Or stranger still, there would come the odd, half-believed
legends of the glen, told shamefully yet with the realism of men for
whom each word had a power and meaning far above fiction. Lewis
listened entranced, marking his interest now by an exclamation, and
again by a question.
The herd of Farawa told of the salmon, the king of the Aller salmon, who
swam to the head of Aller and then crossed the spit of land to the head
of Callowa to meet the king of the Callowa fish. It was a humorous
story, and was capped there and then by his cousin of the Dreichill, who
told a ghastly tale of a murder in the wilds. Then a lonely man, Simon
o' the Heid o' the Hope, glorified his powers on a January night when he
swung himself on a flood-gate over the Aller while the thing quivered
beneath him, and the water roared redly above his thighs.
"And that yett broke when I was three pairts ower, and I went down the
river with my feet tangled in the bars and nae room for sweemin'. But I
gripped an oak-ritt and stelled mysel' for an hour till the water
knockit the yett to sawdust. It broke baith my ankles, and though I'm a
mortal strong man in my arms, thae twisted kitts keepit me helpless.
When a man's feet are broke he has nae strength in his wrist."
"I know," said Lewis, with excitement. "I have found the same myself."
"Where?" asked the man, without rudeness.
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