{"product_id":"2940013757820","title":"The Flying Years","description":"Memory, as the years slipped past, always served Angus Munro with\u003cbr\u003eLoch Brendan through a web of yammering gulls, but his mother\u003cbr\u003eremembered it through a mist of tears.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere had come to her no omen that the Munros were to leave there.\u003cbr\u003eAn omen would have hinted the Hand of God in it, however strangely,\u003cbr\u003ewhereas there seemed to be only the callousness and rapacity of\u003cbr\u003eman.  Not that any supernatural warning was needed in face of the\u003cbr\u003ebitter evidences, but her folk were prone to omens.  Her\u003cbr\u003egrandmother, as she often told, when recounting the stories of the\u003cbr\u003eland, had been waked one night in the '45 by her brother who was,\u003cbr\u003eas they said, \"out\".  She had sat up in bed, staring at him in the\u003cbr\u003edusk of the kitchen.  The smouldering seed of the fire had blazed\u003cbr\u003eto a sudden puff of air--and he it was, without doubt, in that\u003cbr\u003eflicker of light.  He shook his head to her, forlorn-like, as in a\u003cbr\u003esign that something had miscarried, and then was gone.  \"So you\u003cbr\u003esee,\" Angus's mother would say, \"my granny was fully prepared when\u003cbr\u003ethe news came that her brother was dead on Culloden Field.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs for herself, when the news came that Angus's brother, Robin, had\u003cbr\u003ebeen drowned in the Sound, she was prepared.  She took it as his\u003cbr\u003efather did not.  Daniel Munro seemed to lose his reason for awhile,\u003cbr\u003emarching to and fro like a soldier on sentry-go, back and forth.\u003cbr\u003eAt each sudden advance he appeared to be going for help; then he\u003cbr\u003ewould halt, aware that there was no help, stand dazed a moment,\u003cbr\u003ewheel, and stride off again--back and forth.  But Mrs. Munro spoke\u003cbr\u003eslowly:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"That was the death candles burning over the Sound last night,\"\u003cbr\u003esaid she.  \"I should never have let him go this day.  I was\u003cbr\u003ewarned.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe was intimate with ghosts.  \"Shadows\", by the way, was the word\u003cbr\u003efor them among another folk in another land to which they were all\u003cbr\u003egoing--the father grimly, the mother in tears, the lad with a sense\u003cbr\u003eof adventuring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey were no great readers in Brendan in those days, though in the\u003cbr\u003ewinter great story-tellers, while sleet scoured the window and\u003cbr\u003enight gave a hollow moan in the chimney, with narratives of the old\u003cbr\u003edays, myth and truth: of King Hakon; of the Norse woman with the\u003cbr\u003eflame-coloured hair; of Cromwell's soldiers that bided in Inverness\u003cbr\u003eafter the wars and, surrounded there by the Gaelic speech, kept\u003cbr\u003epure amongst themselves their own tongue and passed on to their\u003cbr\u003ebairns the fine language of their time, so that, in after years,\u003cbr\u003eSassenach philologists would comment on how beautiful was the\u003cbr\u003eEnglish the folk of Inverness spoke; of Prince Charles Stuart; of\u003cbr\u003eCluny in his \"cage\" on Ben Alder when it was supposed by most that\u003cbr\u003ehe was long since in France; of the smoking out of the Macdonalds\u003cbr\u003ein the cave of Sciur; of the pixies and the kelpies.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47145829138672,"sku":"2940013757820","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013757820_p0.jpg?v=1763589874","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013757820","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}