CHAPTER II.

TALES ILLUSTRATIVE OF FAIRY SUPERSTITION.

LURAN.

This is a tale, diffused in different forms, over the whole West Highlands. Versions of it have been heard from Skye, Ardnamurchan, Lochaber, Craignish, Mull, Tiree, differing but slightly from each other.

The Charmed Hill (_Beinn Shianta_), from its height, greenness, or pointed summit, forms a conspicuous object on the Ardnamurchan coast, at the north entrance of the Sound of Mull. On ‘the shoulder’ of this hill, were two hamlets, Sgìnid and Corryvulin, the lands attached to which, now forming part of a large sheep farm, were at one time occupied in common by three tenants, one of whom was named Luran Black (_Luran Mac-ille-dhui_). One particular season a cow of Luran’s was found unaccountably dead each morning. Suspicion fell on the tenants of the Culver (_an cuilibheir_), a green knoll in Corryvulin, having the reputation of being tenanted by the Fairies. Luran resolved to watch his cattle for a night, and ascertain the cause of his mysterious losses. Before long he saw the Culver opening, and a host of little people pouring out. They surrounded a grey cow (_mart glas_) belonging to him and drove it into the knoll. Not one busied himself in doing this more than Luran himself; he was, according to the Gaelic expression, ‘as one and as two’ (_mar a h-aon ’s mar a dhà_) in his exertions. The cow was killed and skinned. An old Elf, a tailor sitting in the upper part of the brugh, with a needle in the right lappel of his coat, was forcibly caught hold of, stuffed into the cow’s hide, and sewn up. He was then taken to the door and rolled down the slope. Festivities commenced, and whoever might be on the floor dancing, Luran was sure to be. He was ‘as one and as two’ at the dance, as he had been at driving the cow. A number of gorgeous cups and dishes were put on the table, and Luran, resolving to make up for the loss of the grey cow, watched his opportunity and made off with one of the cups (_còrn_). The Fairies observed him and started in pursuit. He heard one of them remark:

“Not swift would be Luran If it were not the hardness of his bread.”[14]

His pursuers were likely to overtake him, when a friendly voice called out:

“Luran, Luran Black, Betake thee to the black stones of the shore.”[15]

Below high water mark, no Fairy, ghost, or demon can come, and, acting on the friendly advice, Luran reached the shore, and keeping below tide mark made his way home in safety. He heard the outcries of the person who had called out to him (probably a former acquaintance who had been taken by ‘the people’) being belaboured by the Fairies for his ill-timed officiousness. Next morning, the grey cow was found lying dead with its feet in the air, at the foot of the Culver, and Luran said that a needle would be found in its right shoulder. On this proving to be the case, he allowed none of the flesh to be eaten, and threw it out of the house.

One of the fields, tilled in common by Luran and two neighbours, was every year, when ripe, reaped by the Fairies in one night, and the benefit of the crop disappeared. An old man was consulted, and he undertook to watch the crop. He saw the shïen of Corryvulin open, and a troop of people coming out. There was an old man at their head, who put the company in order, some to shear, some to bind the sheaves, and some to make stooks. On the word of command being given, the field was reaped in a wonderfully short time. The watcher, calling aloud, counted the reapers. The Fairies never troubled the field again.

Their persecution of Luran did not, however, cease. While on his way to Inveraray Castle, with his Fairy cup, he was lifted mysteriously with his treasure out of the boat, in which he was taking his passage, and was never seen or heard of after.

According to another Ardnamurchan version, Luran was a butler boy in Mingarry Castle. One night he entered a Fairy dwelling, and found the company within feasting and making merry. A shining cup, called _an cupa cearrarach_, was produced, and whatever liquor the person having it in his hand wished for and named, came up within it. Whenever a dainty appeared on the table, Luran was asked, “Did you ever see the like of that in Mingarry Castle?” At last, the butler boy wished the cup to be full of water, and throwing its contents on the lights, and extinguishing them, ran away with it in his hand. The Fairies gave chase. Some one among them called out to Luran to make for the shore. He reached the friendly shelter, and made his way below high-water mark to the castle, which he entered by a stair leading to the sea. The cup remained long in Mingarry Castle, but was at last lost in a boat that sank at Mail Point (_Rutha Mhàil_).

A Tiree version of the tale says that Luran entered an open Fairy dwelling (_brugh_), where he found the inmates asleep, and a large cauldron, or copper, standing on the floor. He took up the kettle, and made off with it. When going out at the door, the cauldron struck one of the door-posts, and made a ringing noise. The Fairies, sixteen men in number, started out of sleep, and gave chase. As they pressed on Luran, one of them (probably a friend who had at one time been ‘taken’) called out, “Luran, Luran, make for the black stones of the shore.” He did so, and made his escape. It was then the Fairies remarked: “Luran would be swift if it were not the hardness of his bread. If Luran had warm milk and soft barley bread, not one among the sixteen of us could catch him.”

According to the Lochaber story, the Fairies stole a white cow from a farmer, and every night took it back again to pasture on his corn. He chased them with his dog Luran, but they threw bread behind them, which the dog loitered to devour, so that it never overtook the white cow. The Fairies were heard saying among themselves, “Swift would be Luran if it were not the hardness of his bread. If Luran got bread singed and twice turned, it would catch the white cow.” The field where this occurred is known as the Field of the White Cow (_acha na bò bàin_), above Brackletter, in Lochaber.

According to a Skye version, the Fairies came to take with them the benefit (_toradh_) of the farmer’s land, but his dog Luran drove them away. One night they were overheard saying, “Swift would be Luran if it were not the hardness of his bread. If thin porridge were Luran’s food, deer would not overtake Luran.” Next day thin porridge, or ‘crowdie,’ was given to Luran, and it ate too much, and could not run at all. The Fairies got away, laughing heartily at the success of their trick.

In Craignish, Argyllshire, Luran was a dog, old, and unable to devour quickly the bread thrown it by the Fairies. There are, no doubt, many other versions of the story current, but these are sufficient to show the want of uniformity in popular tales of this kind.

THE CUP OF THE MACLEODS OF RAASA.

In Raasa, a man, named Hugh, entered a Fairy dwelling where there was feasting going on. The Fairies welcomed him heartily, and pledged his health. “Here’s to you, Hugh,” “I drink to you, Hugh” (_cleoch ort, Eoghain_), was to be heard on every side. He was offered drink in a fine glittering cup. When he got the cup in his hands he ran off with it. The Fairies let loose one of their dogs after him. He made his escape, and heard the Fairies calling back the dog by its name of “Farvann” (_Farbhann! Farbhann!_). The cup long remained in the possession of the Macleods of Raasa.

THE FAIRIES ON FINLAY’S SANDBANK.

The sandbank of this name (_Bac Fhionnlaidh_) on the farm of Ballevulin, in Tiree, was at one time a noted Fairy residence, but has since been blown level with the ground. It caused surprise to many that no traces of the Fairies were found in it. Its Fairy tenants were at one time in the habit of sending every evening to the house of a smith in the neighbourhood for the loan of a kettle (_iasad coire_). The smith, when giving it, always said:

“A smith’s due is coals, And to send cold iron out; A cauldron’s due is a bone, And to come safe back.”[16]

Under the power of this rhyme the cauldron was restored safely before morning. One evening the smith was from home, and his wife, when the Fairies came for the usual loan, never thought of saying the rhyme. In consequence the cauldron was not returned. On finding this out the smith scolded savagely, and his wife, irritated by his reproaches, rushed away for the kettle. She found the brugh open, went in, and (as is recommended in such cases), without saying a word, snatched up the cauldron and made off with it. When going out at the door she heard one of the Fairies calling out:

“Thou dumb sharp one, thou dumb sharp, That came from the land of the dead, And drove the cauldron from the brugh— Undo the Knot, and lose the Rough.”[17]

She succeeded in getting home before the Rough, the Fairy dog, overtook her, and the Fairies never again came for the loan of the kettle.

This story is given, in a slightly different form, by Mr. Campbell, in his _Tales of the West Highlands_ (Vol. ii., p. 44), and the scene is laid in Sanntrai, an island near Barra. The above version was heard in Tiree by the writer, several years before he saw Mr. Campbell’s book. There is no reason to suppose the story belongs originally either to Tiree or Barra. It is but an illustration of the tendency of popular tales to localize themselves where they are told.

PENNYGOWN FAIRIES.

A green mound, near the village of Pennygown (_Peigh’nn-a-ghobhann_), in the Parish of Salen, Mull, was at one time occupied by a benevolent company of Fairies. People had only to leave at night on the hillock the materials for any work they wanted done, as wool to be spun, thread for weaving, etc., telling what was wanted, and before morning the work was finished. One night a wag left the wood of a fishing-net buoy, a short, thick piece of wood, with a request to have it made into a ship’s mast. The Fairies were heard toiling all night, and singing, “Short life and ill-luck attend the man who asked us to make a long ship’s big mast from the wood of a fishing-net buoy.”[18] In the morning the work was not done, and these Fairies never after did anything for any one.

BEN LOMOND FAIRIES.

A company of Fairies lived near the Green Loch (_Lochan Uaine_), on Ben Lomond. Whatever was left overnight near the loch—cloth, wool, or thread—was dyed by them of any desired colour before morning. A specimen of the desired colour had to be left at the same time. A person left a quantity of undyed thread, and a piece of black and white twisted thread along with it, to show that he wanted part of the hank black and part white. The Fairies thought the pattern was to be followed, and the work done at one and the same dyeing. Not being able to do this, they never dyed any more.

CALLUM CLARK AND HIS SORE LEG.

