The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

An Teampiill Spioradail. 557
one of his married sisters and her husband, Mr Duncan
Macdiarmid, farmer, Craigfhianidh ; and when they died, he
continued to reside there till his death, a year ago, with
their children and children's children. The Kerrumore
Schoolhouse, in which the Baptists worshipped, is fully
three miles from Craigfhianidh, but as long as strength
remained the distance did not keep Peter from very regular
Sabbath attendance. With stick, dwarfed stature, and long
strides, he was a well-known Sunday figure on the road to old
and young, and deservedly a universal favourite. On week
days he found himself employment in coopering and making
fishing lines. He used white and black horse hair for
his lines, and such was his sense of touch that he knew by
the feel when it was a white or a black hair that was needing
a successor in the clever stick machine he had devised,
for what we may call his spinn'ng frame. His sense of
hearing, till age fell on him, was similarly acute. In walking
up and down the Glen he could always tell exactly
where he was from the sounds of the little streamlets, whose
different voices he could discriminate whether they were
low or roaring high after a flood. Notwithstanding his
blindness and crooked back, he lived on till he was within a
few years of eighty. In summer weather, if not employed
in his little coopering work-house, Peter was generally to be
found on a settle at the end of the farm-house, weaving his
lines or making highly-finished quaichs and wooden bowls
and ladles. He liked the sunshine, the open-air, and
nature's many voices. When residing at Garth House in
1858, the late Mr John Colquhoun, author of the Moor and
Loch, obtained liberty to fish over a long stretch of the
Lyon, and became acquainted with Peter, his settle, and
his work. There is a good salmon pool below Craigfhianidh
Farm-house, which Mr Colquhoun fished more
than once, and a spring above close to Peter's usual
_
sunning place. At page 348 of the new edition of his book,
Mr Colquhoun says :— "' The hot day and hard work made
a draught from the spring at the nearest farm house very
delicious; and the luxury of a drink is enhanced by sucking
it through our patent drinkipg-horn—the hollow bone
of a roe's fore-leg. Sunning himself close to the spring, a
stone-blind man was making pirn-lines in the most
dexterous manner I ever sau'. He also had a little workshop,
and coopered pails, ' bowics,' &c., remarkably well. I
bought a trout-line from him as a curiosity, and a neat