinations are verified by the event, the world rarely fails to be reminded of it; when it is otherwise, however; when the vaticinations turn out to be the v...

It is true to a proverb that one may have too much even of a good It is true to a proverb that one may have too much even of a good thing. It was the most natural thing in the w...

It is not generally known, we believe, that a wound from a stag's antlers, however slight--the merest scratch or abrasion of the skin, if only blood is drawn--is exceedingly dan...

It has been our habit for many years [January 1875] to take our morning walk along our beautiful sea-beach, one of the coziest and prettiest silver-sanded bays on the West Coast...

How intense was the recent frost [January 1875], and how hyperborean all our surroundings, may be judged of from the fact that on coming out of church yesterday, one of our peop...

In a recent number of Land and Water, Mr. Frank Buckland, in writing about the Ophiophagus elaps, a serpent-eating serpent lately introduced into the Zoological Gardens, London,...

The hero of one of our most popular old Fingalian tales is described as very marvellously gifted. In order to secure the hand of a beautiful Scandinavian princess, whose locks a...

So says the love-sick knight in Venice Preserved. We have never, much as we should like it, had an opportunity of enjoying a Rialto midnight meditation ramble. There is poetry a...

We have had a full fortnight of magnificent summer weather [August 1875], a bright sun over-head from morning till night, with brisk breezes, a leanachd na gréine, following the...

Audi alteram partem is a sensible maxim, so reasonable in itself, and mild and deprecatory of tone, that it rarely fails to commend itself to our sense of right and candour; for...

We live in an age of intense literary and intellectual activity; the tendency of the highest culture of our time [March 1876], however, it is complained, being towards materiali...

After rather more than six consecutive weeks of weather so hot and dry and parching [May 1876], that we were all rapidly becoming hide-bound, brown-skinned, and sapless as so ma...

With a bright sun overhead, at noon as nearly vertical as it can ever be in our latitudes, and a steady, kindly warmth, and no lack now of genial showers, our West Highlands are...

The unprecedented heat of mid-August lasted with us here precisely a fortnight [September 1876]. Beginning on the 10th, it continued with little intermission or mitigation till...

The meteorological vaticinations of our weather-wise octogenarian neighbours have met with abundant and speedy verification in the storms and heavy rains of the past ten days [O...

This is the 1st of May [1877], sacred in the ecclesiastical calendar to St. Philip and St. James the Apostles. In ordinary speech we may now call it summer, we suppose, and it i...

"It never rains but it pours," and nowhere is the familiar adage in its utmost literalness truer than in Lochaber. During a long protracted drought of nearly a couple of months'...

The reader may remember that we concluded our last with a hopeful and jubilant note, believing that really fine weather--a long track of it, perhaps--was just at hand. We much r...

The weather continues wonderfully fine for the season [October 1877], and with the exception of the potato-lifting, all our harvest labours are at length concluded. The ingather...

October Storms--Cablegram Predictions--Indications of coming Storms--Geordie Braid, the St. Andrews and Newport Coach-driver--The Naturalist in Winter--Drowned Hedgehogs: Spines...

Favoured by the most splendid Christmas weather [January 1878], piercingly cold, indeed, but beautifully bright and clear, a run from Lochaber to Clydesdale on an agreeable erra...

With all their tendency, in their every reference to the past, to become laudatores temporis acti, the sturdy upholders of the superiority of all that was, in comparison with an...

A finer February month from first to last was never known in the West Highlands. With an amount of sunshine that April might be glad of, it was mild and open throughout; the sor...

If for the first few days March [1878] seemed inclined to emulate the peaceful calm and sunshine of its predecessor, it very suddenly assumed a more warlike aspect; a change cam...