Some six generations ago there lived at Port Vista (_Port Bhissta_), in Tiree, a dark, fierce man, known as Big Malcolm Clark (_Callum mòr mac-a-Chleirich_). He was a very strong man, and in his brutal violence produced the death of several people. Tradition also says of him that he killed a water-horse, and fought a Banshi with a horse-rib at the long hollow, covered in winter with water, called the _Léig_. In this encounter his own little finger was broken. When sharpening knives, old women in Tiree said, “Friday in Clark’s town” (_Di-haoine am baile mhic-a-Chleirich_), with the object of making him and his the objects of Fairy wrath. One evening, as he was driving a tether-pin into a hillock, a head was popped up out of the ground, and told him to take some other place for securing his beast, as he was letting the rain into ‘their’ dwelling. Some time after this he had a painfully sore leg (_bha i gu dòruinneach doirbh_). He went to the shï-en, where the head had appeared, and, finding it open, entered in search of a cure for his leg. The Fairies told him to put ‘earth on the earth’ (_Cuir an talamh air an talamh_). He applied every kind of earth he could think of to the leg, but without effect. At the end of three months he went again to the hillock, and when entering put steel (_cruaidh_) in the door. He was told to go out, but he would not, nor would he withdraw the steel till told the proper remedy. At last he was told to apply the red clay of a small loch in the neighbourhood (_criadh ruadh Lochan ni’h fhonhairle_). He did so, and the leg was cured.

THE YOUNG MAN IN THE FAIRY KNOLL.

Two young men, coming home after nightfall on Hallowe’en, each with a jar of whisky on his back, heard music by the roadside, and, seeing a dwelling open and illuminated, and dancing and merriment going on within, entered. One of them joined the dancers, without as much as waiting to lay down the burden he was carrying. The other, suspecting the place and company, stuck a needle in the door as he entered, and got away when he liked. That day twelvemonths he came back for his companion, and found him still dancing with the jar of whisky on his back. Though more than half-dead with fatigue, the enchanted dancer begged to be allowed to finish the reel. When brought to the open-air he was only skin and bone.

This tale is localized in the Ferintosh district, and at the Slope of Big Stones (_Leathad nan Clacha mòra_) in Harris. In Argyllshire people say it happened in the north. In the Ferintosh story only one of the young men entered the brugh, and the door immediately closed. The other lay under suspicion of having murdered his companion, but, by advice of an old man, went to the same place on the same night the following year, and by putting steel in the door of the Fairy dwelling, which he found open, recovered his companion. In the Harris story, the young men were a bridegroom and his brother-in-law, bringing home whisky for the marriage.

Two young men in Iona were coming in the evening from fishing on the rocks. On their way, when passing, they found the shï-en of that island open, and entered. One of them joined the dancers, without waiting to lay down the string of fish he had in his hand. The other stuck a fish-hook in the door, and when he wished made his escape. He came back for his companion that day twelvemonths, and found him still dancing with the string of fish in his hand. On taking him to the open air the fish dropped from the string, rotten.

Donald, who at one time carried on foot the mails from Tobermory, in Mull, to Grass Point Ferry (_Ru-an-fhiarain_), where the mail service crosses to the mainland, was a good deal given to drink, and consequently to loitering by the way. He once lay down to have a quiet sleep near a Fairy-haunted rock above Drimfin. He saw the rock open, and a flood of light pouring out at the door. A little man came to him and said in English, “Come in to the ball, Donald,” but Donald fled, and never stopped till he reached the houses at Tobermory, two miles off. He said he heard the whizz and rustling of the Fairies after him the whole way. The incident caused a good deal of talk in the neighbourhood, and Donald and his fright were made the subject of some doggerel verse, in which the Fairy invitation is thus given:

“Rise, rise, rise, Donald, Rise, Donald, was the call, Rise up now, Donald, Come in, Donald, to the ball.”

It is well known that Highland Fairies, who speak English, are the most dangerous of any.

A young man was sent for the loan of a sieve, and, mistaking his way, entered a brugh, which was that evening open. He found there two women grinding at a handmill, two women baking, and a mixed party dancing on the floor. He was invited to sit down, “Farquhar MacNeill, be seated” (_Fhearchair ’ie Neill, bi ’d shuidhe_). He thought he would first have a reel with the dancers. He forgot all about the sieve, and lost all desire to leave the company he was in. One night he accompanied the band among whom he had fallen on one of its expeditions, and after careering through the skies, stuck in the roof of a house. Looking down the chimney (_fàr-leus_), he saw a woman dandling a child, and, struck with the sight, exclaimed, “God bless you” (_Dia gu d’bheannachadh_). Whenever he pronounced the Holy Name he was disenchanted, and tumbled down the chimney! On coming to himself he went in search of his relatives. No one could tell him anything about them. At last he saw, thatching a house, an old man, so grey and thin he took him for a patch of mist resting on the house-top. He went and made inquiries of him. The old man knew nothing of the parties asked for, but said perhaps his father did. Amazed, the young man asked him if his father was alive, and on being told he was, and where to find him, entered the house. He there found a very venerable man sitting in a chair by the fire, twisting a straw-rope for the thatching of the house (_snìomh sìomain_). This man also, on being questioned, said he knew nothing of the people, but perhaps his father did. The father referred to was lying in bed, a little shrunken man, and he in like manner referred to his father. This remote ancestor, being too weak to stand, was found in a purse (_sporran_) suspended at the end of the bed. On being taken out and questioned, the wizened creature said, “I did not know the people myself, but I often heard my father speaking of them.” On hearing this the young man crumbled in pieces, and fell down a bundle of bones (_cual chnàmh_).

The incident of the very aged people forms part of some versions of the story, “How the Great Description (a man’s name) was put to Death” (_Mar a chaidh an Tuairisgeul mòr a chur gu bàs_). Another form is that a stranger came to a house, and at the door found an old man crying, because his father had thrashed him. He went in, and asking the father why he had thrashed his aged son, was told it was because the grandfather had been there the day before, and the fellow had not the manners to put his hand in his bonnet to him!

BLACK WILLIAM THE PIPER.

William M‘Kenzie was weaver to the Laird of Barcaldine. He and a friend were going home with two gallons of whisky in jars strapped on their backs. They saw a hillock open and illuminated, and entered. William’s companion stuck a knife in the door when entering. They found inside an old man playing the bagpipes, and a company of dancers on the floor. William danced one reel, and then another, till his companion got tired waiting, and left. When, after several days, M‘Kenzie did not turn up, the other was accused of having murdered him, and was advised, if his story was true, to get spades and dig into the hillock for his missing friend. A year’s delay was given, and when the hillock was entered M‘Kenzie was found still dancing on the floor. After this adventure he became the chief weaver in the district; he did more work in a shorter time than any other. At the first throw of the shuttle he said, “I and another one are here” (_mise ’s fear eile so!_). He also began to make pipes, but though a better weaver and piper than he had been before, he never prospered. He became known as “Black William of the Pipes” (_Uilleam du na pìoba_).

It is said in Sutherlandshire that a weaver, getting a shuttle from the Fairies, can go through three times as much work as another man. (Cf. Tale of M‘Crimmon, p. 139.)

THE HARRIS WOMAN AND HER BAKING.

A woman in Harris was passing _Creag Mhanuis_, a rock having on its face the appearance of a door, which she saw opening, and a woman dressed in green standing before it, who called to her to come in to see a sick person. The woman was very unwilling to go, but was compelled, and went in without taking any precaution. She found herself among a large company, for whom she was immediately to begin baking bread, and was told that when the quantity of meal, not very large, given her was entirely used, she would be allowed to go away. She began to bake, and made all possible haste to finish the work, but the more she strove the less appearance there was of the labour being finished, and her courage failed when day after day passed, leaving her where she began. At last, after a long time, the whole company left for the outer world, leaving her, as she thought, alone. When the last tramp of their footsteps could no longer be heard, she was startled by hearing a groan. On looking through an opening which she found in the side of the dwelling, she saw a bed-ridden old man, who, on seeing her head in the opening, said, “What sent you here?” “I did not come by my own will,” she replied. “I was made to come to attend to a sick person.” He then asked what work was given her to do. She told him, and how the baking was never likely to be finished. He said she must begin again, and that she was not to put the dusting meal (_an fhallaid_) at any time back among the baking. She did as he told her, when she found her stock of meal soon exhausted, and she got out and away before the others returned, much to their discomfiture.

A woman in Skye was taken to see a sick person in a _dùn_, and after attending to her patient, she saw a number of women in green dresses coming in and getting a loan of meal. They took the meal from a skin bag (_balgan_), which seemed as if it would never be exhausted. The woman asked to be sent home, and was promised to be allowed to go, on baking the meal left in the bag, and spinning a tuft of wool on a distaff handed to her. She baked away, but could not exhaust the meal bag; and spun, but seemed never nearer the end of her task. A woman came in, and advised her to “put the remnant of the meal she baked into the little bag, and to spin the tuft upon the distaff as the sheep bites the hillock”[19]—_i.e._, to draw the wool in small tufts, like sheep bites, from the distaff. On doing this, the task was soon finished, the Fairies saying, “A blessing rest on you, but a curse on the mouth that taught you.”[20] On coming out, the woman found she had been in the _dùn_ for seven years.

LIFTED BY THE FAIRIES.

Black Donald of the Multitude (_Dòmhnull du an t-sluaigh_), as he was ever afterwards known, was ploughing on the farm of Baile-pheutrais, in the island of Tiree, when a heavy shower came on from the west. In these days it required at least two persons to work a plough, one to hold it, and one to lead the horses. Donald’s companion took shelter to the lee of the team. When the shower passed, Donald himself was nowhere to be found, nor was he seen again till evening. He then came from an easterly direction, with his coat on his arm. He said the Fairies had taken him in an Eddy wind to the islands to the north—Coll, Skye, etc. In proof of this, he told that a person (naming him) was dead in Coll, and people would be across next day for whiskey for the funeral to Kennovay, a village on the other side of Bally-pheutrais, where smuggling was carried on at the time. This turned out to be the case. Donald said he had done no harm while away, except that the Fairies had made him throw an arrow at, and kill, a speckled cow in Skye. When crossing the sea he was in great terror lest he should fall.

