This hill has cairns with kerbstones, cists, a bronze axe head – and of course, was the home of ‘Gormal Mor’:
“who is said to have lived at Achinduin at the south-west end of Lismore, which faces the Garbh-shlios Hill in Morven.
‘Gormal,’ it is said, ‘was as strong as five ordinary men, and very proud of his strength; and so the Evil One tempted him by a challenge to fight, with the design to destroy him.
Gormal induced his friends to row him over to the lonely shore of the rugged Garbh-shlios. There [...] he bade them farewell [...] in the waning light they thought they saw a huge black bull, terrible and grim, descending the hill to meet him [...]
So they came home to Achinduin, and spent the night in great fear and dismay for their brave strong friend and kinsman Gormal; and next day they crossed the Linnhe [...] but they found only his trampled body lying in the wood on the hillside, and they brought him home with weeping and wailing [...] ‘
This story was told to the narrator of it by a cottager in Lismore as absolutely true. Another cottager of a more rationalistic tendency of mind denied its truth, and explained away the appearance of the evil one by saying that the hills [...] were the one time abode of wild and fierce cattle.
From ‘Records of Argyll’ in The Scottish Review 6, October 1885.
