The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

622 The Highland Monthly
home, were it not that I felt somewhat reluctant to
acknowledge my timidity. My father's house was nearly
a mile distant, and my disordered imagination converted
every stone and bush on the way into a ghost, and every
bird that flew across my path into an evil spirit. My
nerves were so highly strung by the time I reached home
that I was unable to enter the house in the ordinary fashion ;
I backed in with my face towards my imaginary foes.
The Ceilidh, a specimen of which I have attempted to
describe—and I know the impression that my account of it
leaves on the mind of the reader gives him but a faint idea
of the reality—is now almost a thing of the past. So is
also the belief in the supernatural. It is true that the
Highlander, brought up as he is among the grandest sights
and sounds of Nature, is prone to associate with the
supernatural anything which to him is unintelligible, but the
spread of education is gradually eradicating habits and
beliefs that were the result of ignorance ; books and
newspapers are being circulated throughout the land, and
are finding their way into the remotest straths and glens,
and the dawn of a new and a better day is slowly but
surely dispersing the dark shadows of a bygone age.
D. M.