_Nial Scrob_ (Neil the Scrub), a native of Uist, was on certain days lifted by the Fairies and taken to Tiree, and other islands of the Hebrides, at least so he said himself. Once he came to Saälun, a village near the north-east end of Tiree, and at the fourth house in the village was made to throw the Fairy arrow. There is an old saying—

“Shut the north window, And quickly close the window to the south; And shut the window facing west, Evil never came from the east.”[21]

And the west window was this night left open. The arrow came through the open window, and struck on the shoulder a handsome, strong, healthy woman of the name of M‘Lean, who sat singing cheerfully at her work. Her hand fell powerless by her side, and before morning she was dead. Neil afterwards told that he was the party whom the Fairies had compelled to do the mischief. In this, and similar stories, it must be understood that, according to popular belief, the woman was taken away by the Fairies, and may still be among them; only her semblance remained and was buried.

About twenty years ago a cooper, employed on board a ship, was landed at Martin’s Isle (_Eilein Mhàrtiunn_), near Coigeach, in Ross-shire, to cut brooms. He traversed the islet, and then somehow fell asleep. He felt as if something were pushing him, and, on awakening, found himself in the island of Rona, ten miles off. He cut the brooms, and a shower of rain coming on, again fell asleep. On awaking he found himself back in Martin’s Isle. He could only, it is argued, have been transported back and forward by the Fairies.

A seer gifted with the second sight (_taibhseis_), resident at Bousd, in the east end of Coll, was frequently lifted by Fairies, that staid in a hillock in his neighbourhood. On one occasion they took him to the sea-girt rock, called _Eileirig_, and after diverting themselves with him for an hour or two took him home again. So he said himself.

A man who went to fish on Saturday afternoon at a rock in Kinnavara hill (_Beinn Chinn-a-Bharra_), the extreme _west_ point of Tiree, did not make his appearance at home until six o’clock the following morning. He said that after leaving the rock the evening before, he remembered nothing but passing a number of beaches. The white beaches of Tiree, from the surrounding land being a dead level, are at night the most noticeable features in the scenery. On coming to his senses, he found himself on the top of the Dùn at Caolis in the extreme _east_ end of the island, twelve miles from his starting point.

A few years ago, a man in Lismore, travelling at night with a web of cloth on his shoulder, lost his way, walked on all night without knowing where he was going, and in the morning was found among rocks, where he could never have made his way alone. He could give no account of himself, and his wanderings were universally ascribed to the Fairies.

Red Donald of the Fairies (_Dòmhnull ruadh nan sìthehean_), as he was called (and the name stuck to him all his life), used when a boy to see the Fairies. Being herd at the Spital (_an Spideal_) above Dalnacardoch in Perthshire, he was taken by them to his father’s house at Ardlàraich in Rannoch, a distance of a dozen miles, through the night. In the morning he was found sitting at the fireside, and as the door was barred, he must have been let in by the chimney.

An old man in Achabeg, Morvern, went one night on a gossiping visit (_céilidh_) to a neighbour’s house. It was winter time, and a river near the place was in flood, which, in the case of a mountain torrent, means that it was impassable. The old man did not return home that night, and next morning was found near the shï-en of _Luran na leaghadh_ in Sasory, some distance across the river. He could give no account of how he got there, only that when on his way home a storm came about him, and on coming to himself he was where they had found him.

When Dr. M‘Laurin was tenant of Invererragan, near Connal Ferry in Benderloch, at the end of last century, “_Calum Clever_,” who derived his name from his skill in singing tunes and expedition in travelling (gifts given him by the Fairies), stayed with him whole nights. The doctor sent him to Fort William with a letter, telling him to procure the assistance of “his own people” and be back with an immediate answer. Calum asked as much time as one game at shinty (_aon taghal air a bhall_) would take, and was back in the evening before the game was finished. He never could have travelled the distance without Fairy aid.

FAIRIES COMING TO HOUSES.

Ewen, son of Allister Og, was shepherd in the Dell of Banks (_Coira Bhaeaidh_), at the south end of Loch Ericht (_Loch Eireachd_), and stayed alone in a bothy far away from other houses. In the evenings he put the porridge for his supper out to cool on the top of the double wall (_anainn_) of the hut. On successive evenings he found it pitted and pecked all round on the margin, as if by little birds or heavy rain-drops. He watched, and saw little people coming and pecking at his porridge. He made little dishes and spoons of wood, and left them beside his own dish. The Fairies, understanding his meaning, took to using these, and let the big dish alone. At last they became quite familiar with Ewen, entered the hut, and stayed whole evenings with him. One evening a woman came with them. There was no dish for her, and she sat on the other side of the house, saying never a word, but grinning and making faces at the shepherd whenever he looked her way. Ewen at last asked her, “Are you always like that, my lively maid?”[22] Owing to the absurdity of the question, or Ewen’s failure to understand that the grinning was a hint for food, the Fairies never came again.

The Elves came to a house at night, and finding it closed, called upon ‘Feet-water’ (_uisge nan cas_) _i.e._, water in which the feet had been washed, to come and open the door. The water answered from somewhere near, that it could not, as it had been poured out. They called on the Band of the Spinning Wheel to open the door, but it answered it could not, as it had been thrown off the wheel. They called upon Little Cake, but it could not move, as there was a hole through it and a live coal on the top of it. They called upon the ‘raking’ coal (_smàladh an teine_), but the fire had been secured in a proper manner, to keep it alive all night. This is a tale not localized anywhere, but universally known.

A man observed a band of people dressed in green coming toward the house, and recognising them to be Fairies, ran in great terror, shut and barred the door, and hid himself below the bed. The Fairies, however, came through the keyhole, and danced on the floor, singing. The song extended to several verses, to the effect that no kind of house could keep out the Fairies, not a turf house (_tigh phloc_), nor a stone house (_tigh cloiche_), etc.

The Fairies staying in Dunruilg came to assist a farmer in the vicinity in weaving and preparing cloth, and, after finishing the work in a wonderfully short space of time, called for more work. To get rid of his officious assistants, the farmer called outside the door that Dunruilg was on fire.[23] The Fairies immediately rushed out in great haste, and never came back. Of this story several versions are given in the _Tales of the West Highlands_ (ii. 52-4). In some form or other it is extensively known, and in every locality the scene is laid in its own neighbourhood. In Mull the Fairy residence is said to have been the bold headland in the south-west of the island known as _Tun Bhuirg_. Some say the Elves were brought to the house by two old women, who were tired spinning, and incautiously said they wished all the people in Tòn Bhuirg were there to assist. According to others, the Elves were in the habit of coming to Tàpull House in the Ross of Mull, and their excessive zeal made them very unwelcome. In Skye the event is said to have occurred at Dùn Bhuirbh. There are two places of the name, one in Lyndale, and one in _Beinn-an-ùine_, near _Druimuighe_, above Portree. The rhyme they had when they came to Tapull is known as “The rhyme of the goodman of Tapull’s servants” (_Rann gillean fir Thàbuill_).

“Let me comb, card, tease, spin, Get a weaving loom quick, Water for fulling on the fire, Work, work, work.”[24]

The cry they raised when going away, in the Skye version, runs:

“Dunsuirv on fire, Without dog or man, My balls of thread And my bags of meal.”[25]

A man, on the farm of Kennovay in Tiree, saw the Fairies about twelve o’clock at night enter the house, glide round the room, and go out again. They said and did nothing.

THE LOWLAND FAIRIES.

The ‘people’ had several dwellings near the village of Largs[26] (_Na Leargun Gallta_, the slopes-near-the-sea of the strangers), on the coast of Ayrshire (see Introduction to Campbell’s _Tales of the West Highlands_).

Knock Hill was full of _elves_, and the site of the old Tron Tree, now the centre of the village, was a favourite haunt. A sow, belonging to the man who cut down the Tron Tree, was found dead in the byre next morning. A hawker, with a basket of crockery, was met near the Noddle Burn by a Fairy woman. She asked him for a bowl she pointed out in his basket, but he refused to give it. On coming to the top of a brae near the village, his basket tumbled, and all his dishes ran on edge to the foot of the incline. None were broken but the one which had been refused to the Fairy. It was found in fragments. The same day, however, the hawker found a treasure that made up for his loss. That, said the person from whom the story was heard, was the custom of the Fairies; they never took anything without making up for it some other way.

On market-days they went about stealing here and there a little of the wool or yarn exposed for sale. A present of shoes and stockings made them give great assistance at out-door work. A man was taken by them to a pump near the Haylee Toll, where he danced all night with them. A headless man was one of the company.

They often came to people’s houses at night, and were heard washing their children. If they found no water in the house, they washed them in _kit_, or sowen water. They were fond of spinning and weaving, and, if chid or thwarted, cut the weaver’s webs at night. They one night dropped a child’s cap, a very pretty article, in a weaver’s house, to which they had come to get the child washed. They, however, took it away the following night.

In another instance, a band of four was heard crossing over the bedclothes, two women going first and laughing, and two men following and expressing their wonder if the women were far before them.

A man cut a slip from an ash-tree growing near a Fairy dwelling. On his way home in the evening he stumbled and fell. He heard the Fairies give a laugh at his mishap. Through the night he was hoisted away, and could tell nothing of what happened till in the morning he found himself in the byre, astride on a cow, and holding on by its horns.

These are genuine popular tales of the South of Scotland, which the writer fell in with in Largs. He heard them from a servant girl, a native of the place. They are quoted as illustrations of the vitality of the creed. They are not stories of the Highlands, but are quite analogous. The student of such mythologies will recognize in them a semblance to the Fairy tales of the North of Ireland.

