Caoilte was so swift, it was said of him that he could appear as three individuals; just as Bran, Finn’s dog, could appear simultaneously as a separate dog at every opening or gap around. A conception of speed which is still a trifle beyond our age.

But the truth of it can be read on a rock, for one day when Caoilte, sent to find deer, let out his mighty shout, a Fian (or Fingalian) on the shore spewed out the limpet hash on a rock in front of him. With its grey splotch, it is known in Gaelic to this day as the Rock of the Mouthful. And the grazing fields of the grey-cheeked cow may be found on the modern map both in Gaelic and in Norse. A philologist once told me that in Skye for every two place names in Gaelic there are fully three in Norse. Already I had seen more than one mountain-top where a princess of Lochlann had elected to be buried.

Who would blame her on a morning like this? The rising sun flashing up through the hollows of the hills; mist not all-pervasive but here and there in snow-white clouds clearly defined as the skylines; the quiet moors with their enchanted cottages, the arms of the sea, the sea itself, the Ascrib Isles, Fladdachuain, the far Hebrides. And beyond the seas, over the foam—Norroway. There is something more than the eagle in a spirit prepared to fold its wings on a mountain-top. But what that something more may be we seem to have forgotten, though it moves us still.

Then suddenly, right across Skye, we saw the serrated tops of the Cuillin. Pale in the morning sun, they seemed at an infinite distance, like guardian mountains to a strange and fabulous country.

It was not difficult to believe in that moment that the warrior Cuchulain had performed daring deeds there in the crossing of the Bridge of Cliffs, in war, and in love. Cuchulain, ‘the small dark sad man’—what is there, in the designation, of strength and insight and love, that still has its grip on the imagination? Dunscaith, on the other side of the Cuillin, was his castle. But with troubles brewing in Ireland—an old story—back he had to go to the wars, leaving his ‘lovely sunbeam of Dunscaith’ to look in vain across the sea for his return.

But, like MacCrimmon, he never returned.

Dunscaith and Borreraig are both in ruins.

Crofting and fishing are still the main occupations in Skye, though they have been declining for years into the grey economic decrepitude that has overspread most of the West. Here and there houses have been enlarged for tourists. One comes, particularly in places like Broadford, on roadside signs displaying the word BOARDING, with an initial surprise that quickly enough fades into indifferent acceptance. And why not? Why not Broadford as well as Blackpool? High time that antiquarian sentiment was abolished in these things. Yet the effect the historic change has had on the living creative spirit that lured Cuchulain to Dunscaith and the MacCrimmons to music in the piper’s hollow at Borreraig, is a matter for long uneasy speculation—particularly in the bodiless hours of an early summer morning.