I stayed at the house of a
shepherd who, though not an unintelligent man was by no means possessed
of the modern spirit. He and his brother swains had sturdily and
successfully resisted an attempt made by the schoolmaster at a village
some seven miles off to get a postal service in the glen more frequently
than once a week. A post once a week was often enough for lucky people
who did not get letters twice a year. It was not my shepherd, but
another, who once came with his wife to the village, after a twelve
miles' walk across the hills, to ask "what the day of the week was?" They
had lost count, and the man had attended to his work on a day which the
dame averred to be the Sabbath. He denied that it _was_ the Sabbath, and
I believe that it turned out to be a Tuesday. This little incident gives
some idea of the delightful absence of population in Glen Aline. But no
words can paint the utter loneliness, which could actually be felt--the
empty moors, the empty sky. The heaps of stones by a burnside, here and
there, showed that a cottage had once existed where now was no
habitation. One such spot was rather to be shunned by the superstitious,
for here, about 1698, a cottar family had been evicted by endless
unaccountable disturbances in the house. Stones were thrown by invisible
hands--though occasionally, by the way, a white hand, with no apparent
body attached to it, _was_ viewed by the curious who came to the spot.
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