FAIRIES STEALING WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

The _machair_ (or links) adjoining the hill of Kennavarra, the extreme south-west point of Tiree, is after sunset one of the most solitary and weird places conceivable. The hill on its northern side, facing the Skerryvore lighthouse, twelve miles off, consists of precipices, descending sheer down for upwards of a hundred feet, with frightful chasms, where countless sea-birds make their nests, and at the base of which the Atlantic rolls with an incessant noise, which becomes deafening in bad weather. The hill juts into the sea, and the coast, from each side of its inner end, trends away in beaches, which, like all the beaches in the island, have, after nightfall, from their whiteness and loneliness, a strange and ghostly look. On the landward side, the level country stretches in a low dark line towards the horizon; little is to be seen and the stillness is unbroken, save by the sound of the surf rolling on the beach and thundering in the chasms of the hill. It is not, therefore, wonderful that these links should be haunted by the Fairies, or the timid wayfarer there meet the big black Elfin dog prowling among the sand-banks, hear its unearthly baying in the stormy night-wind, and in the uncertain light and the squattering of wildfowl, hear in wintry pools the Banshi washing the garments of those soon to die.

Some seventy or eighty years ago the herdsman who had charge of the cattle on this pasture, went to a marriage in the neighbouring village of Balephuill (mud-town), leaving his mother and a young child alone in the house. The night was wild and stormy; there was heavy rain, and every pool and stream was more than ordinarily swollen. His mother sat waiting his return, and two women, whom she knew to be Fairies, came to steal the child. They stood between the outer and inner doors and were so tall their heads appeared above the partition beam. One was taller than the other. They were accompanied by a dog, and stood one on each side, having a hold of an ear and scratching it. Some say there was a crowd of ‘little people’ behind to assist in taking the child away. For security the woman placed it between herself and the fire, but her precautions were not quite successful. From that night the child was slightly fatuous, ‘a half idiot’ (_leth oinseach_). The old woman, it is said, had the second sight.

A shepherd, living with his wife in a bothy far away among the hills of Mull, had an addition to his family. He was obliged to go for assistance to the nearest houses, and his wife asked him, before leaving her and her babe alone, to place the table beside the bed, and a portion of the various kinds of food in the house on it, and also to put the smoothing-iron below the front of the bed and the reaping-hook (_buanaiche_) in the window. Soon after he had left the wife heard a suppressed muttering on the floor and a voice urging some one to go up and steal the child. The other answered that butter from the cow that ate the pearlwort (_mòthan_) was on the table, that iron was below the bed, and the ‘reaper’ in the window, how could he get the child away? As the reward of his wife’s providence and good sense the shepherd found herself and child safe on his return.

A man in Morvern, known by the nickname of the ‘Marquis’ (_a mor’aire_), left a band of women watching his wife and infant child. On returning at night, he found the fire gone out, and the women fast asleep. By the time he had rekindled the fire he saw a Banshi entering and making for the bed where his wife and child were. He took a faggot from the fire and threw it at her. A flame gleamed about his eyes and he saw the Fairy woman no more. His wife declared that she felt at the time like one in a nightmare (_trom-a-lidhe_); she heard voices calling upon her to go out, and felt an irresistible inclination to obey.

A woman from Rahoy (_Ra-thuaith_) on Loch Sunartside was taken with her babe to Ben Iadain (_Beinn Iadain_), a lofty hill in the parish of Morvern, rising to a height of above 2000 feet, and at one time of great note as an abode of the Fairies. Her husband had laid himself down for a few minutes’ rest in the front of the bed, and fallen asleep. When he awoke his wife and child were gone. They were taken, the woman afterwards told, to the ‘Black Door’ (_a chòmhla dhu_), as the spot forming the Fairy entrance into the interior of the mountain is called. On entering, they found a large company of men, women, and children. A fair-haired boy among them came and warned the woman not to eat any food the Fairies might offer, but to hide it in her clothes. He said they had got his own mother to eat this food, and in consequence he could not now get her away. Finding the food offered her was slighted, the head Fairy sent off a party to bring a certain man’s cow. They came back saying they could not touch the cow as its right knee was resting on the plant _bruchorcan_ (dirk grass). They were sent for another cow, but they came back saying they could not touch it either, as the dairymaid, after milking it, had struck it with the shackle or cow-spancel (_burach_). That same night the woman appeared to her husband in his dreams, telling him where she was, and that by going for her and taking the black silk handkerchief she wore on her marriage day, with three knots tied upon it, he might recover her. He tied the knots, took the handkerchief and a friend with him, entered the hill at the Black Door, and recovered his wife and child. The white-headed boy accompanied them for some distance from the Black Door, but returned to the hill, and is there still in all probability.

Another wife was taken from the neighbourhood of Castle _Lionnaig_, near Loch Aline (_Loch Aluinn_, the pretty loch), in the same parish, to the same hill. She was placed in the lap of a gigantic hag, who told her it was useless to attempt escaping; her arms would close round her

“As the ivy to the rock, And as the honeysuckle to the tree; As the flesh round the bone, And as the bone round the marrow.”[27]

The woman answered that she wished it was an armful of dirt the Fairy held. In saying so, she made use of a very coarse, unseemly word, and, as no such language is tolerated among the Fairies, the big woman called to take the vile wretch away, and leave her in the hollow in which she had been found, (_an lag san d’ fhuaradh i_) which was done.

A man in Balemartin, on the south side of Tiree (_air an leige deas_), whose wife had died in childbed, was sitting one night soon after with a bunch of keys in his hands. He saw his wife passing and repassing him several times. The following night she came to him in his dreams, and reproached him for not having thrown the bunch of keys at her, or between her and the door, to keep the Fairies from taking her back with them. He asked her to come another night, but she said she could not, as the company she was with was removing that night to another brugh far away.

Another, somewhere on the mainland of Argyllshire, suspecting his wife had been stolen by Fairies, hauled her by the legs from bed, through the fire, and out at the door. She there became a log of wood, and serves as the threshold of a barn in the place to this day.

A woman, taken by the Fairies, was seen by a man, who looked in at the door of a brugh, spinning and singing at her work.

A wife, taken in childbed, came to her husband in his sleep, and told him that, by drawing a furrow thrice round a certain hillock sunwise (_deiseal_) with the plough, he might recover her. He consulted his neighbours, and in the end it was deemed as well not to attend to a dream of one’s sleep (_bruadar cadail_). He consequently did not draw the furrow, and never recovered his wife.

A child was taken by the Fairies from Killichrenan (_Cill-a-Chreunain_), near Loch Awe, to the shï-en in Nant Wood (_Coill’ an Eannd_). It was got back by the father drawing a furrow round the hillock with the plough. He had not gone far when he heard a cry behind him, and on looking back found his child lying in the furrow.

A trampling as of a troop of horses came round a house, in which a woman lay in childbed, and she and the child were taken away. At the end of seven years her sister came upon an open Fairy hillock, and thoughtlessly entered. She saw there her lost sister, with a child in her arms, and was warned by her, in the lullaby song to the child, to slip away out again.

“Little sister, little loving sister, Rememberest thou the night of the horses? Seven years since I was taken, And one like me was never seen. Ialai horro, horro, Ialai horro hì.”[28]

READY WIT REPULSES THE FAIRIES.

A Fairy woman came to take away a child, and said to its mother, “Grey is your child.” “Grey is the grass, and it grows,” was the ready answer. “Heavy is your child,” said the Banshi. “Heavy is each fruitful thing,” the mother replied. “Light is your child,” said the Banshi. “Light is each happy worldly one,” said the mother, bursting into singing and saying—

“Grey is the foliage, grey the flowers, And grey the axe that has a handle, And nought comes through the earth, But has some greyness in its nature.”[29]

On finding herself outwitted the Banshi left.

A boy, a mere child, was left alone for a few minutes, in the islet of Soa, near Tiree. The mother was making kelp there at the time, and in her absence the Fairies came and gave the child’s legs such a twist that it was lame (_liùgach_) ever after.

KINDNESS TO A NEGLECTED CHILD.

The Elves sometimes took care of neglected children. The herd who tendered the Baile-phuill cattle on Heynist Hill sat down one day on a green eminence (_cnoc_) in the hill, which had the reputation of being tenanted by the Fairies. His son, a young child, was along with him. He fell asleep, and when he awoke the child was away. He roused himself, and vowed aloud, that unless his boy was restored he would not leave a stone or clod of the hillock together. A voice from underground answered that the child was safe at home with its mother, and they (the ‘people’) had taken it lest it should come to harm with the cold.

THE BRIDEGROOM’S BURIAL.

A young woman in Islay was promised in marriage to a rich neighbour, and the marriage day was fixed. She had a sweetheart who, on hearing this, said to a brother older than himself that if he had means to keep a wedding feast he would run away with the bride. His brother promised him all he had, being thirty-five gallons of whisky. On getting this, the young man took the bride away, and gave a nuptial feast himself that lasted a month. At the end of that time, when he was taking a walk with his wife, an eddy wind was seen coming. As it passed the young man was seized with sickness, which in a short time ended in his death. Before his death his wife said to him, “If the dead have feeling, I ordain that you be not a night absent from your bed.”[30] The night after the funeral he came back, to the consternation of his wife. He told her not to be alarmed, that he was still sound and healthy (_slàn fallain_), that he had only been taken in the eddy by the Lady of the Green Island (_Baintighearna ’n Eilein Uaiue_), and that by throwing a dirk at the eddy wind, when next she encountered it, she would get him back again. The wife threw a dirk at the next eddy wind she saw, and her husband dropped at her feet. He told he had been with the light people (_sluagh eutrom_), and in the tomb in which they supposed him buried would be found only a log of alder wood (_maide fearna_). His wife’s relatives were sent for, and they came, thinking the young widow had lost her wits through grief. The grave was opened, and an alder stick found in the coffin instead of the body proved the husband’s account of his disappearance.

THE CROWING OF THE BLACK COCK.

