If your gillie is told to take you to The Tree—you need not define it further—he rows you over to the southern side of the island, where the tangled wood meets the water's edge. From a landing-rock a narrow path is trodden through damp undergrowth, and trees linked bough in bough, till you step out into an open circle, whence the dark covert draws back on every side. In the centre of this space rises a slight white trunk—bare, branchless, leafless, with spreading foot, and jagged and broken top. The cracks and clefts in the stem are studded with coins, nails, screws, and rusty iron fragments. No sign of leaf or shoot remains to give the gaunt shaft any touch of common vegetation. It stands alone and inviolate—a Sacred Tree. In the damp ground at the tree's foot is a small dark hole, the sides of which are roughly formed by stones overhung with moss and grass. A cover of unwrought stone lies beside it, and it is filled up with dead leaves. This is the healing-well "of power unspeakable in cases of lunacy". All the brief space is circled round by an impenetrable mesh of dripping bough and briar; ferns and grass luxuriate in the dim light; ivy and honeysuckle strands cling and fall; and damp depths of fallen leaves silence every step.
The tree is now a Wishing Tree, and the driving in of a bit of metal is the only necessary act. The accompanying reproduction of a photograph, taken by us this summer, shows the form of the stem as it now is, but brings the surrounding vegetation much too near. Writing in 1886, Mr. Dixon says: "It is said that if anyone removes an offering that has been attached to the tree, some misfortune, probably the taking fire of the house of the desecrator, is sure to follow."[1] From which it appears that this tree can exercise retributive powers as sternly as any of the dread tree-dwelling spirits of Teutonic forest or savage grove.
In 1860. Sir A. Mitchell saw a faded ribbon attached to
- ↑ Gairloch, J. A. Dixon, F.S.A.Scot. Edinburgh, 1886.
