Taking a stick from the wood
Patrick Sellar of Ardtornish (1780-1851).
THE old Highland proverb, ‘Breac à linne, slat à coille, ‘s fiadh à fìreach – mèirle nach do ghabh duine riamh nàir aisde’ (a fish from the pool, a stick from the wood, a deer from the mountain – thefts no man ever was ashamed of), may have found favour with some 19th-century Gaelic-speaking landowners, but it cut no ice with one Morvern laird as a party of men from Lismore found to their cost.