A woman in Islay (the story was heard in Tiree) was taken by the Fairies, leaving an infant who was baptised by the name of Julia (_Sìle_). To appearance the mother died and was buried. Every night, however, she came back, and was heard singing to her child. Her husband watched one night and caught her. She told that by going to a hillock, which she named, on a certain night he might recover her. He went, taking with him, according to her instructions, a black cock born in the busy time of year (_coileach du màrt_)[31] and a piece of steel (_cruaidh_). He found the door of the brugh open, put steel in one of the posts, entered, having the cock in his arms, and hid himself in a corner. Towards morning the cock crew. The head or principal Fairy caused a search to be made, and ‘Big Martin without clemency or mercy’ (_Martuinn Mòr gun iochd gun tròcair_) was found in the brugh. On withdrawing the steel he was allowed to go home, and his wife along with him.

THROWING THE ARROW.

A weaver at the Bridge of Awe (_Drochaid Atha_) was left a widower with three or four children. He laboured at his trade all day, and when the evening came, being a hard-working, industrious man, did odd jobs about the house to maintain his helpless family. One clear moonlight, when thatching his house with fern (_ranach_), he heard the rushing sound of a high wind, and a multitude of little people settled on the housetop and on the ground, like a flock of black starlings. He was told he must go along with them to Glen Cannel in Mull, where they were going for a woman. He refused to go unless he got whatever was foraged on the expedition to himself. On arriving at Glen Cannel, the arrow was given him to throw. Pretending to aim at the woman he threw it through the window and killed a pet lamb. The animal at once came out through the window, but he was told this would not do, he must throw again. He did so, and the woman was taken away and a log of alder wood (_stoc fearna_) was left in her place. The weaver claimed his agreement, and the Fairies left the woman with him at the Bridge of Awe, saying they would never again make the same paction with any man. She lived happily with him and he had three children by her. A beggar came the way and staid with him that night. The whole evening the beggar stared at the wife in a manner that made his host at last ask him what he meant. He said he had at one time been a farmer in Glen Cannel in Mull, comfortable and well-to-do, but his wife having died, he had since fallen into poverty, till he was now a beggar, and that the weaver’s wife could be no other than the wife he had lost. Explanations were entered into, and the beggar got his choice of the wife or the children. He chose the former,[32] and again became prosperous in the world.

THE WOMAN STOLEN FROM FRANCE.

“MacCallum of the Humming Noise” (_Mac Challum a Chrònain_), who resided in Glen Etive subsequent to the ‘45, was the last to observe the habits of the Fairies and ancient hunters. He ate three days’ allowance of food before setting out on his hunting expeditions, and when he got hungry merely tightened his belt another hole. The Indians of Labrador are said to do the same at the present day. These hunters can go for nine days without food, merely tightening their belts as they get thin. In MacCallum’s time, a woman was for seven years observed among the deer of Ben Cruachan, as swift of foot and action as the herd with which she consorted. A gathering was made to catch her. The herd was surrounded by men and dogs, and on her being caught, she was taken to Balinoe, where MacCallum resided. There were rings on her fingers, from which it was ascertained that she came from France. Inquiries were made, and she was sent home by a ship from Greenock. She had been taken away in childbed doubtless by the Fairies. This story was believed by the person from whom it was heard. He had heard it from good authority, he said.

CHANGELINGS.

A young lad was sent for the loan of a corn sieve to a neighbour’s house. He was a changeling, and in the house to which he went there was another like himself. He found no one in but his fellow-elf. A woman, in a closet close by, overheard the conversation of the two. The first asked for the sieve, and the other replied, “Ask it in an honest way (that is, in Fairy language) seeing I am alone.”[33] The first then said (and his words have as much sense in English as in Gaelic):

“The muggle maggle Wants the loan of the black luggle laggle, To take the maggle from the grain.”[34]

The words are a ludicrous imitation of the sound made by the fan in winnowing corn, and several versions of them exist.

A child, in Skye, ate such a quantity of food, people suspected it could not be ‘canny.’ A man of skill was sent for, and on his saying a rhyme over it, the changeling became an old man.

A changeling in Hianish (some say Sanndaig), Tiree, was driven away by a man of skill who came, and, standing in the door, said:

“Red pig, red pig, Red one-eared pig, That Fin killed with the son of Luin, And took on his back to Druim-derg.”[35]

Drim-derg, or the Red Ridge, is a common in the neighbourhood of Hianish. Fin’s sword, ‘the son of Luin,’ was of such superior metal that it cut through six feet of whatever substance was struck by it, and an inch beyond. Its peculiar virtue was “never to leave a remnant from its blow.” When the changeling heard the bare mention of it, with the aversion of his race to steel, he jumped, like a fish out of the water (_thug e iasg-leum as_), rushed out of the house and was never seen again. The real child was found outside the house.

A woman was told by her neighbours that her child, which was not thriving, was a changeling, and that she ought to throw it in the river. The imp, frightened by the counsel, advised the contrary in an expression, which is now proverbial, “Whether it be fat or lean, every man should rear a calf for himself” (_Air dha bhi reamhar na caol, is mairg nach beathaicheadh laogh dha fhéin_).

TAKING AWAY COWS AND SHEEP.

A farmer had two good cows that were seized one spring with some unaccountable malady. They ate any amount of food given them, but neither grew fat nor yielded milk. They lay on their sides and could not be made to rise. An old man in the neighbourhood advised that they should be hauled up the hill, and rolled down its steepest and longest incline. The brutes, he said, were not the farmer’s cows at all, but two old men (_bodaich_) the Fairies had substituted for them. The farmer acted on this advice, and at the bottom of the descent, down which the cows were sent rolling, nothing was found, neither cow nor man, either dead or alive.

There are old people still living in Iona who remember a man driving a nail into a bull that had fallen over a rock, to keep away the Fairies.

A man in Ruaig, Tiree, possessed of the second sight, saw a wether sheep (_molt_) belonging to himself whirled through the sky, and was so satisfied the Fairies had taken it in their eddy wind, that he did not, when the animal was killed, eat any of its mutton.

DWELLINGS.

An old man kept a green hillock, near his house, on which he frequently reclined in summer, very clean, sweeping away any filth or cow or horse droppings he might find on it. One evening, as he sat on the hillock, a little man, a stranger to him, came and thanked him for his care of the hillock, and added, that if at any time the village cattle should leave their enclosure during the night, he and his friends would show their gratitude by keeping them from the old man’s crops. The village in these days was in common, ridge about, and the Fairy promise, being tested, was found good.

Of hills having the reputation of being tenanted by Fairies may be mentioned Schiehallion (_Sith-chaillionn_), in Perthshire, and Ben-y-ghloe (_Beinn a Ghlotha_); and in Argyllshire, _Sìthein na Rapaich_, ‘the Fairy dwelling of tempestuous weather,’ in Morvern and Dunniquoich (_Dùn Cuaich_, the Bowl-shaped hill) Dùn-deacainn and Shien-sloy (_sìthein sluaigh_, the multitude’s residence), near Inverary. The three latter hills are in sight of each other, and the preference of the Fairies for the last is mentioned in a popular rhyme:

Dùn-deacainn is Dùn-cuaich Sìthein sluaigh is Airde-slios; Nam faighinnsa mo roghainn de ’n triùir B’e mo rùn a bhi san t-slios.

At the head of Glen-Erochty (_Gleann-Eireochd-aidh_, the Shapely glen), in Athol, in Perthshire, there is a mound known as _Càrn na Sleabhach_, which at one time was of much repute as a Fairy haunt. Alasdair Challum, a poor harmless person, who went about the country making divinations for his entertainers by means of a small four-sided spinning top (_dòduman_), was asked by a widow where her late husband now was. Alasdair spun round his teetotum and, examining it attentively, said, “He is a baggage horse to the Fairies in Slevach Cairn, with a twisted willow withe in his mouth.”[36]

A native of the Island of Coll went to pull some wild-briar plants (_fearra-dhris_). He tried to pull one growing in the face of a rock. The first tug he gave he heard some one calling to him from the inside of the rock, and he ran away without ever looking behind. To this day he says no one need try to persuade him there are no Fairies, for he heard them himself.

A shepherd at Lochaweside, coming home with a wedder sheep on his back, saw an open cave in the face of a rock where he had never noticed a cave before. He laid down his burden, and stepping over to the entrance of the cave, stuck his knife into a fissure of the rock forming a side of the entrance. He then leisurely looked in, and saw the cave full of guns and arms and chests studded with brass nails, but no appearance of tenants. Happening to turn his head for a moment to look at the sheep, and seeing it about to move off, he allowed the knife to move from its place. On looking again at the rock, he only saw water trickling from the fissure from which the knife had been withdrawn.

A person who had a green knoll in front of his house and was in the habit of throwing out dirty water at the door, was told by the Fairies to remove the door to the other side of the house, as the water was spoiling their furniture and utensils. He did this, and he and the Fairies lived on good terms ever after.

In the evening a man was tethering his horse on a grassy mound. A head appeared out of the ground, and told him to drive his tether pin somewhere else, as he was letting the rain into their house, and had nearly killed one of the inmates by driving the peg into his ear.

Beinn Feall is one of the most prominent hills in the Island of Coll. It is highly esteemed for the excellence of its pasture, and was of old much frequented by the Fairies. A fisherman going to his occupation at night saw it covered with green silk, spread out to dry, and heard all night the sound of a quern at work in the interior. On another occasion, similar sounds were heard in the same hill, and voices singing:

“Though good the haven we left, Seven times better the haven we found.”[37]

A man who avoided tethering horse or cow on a Fairy hillock near his house, or in any way breaking the green sward that covered it, was rewarded by the Fairies driving his horse and cow to the lee of the hillock in stormy nights.

FAIRY ASSISTANCE.

A man in Flodigarry, an islet near Skye, expressed a wish his corn were reaped, though it should be by Fairy assistance. The Fairies came and reaped the field in two nights. They were seen at work, seven score and fifteen, or other large number. After reaping the field they called for more work, and the man set them to empty the sea.

One of the chiefs of Dowart was hurried with his harvest, and likely to lose his crop for want of shearers. He sent word through all Mull for assistance. A little old man came and offered himself. He asked as wages only the full of a straw-rope he had with him of corn when the work was over. M‘Lean formed no high opinion of the little man, but as the work was urgent and the remuneration trifling, he engaged his services. He placed him along with another old man and an old woman on a ridge by themselves, and told them never to heed though they should be behind the rest, to take matters easy and not fatigue themselves. The little man, however, soon made his assistants leave the way, and set them to make sheaf-bands. He finished shearing that ridge before the rest of the shearers were half-way with theirs, and no fault could be found with the manner in which the work was done. M‘Lean would not part with the little reaper till the end of harvest. Fuller payment was offered for his excellent services, but he refused to take more than had been bargained for. He began putting the corn in the rope, and put in all that was in the field, then all that was in the stackyard, and finally all that was in the barn. He said this would do just now, tightened the rope, and lifted the burden on his back. He was setting off with it, when M‘Lean, in despair, cried out, “Tuesday I ploughed, Tuesday I sowed, Tuesday I reaped; Thou who did’st ordain the three Tuesdays, suffer not all that is in the rope to leave me.” “The hand of your father and grandfather be upon you!” said the little man, “it is well that you spoke.”[38]

Another version of the tale was current in Morvern. A servant, engaged in spring by a man who lived at _Aodienn Mòr_ (‘Big Face’) in Liddesdale, when told to begin ploughing, merely thrust a walking-stick into the ground, and, holding it to his nose, said the earth was not yet ready (_cha robh an talamh air dàir fathast_). This went on till the neighbours were more than half-finished with their spring work. His master then peremptorily ordered the work to be done. By next morning the whole Big Face was ploughed, sown, and harrowed. The shearing of the crop was done in the same mysterious and expeditious manner. The servant had the Association-craft, which secured the assistance of the Fairies. When getting his wages he was like to take away the whole crop, and was got rid of as in the previous version.

An old man in Còrnaig, Tiree, went to sow his croft, or piece of land. He was scarce of seed oats, but putting the little he had in a circular dish made of plaited straw, called _plàdar_, suspended from his shoulder by a strap (_iris_), commenced operations. His son followed, harrowing the seed. The old man went on sowing long after the son expected the seed corn was exhausted. He made some remark expressive of his wonder, and the old man said, “Evil befall you, why did you speak? I might have finished the field if you had held your tongue, but now I cannot go further,” and he stopped. The piece sown would properly take four times as much seed as had been used.

A man in the Ross of Mull, about to sow his land, filled a sheet with seed oats, and commenced. He went on sowing, but the sheet remained full. At last a neighbour took notice of the strange phenomenon, and said, “The face of your evil and iniquity be upon you, is the sheet never to be empty?” When this was said a little brown bird leapt out of the sheet, and the supply of corn ceased. The bird was called _Torc Sona_, _i.e._ ‘Happy Hog,’ and when any of the man’s descendants fall in with any luck they are asked if the _Torc Sona_ still follows the family.

A man in the Braes of Portree, in Skye, with a large but weak family, had his spring and harvest work done by the Fairies. No one could tell how it was done, but somehow it was finished as soon as that of any of his neighbours. All his family, however, grew up ‘peculiar in their minds.’

THE BATTLE OF TRAI-GRUINARD.

On 5th August, 1598, one of the bloodiest battles in the annals of clan feuds was fought at the head of Loch Gruinard, in Islay, between Sir Lachlan Mor M‘Lean, of Dowart, and Sir James Macdonald, of Islay, for possession of lands forfeited by the latter’s uncle, of which the former had received a grant. Of the M‘Leans, Sir Lachlan and 80 of his near kinsmen and 200 clansmen were killed; and of the Macdonalds, 30 were killed, and 60 wounded.[39] According to tradition, a trifling looking little man came to Sir Lachlan, and offered his services for the battle. The chief, who was himself of giant frame and strength, answered contemptuously, he did not care which side the little man might be on. The Elf then offered himself to Macdonald, who said he would be glad of the assistance of a hundred like him. All day Sir Lachlan, who was clothed from head to foot in armour of steel, was followed by the little man, and on his once lifting the vizor of his helmet an arrow struck him in the forehead at the division of the hair, and came out at the back of his head. It proved to be one of those arrows known as Elf-bolts. Macdonald was sorry for the death of his rival, and after the battle made enquiry as to who had killed him. “It was I” said the little man, “who killed your enemy; and unless I had done so he would have killed you.” “What is your name?” asked Macdonald. “I am called” he said, “_Du-sìth_” (_i.e._ Black Elf),[40] “and you were better to have me with you than against you.”

DUINE SÌTH, MAN OF PEACE.

A wright in the island of Mull, on his way home in the evening from work, got enveloped in a mist. He heard some one coming towards him whistling. He entered into talk with the stranger, and was told, a legacy would be left him, and would continue in the line of his direct descendants to the third generation. His grandson is unmarried, and well advanced in years; to the credit of the whistler’s prophecy.

Davie, a south country ploughman, or grieve, was brought to Tiree, about the beginning of the present century, by the then Chamberlain or ‘Baillie’ of the Island. Ploughing one day on Crossapol farm, he saw before him in the furrow a very little man. Not understanding that the diminutive creature was a Fairy, Davie cried out in broken Gaelic, “What little man are you? Get out of that.”

A former gardener in Tìr Mhine (Meal Land) in Glenorchy, a good deal given to drinking, was crossing Loch Awe one night in a boat alone. He saw a little man sitting in the stern of the boat, and spoke to him several times but received no answer. He at last struck at the little man, and himself tumbled overboard. Now, asked the old woman, who told this story, what could the little man be, but a _brughadair_ (_i.e._ one that came from the Fairy dwelling, an Elf)? To the reader the case will appear one of simple hallucination produced by ardent spirits, but it is of interest as shewing the interpretation put upon it under a belief in the Fairies.

BEAN SHITH, ELLE WOMAN, OR WOMAN OF PEACE.

While supper was being prepared in a farmer’s house in Morvern, a very little woman, a stranger to the inmates, entered. She was invited to share the supper with the family, but would take none of the food of which the meal consisted, or of any other the inmates had to offer. She said her people lived on the tops of heather, and in the loch called _Lochan Fasta Litheag_. There does not seem to be any loch of the name in Morvern. The name is difficult to translate, but indicates a lakelet covered with weeds or green scum. The little woman left the house as she came, and fear kept every one from following her, or questioning her further.

A woman at Kinloch Teagus (_Ceann Loch Téacais_), in the same parish, was sitting on a summer day in front of the house, preparing green dye, by boiling heather tops and alum together. This preparation is called _ailmeid_. A young woman, whom she had never seen before, came to her, and asked for something to eat. The stranger was dressed in green, and wore a cap bearing the appearance of the king’s hood of a sheep (_currachd an righ caorach_). The housewife said the family were at the shielings with the cattle, and there was no food in the house; there was not even a drink of milk. The visitor then asked to be allowed to make brose of the dye, and received permission to do what she liked with it. She was asked where she stayed, and she said, “in this same neighbourhood.” She drank off the compost, rushed away, throwing three somersaults, and disappeared.

A young man, named Callum, when crossing the rugged hills of _Ard-meadhonach_ (Middle Height), in Mull, fell in with some St. John’s wort (_Achlusan Challum-chille_), a plant of magic powers, if found when neither sought nor wanted. He took some of it with him. He had _dùcun_ (small swellings below the toes) on his feet, and on coming to a stream sat down and bathed them in the water. Looking up, he saw an ugly little woman, having no nostrils, on the other side of the stream, with her feet resting against his own. She asked him for the plant he had in his hand, but he refused to give it. She asked him to make snuff of it then and give her some. He answered, “What could she want with snuff, when she had no nostril to put it in?” He left her and went further on. As he did not come home that night his friends and neighbours next day went in search of him through the hills. He was found by his father asleep on the side of a _cnoc_, a small hillock, and when awakened, he thought, from the position of the sun, he had only slept a few minutes. He had, in fact, slept for twenty-four hours. His dog lay sleeping in the hollow between his two shoulders, and had ‘neither hair nor fur’ on. It is supposed it had lost the hair in chasing away the Fairies, and protecting its master.

In what seems to be only another version of this story, a herd-boy was sitting in the evening by a stream bathing his feet. A beautiful woman appeared on the other side of the stream, and asked him to pull a plant she pointed out, and make snuff of it for her. He refused, asking what need had she of snuff, when she had no nostrils? She asked him to cross the stream, but he again refused. When he went home his step-mother gave him his food and milk as usual. He gave the whole of it to his dog, and the dog died from the effects.

A herdsman at Baile-phuill, in the west end of Tiree, fell asleep on _Cnoc Ghrianal_, at the eastern base of Heynish Hill, on a fine summer afternoon. He was awakened by a violent slap on the ear. On rubbing his eyes, and looking up, he saw a woman, the most beautiful he had ever seen, in a green dress, with a brooch fastening it at the neck, walking away from him. She went westward and he followed her for some distance, but she vanished, he could not tell how.

A person in Mull reported that he saw several Fairy women together washing at a stream. He went near enough to see that they had only one nostril each.

The places in Tiree where _cailleacha sìth_ (Fairy hags) were seen were at streams and pools of water on _Druim-buidhe_ (the Yellow Back), the links of Kennavara, and the bend of the hill (_lùbadh na beinne_) at Baile-phendrais. They have long since disappeared, the islanders having become too busy to attend to them.

A Skyeman was told by one of these weird women never to put the burning end of a peat outside when making up the fire for the night.

DONALD THRASHED BY THE FAIRY WOMAN.

A man in Mull, watching in the harvest field at night, saw a woman standing in the middle of a stream that ran past the field. He ran after her, and seemed sometimes to be close upon her, and again to be as far from her as ever. Losing temper he swore himself to the devil that he would follow till he caught her. When he said the words the object of his pursuit allowed herself to be overtaken, and showed her true character by giving him a sound thrashing. Every night after he had to meet her. He was like to fall into a decline through fear of her, and becoming thoroughly tired of the affair, he consulted an old woman of the neighbourhood, who advised him to take with him to the place of appointment the ploughshare and his brother John. This would keep the Fairy woman from coming near him. The Fairy, however, said to him in a mumbling voice, “You have taken the ploughshare with you to-night, Donald, and big, pock-marked, dirty John your brother,” and catching him she administered a severer thrashing than ever. He went again to the old woman, and this time she made for his protection a thread, which he was to wear about his neck. He put it on, and, instead of going to the place of meeting, remained at the fireside. The Fairy came, and, taking him out of the house, gave him a still severer thrashing. Upon this, the wise woman said she would make a chain to protect him against all the powers of darkness, though they came. He put this chain about his neck, and remained by the fireside. He heard a voice calling down the chimney, “I cannot come near you to-night, Donald, when the pretty smooth-white is about your neck.”

IONA BANSHI.

A man in Iona, thinking daylight was come, rose and went to a rock to fish. After catching some fish, he observed he had been misled by the clearness of the moonlight, and set off home. On the way, as the night was so fine, he sat down to rest himself on a hillock. He fell asleep, and was awakened by the pulling of the fishing rod, which he had in his hand. He found the rod was being pulled in one direction and the fish in another. He secured both, and was making off, when he heard sounds behind him as of a woman weeping. On his turning round to her, she said, “Ask news, and you will get news.” He answered, “I put God between us.” When he said this, she caught him and thrashed him soundly. Every night after he was compelled to meet her, and on her repeating the same words and his giving the same answer, was similarly drubbed. To escape from her persecutions he went to the Lowlands. When engaged there cutting drains, he saw a raven on the bank above him. This proved to be his tormentor, and he was compelled to meet her again at night, and, as usual, she thrashed him. He resolved to go to America. On the eve of his departure, his Fairy mistress met him and said, “You are going away to escape from me. If you see a hooded crow when you land, I am that crow.” On landing in America he saw a crow sitting on a tree, and knew it to be his old enemy. In the end the Fairy dame killed him.

TIREE BANSHI.

At the time of the American War of Independence, a native of Tiree, similarly afflicted and wishing to escape from his Fairy love, enlisted and was drafted off to the States. On landing he thanked God he was now where the hag could not reach him. Soon after, however, she met him. “You have given thanks,” she said, “for getting rid of me, but it is as easy for me to make my appearance here as in your own country.” She then told him what fortunes were to befall him, that he would survive the war and return home, and that she would not then trouble him any more. “You will marry there and settle. You will have two daughters, one of whom will marry and settle in Croy-Gortan (_Cruaidh-ghortain_, stone-field), the other will marry and remain in your own house. The one away will ask you to stay with herself, as her sister will not be kind to you. Your death will occur when you are crossing the _Leíge_” (a winter stream falling into Loch Vasipol). All this in due course happened.

About four generations ago, a native of Cornaig in Tiree was out shooting on the Reef plain, and returning home in the evening, at the streamlet, which falls into Balefetrish Bay, near Kennovay, was met by a Fairy dame. He did not at first observe anything in her appearance different from other women, but, on her putting over her head and kissing him, he saw she had but one nostril. On reaching home he was unable to articulate one word. By the advice of an old man he composed, in his mind, a love song to the Fairy. On doing this, his speech came back.

MACPHIE’S BLACK DOG.

[This tale was taken down in Gaelic from the dictation of Donald Cameron, Ruaig, Tiree, in 1863, and is here given in his words as closely as a translation will allow. It is a very good specimen of a class of tales found in the Highlands, and illustrates many remarkable traits of the belief regarding the Fairy women, their enmity to the hunter, their beauty and powers of enchanting men at first, their changing their shape to that of deer, and the aversion dogs have to them; also the size and character of the Fairy hound.]

Mac-vic-Allan of Arasaig, lord of Moidart, went out hunting in his own forest when young and unmarried. He saw a royal stag before him, as beautiful an animal as he had ever seen. He levelled his gun at it, and it became a woman as beautiful as he had ever seen at all. He lowered his gun, and it became a royal stag as before. Every time he raised the gun to his eye, the figure was that of a woman, and every time he let it down to the ground, it was a royal stag. Upon this he raised the gun to his eye and walked up till he was close to the woman’s breast. He then sprang and caught her in his arms. “You will not be separated from me at all,” he said, “I will never marry any but you.” “Do not do that, Mac-vic-Allan,” she said, “you have no business with me, I will not suit you. There will never be a day, while you have me with you, but you will need to kill a cow for me.” “You will get that,” said the lord of Moidart, “though you should ask two a day.”

But Mac-vic-Allan’s herd began to grow thin. He tried to send her away, but he could not. He then went to an old man, who lived in the townland, and was his counsellor. He said he would be a broken man, and he did not know what plan to take to get rid of her. The honest old man told him, that unless Macphie of Colonsay could send her away, there was not another living who could. A letter was instantly sent off to Macphie. He answered the letter, and came to Arasaig.

“What business is this you have with me,” said Macphie, “Mac-vic-Allan?”

Mac-vic-Allan told him how the woman had come upon him, and how he could not send her away.

“Go you,” said Macphie, “and kill a cow for her to-day as usual; send her dinner to the room as usual; and give me my dinner on the other side of the room.”

Mac-vic-Allan did as he was asked. She commenced her dinner, and Macphie commenced his. When Macphie got his dinner past, he looked over at her.

“What is your news, Elle-maid?” said he. “What is that to you, Brian Brugh,” said she. “I saw you, Elle-maid,” said he, “When you consorted with the Fingalians, When you went with Dermid o Duvne And accompanied him from covert to covert.” “I saw you, Brian Brugh,” she said, “When you rode on an old black horse, The lover of the slim Fairy woman, Ever chasing her from brugh to brugh.”

“Dogs and men after the wretch,” cried Macphie, “long have I known her.”

Every dog and man in Arasaig was called and sent after her. She fled away out to the point of Arasaig, and they did not get a second sight of her.

Upon this Macphie went home to his own Colonsay. One day he was out hunting, and night came on before he got home. He saw a light and made straight for it. He saw a number of men sitting in there, and an old grey-headed man in the midst. The old man spoke and said, “Macphie, come forward.” Macphie went forward, and what should come in his way but a bitch, as beautiful an animal as he had ever seen, and a litter of pups with it. He saw one pup in particular, black in colour, and he had never seen a pup so black or so beautiful as it.

“This dog will be my own,” said Macphie.

“No,” said the man, “you will get your choice of the pups, but you will not get that one.”

“I will not take one,” said Macphie, “but this one.”

“Since you are resolved to have it,” said the old man, “it will not do you but one day’s service, and it will do that well. Come back on such a night and you will get it.”

Macphie reached the place on the night he promised to come. They gave him the dog, “and take care of it well,” said the old man, “for it will never do service for you but the one day.”

The Black Dog began to turn out so handsome a whelp that no one ever saw a dog so large or so beautiful as it. When Macphie went out hunting he called the Black Dog, and the Black Dog came to the door and then turned back and lay where it was before. The gentlemen who visited at Macphie’s house used to tell him to kill the Black Dog, it was not worth its food. Macphie would tell them to let the dog alone, that the Black Dog’s day would come yet.

At one time a number of gentlemen came across from Islay to visit Macphie and ask him to go with them to Jura to hunt. At that time Jura was a desert, without anyone staying on it, and without its equal anywhere as hunting ground for deer and roe. There was a place there where those who went for sport used to stay, called the Big Cave. A boat was made ready to cross the sound that same day. Macphie rose to go, and the sixteen young gentlemen along with him. Each of them called the Black Dog, and it reached the door, then turned and lay down where it was before. “Shoot it,” cried the young gentlemen. “No,” said he, “the Black Dog’s day is not come yet” They reached the shore, but the wind rose and they did not get across that day.

Next day they made ready to go; the Black Dog was called and reached the door, but returned where it was before. “Kill it,” said the gentlemen, “and don’t be feeding it any longer.” “I will not kill it,” said Macphie, “the Black Dog’s day will come yet.” They failed to get across this day also from the violence of the weather and returned. “The dog has foreknowledge,” said the gentlemen. “It has foreknowledge,” said Macphie, “that its own day will come yet.”

On the third day the weather was beautiful. They took their way to the harbour, and did not say a syllable this day to the Black Dog. They launched the boat to go away. One of the gentlemen looked and said the Black Dog was coming, and he never saw a creature like it, because of its fierce look. It sprang, and was the first creature in the boat. “The Black Dog’s day is drawing near us,” said Macphie.

They took with them meat, and provisions, and bedclothes, and went ashore in Jura. They passed that night in the Big Cave, and next day went to hunt the deer. Late in the evening they came home. They prepared supper. They had a fine fire in the cave and light. There was a big hole in the very roof of the cave through which a man could pass. When they had taken their supper the young gentlemen lay down, Macphie rose, and stood warming the back of his legs to the fire. Each of the young men said he wished his own sweetheart was there that night. “Well,” said Macphie, “I prefer that my wife should be in her own house; it is enough for me to be here myself to-night.”

Macphie gave a look from him and saw sixteen women entering the door of the cave. The light went out and there was no light except what the fire gave. The women went over to where the gentlemen were. Macphie could see nothing from the darkness that came over the cave. He was not hearing a sound from the men. The women stood up and one of them looked at Macphie. She stood opposite to him as though she were going to attack him. The Black Dog rose and put on a fierce bristling look and made a spring at her. The women took to the door, and the Black Dog followed them to the mouth of the cave. When they went away the Black Dog returned and lay at Macphie’s feet.

In a little while Macphie heard a horrid noise overhead in the top of the cave, so that he thought the cave would fall in about his head. He looked up and saw a man’s hand coming down through the hole, and making as if to catch himself and take him out through the hole in the roof of the cave. The Black Dog gave one spring, and between the shoulder and the elbow caught the Hand, and lay upon it with all its might. Now began the play between the Hand and the Black Dog. Before the Black Dog let go its hold, it chewed the arm through till it fell on the floor. The Thing that was on the top of the cave went away, and Macphie thought the cave would fall in about his head. The Black Dog rushed out after the Thing that was outside. This was not the time when Macphie felt himself most at ease, when the Black Dog left him. When the day dawned, behold the Black Dog had returned. It lay down at Macphie’s feet, and in a few minutes was dead.

When the light of day appeared Macphie looked, and he had not a single man alive of those who were with him in the cave. He took with him the Hand, and went to the shore to the boat. He went on board and went home to Colonsay, unaccompanied by dog or man. He took the Hand up with him that men might see the horror he had met with, the night he was in the cave. No man in Islay or Colonsay ever at all saw such a hand, nor did they imagine that such existed.

There only remained to send a boat to Jura and take home the bodies that were in the cave. That was the end of the Black Dog’s day.

* * * * *

A short tale, similar to the first part of the above legend, is given in Campbell’s _Tales of the West Highlands_ (ii. 52). A fairy changeling in Gaolin Castle, Kerrera, is detected by a visitor from Ireland as the Fairy sweetheart of a countryman—_Brian Mac Braodh_. On being detected the Elle woman ran into the sea from the point since called _Rutha na Sirich_. The name _Brian Brugh_ of the one tale and _Brian Mac Braodh_ of the other renders it probable the two tales had originally more in common.

The expression, “The Black Dog’s day will come yet” (_Thig latha choindui fhathast_), has passed into a proverb to denote that a time will yet come when one now despised will prove of service. The English proverb, “Every dog has its day,” means that everyone has his own time of enjoyment.

The Macphies or MacDuffies were Lairds of Colonsay till the middle of the 17th century. In 1623 the celebrated Colkitto was delated for the murder of umquhill Malcolm Macphie of Colonsay; and one of the race lies buried in Iona, with the inscription on his tomb

HIC JACET MALCOLUMBUS MACDUFFIE DE COLONSAY.

If the same Malcolm is referred to in both cases, these traces of his fame, slight though they be, create some presumption that he may be the person round whom romance has gathered the incidents of the above tale. In 1615 Malcolm Macphie joined Sir James Macdonald of Dunyveg, in Islay, in the last and unsuccessful attempt made by the once powerful Clandonald of Islay and Cantyre to retain their possessions from the Campbells. He was one of the principal leaders of the rebels and a remarkable man. The family was one of the oldest and most esteemed in the West Highlands.

The following are other versions of the tale in circulation. They are of interest when compared with each other in showing the growth and character of a popular tale.

Macphie of Colonsay was kept captive by a mermaid in a cave by the shore. She supplied him with whatever he needed or desired, but he was not happy, and took advantage of her absence to make his escape. She missed him on her return and went in pursuit. He had with him a large black dog, which he had kept in spite of everyone’s remonstrances. When the mermaid overtook him he threw it into the water and it fought the mermaid. The end of the battle was that the dog killed the mermaid and the mermaid killed the dog.

This version is the one which supplied the ground work of Leyden’s beautiful ballad “The Mermaid.” Considerable changes must have been made by him upon the legend as it came to his hand. The dog, which in all the versions is the principal character, is left out; Macphie’s name is changed to Macphail; a magic ring (a thing unknown in Highland lore) is introduced, etc. Leyden fell in with the version, of which he made use, in his travels in the Highlands in 1801.

Macphie of Colonsay was in an island hunting, and in the course of his ramblings came to a hut, which he entered. He found no one in, and threw himself on a bed for a little rest. He was accompanied by a dog as large as a year old calf. A dark object (_dùthra_) came to the door and the dog attacked it. The Thing made a hideous screaming. When Macphie saw the dog’s hair beginning to smoke, he made his escape to the boat that had come with him to the island. Before long the dog came rushing after him, like a mad beast, with a green flame issuing from its jaws. Macphie had prepared himself for this by loading his double-barrelled gun[41] with two crooked sixpences. He fired the two shots at the dog, as it rushed to attack him, and killed it. The Banshi, it had fought with, was left cruelly mauled, and she crawled or dragged herself to the shore, throwing rocks and stones out of her way. Her track is still known as the Carlin’s Furrow (_Sgrìob na Caillich_). The boat left the shore before she reached it. She tried to bring it back by throwing a ball of thread after it, but without success. This was in Islay.

Macphie of Colonsay, when he went hunting, was met in a particular glen by a man who accompanied him during the rest of the excursion. His companion had a brindled bitch (_galla riabhach_), to which Macphie took a fancy. He asked the man to sell it. “I will not,” said the man, “sell it to you or any one else, but as you have rested your eye upon it, I will give it to you for a while. It will have two pups, one like itself and one black. The brindled one you can keep, but the black one must be returned along with its mother. You will meet me at this same spot on such a day.” Macphie took the brindled bitch home, and in due time the animal had two pups, both very pretty. When the time came, Macphie went back, according to promise, to the place appointed, but instead of taking the black pup, took the brindled one. The man said to him, “You have not brought the Black Dog; it would have been better for you if you had; but keep it. It will give you but one night’s service; you will not gain much by the Black Dog.” After this the Black Dog began to wither; it grew large and tall but lank and lean. The servants thrashed and kicked it about, as if it never was likely to come to any good. Macphie himself seemed to have an unaccountable regard for it, and was very angry when he saw it abused. Two gentlemen came to see him, with the intention of taking him with them to hunt in some neighbouring islet. On the morning of their intended expedition they rose early, and were getting the guns ready, when the Black Dog rose and whined and fawned upon Macphie. On reaching the boat the Black Dog was the first to spring on board. The night became stormy, and the party were not able to get home that night. They passed the night in a cave. A noise as of walking was heard overhead, and a Hand appeared through the roof as if to grasp one of Macphie’s friends. All the dogs fled into the corners of the cave. Macphie himself had a Jew’s harp (which is said to be the holiest kind of musical instrument), and when he played fast upon it the Hand drew back; when he played slow the Hand came nearer. At last he was almost exhausted. He called upon the Black Dog, and the Black Dog rose. “My Black Dog,” said Macphie, “if you cannot do it now, I am undone.” The Dog attacked the Hand, and made it disappear. It then rushed out and gave chase. It came back, spotted and speckled, with its hair stripped off. When the hunters got home on the following night the Dog disappeared.

Macphie from Colonsay was cast ashore at Ormsaig, in the district of Brolas in Mull, clinging to a log of wood. He stayed for some time at Ormsaig, and was in the habit of going to the hill with his gun. A Fairy woman met him there, and from her he received the present of a young dog, which she said would yet be of service to him, but only for one day. He had seventeen foster brothers, and, on his return home, they came and asked him to go with them to shoot cormorants at the Paps of Jura. The Dog, which had by this time grown very large, and had never before given any indication of being useful, this day eagerly accompanied the hunters. Macphie’s wife had often urged him to kill the dog, but he had insisted on keeping it. When Jura was reached, a servant was left in charge of the boats, and the company passed the night in a cave. As they reclined round the cave, each expressed a wish, that his sweetheart were there. Macphie, who was standing by the fire, said he had no such wish, it was better for his mistress to be at home. Before long, seventeen women in green dresses entered the cave, and went over to the beds of heather where Macphie’s foster brothers were, and Macphie heard the crackling sound of breaking bones. The seventeen women then came up, as if to attack himself. Afraid of their number, he called to the Black Dog, “If you assist me not now, I am a lost man.” The dog attacked the women, drove them out of the cave, and went off in pursuit. Macphie fled to the boat, and he and the servant left in charge quitted the shore with all haste. When they were well out to sea, the servant said there was a fiery star coming after them. Macphie said it was the Black Dog, and its heart had taken fire. He made ready, and when the dog overtook them, cut off its head.

THE CARLIN OF THE SPOTTED HILL (_Cailleach Beinne Bhric_).

The Fairy wife, who owned the deer of Ben Breck, is well known in the Highlands.

It is told of her that on one occasion, as she milked a hind, the animal became restive and gave her a kick. In return she struck the hind with her open palm and expressed a wish that the arrow of Donald, the son of John (a noted hunter in his day), might come upon it. That very day the restive hind fell to Dò’il MacJain’s arrow.[42]

It is also told of this Elfin wife that while three hunters were passing the night in a bothy on Ben Breck, the Carlin wife came to the door and sought admittance. A dog that accompanied the hunters sprang up to attack her. She retreated and asked one of the men to tie up his dog. He refused. She asked him again, and a second time he refused. She asked a third time, and he replied he had nothing to tie it with. She pulled a hair out of her head and told him to tie his dog with that, it was strong enough to hold a four-masted ship at anchor. He pretended to consent, and the hag, on trying again to enter, found the dog was not secured. She then went away, saying it was well for the hunter the dog had not been tied, and threatening to come again. It does not appear, however, that she ever came back.

She was last seen about twenty years ago in Lochaber. Age had told severely upon her. Instead of being ‘broad and tall,’ she had become no bigger than a teapot! She wore a little grey plaid or shawl about her shoulders.

DONALD, SON OF PATRICK.

Donald, the son of Patrick (_Dòmhnull Mac Phàruig_), or, as others say, the son of Lachlan, was a _brocair_, that is, a foxhunter or destroyer of ground vermin, in Lorn. Persons following this profession were employed by the hill farmers, and had generally long tracts of country to travel over. Their companions were their gun, a pack of terriers, and perhaps a wiry deer-hound. With these they led as lonely a life as anyone who had at all to descend to the strath and men’s houses could do. Many a lonely night they watched by the fox’s cairn in some remote corrie for an opportunity ‘to put a hole in the red rogue’s hide,’ and they often passed the night in bothies and shielings far from the haunts of men. One day Donald, the son of Patrick, killed a roe, and took it to a bothy in the hills. He kindled a fire with the flint of his gun, and having cut up the roe, roasted pieces of the flesh by a large fire. As he helped himself, he threw now and then a piece to his dogs. Before long he observed, the night being moonlit, a large dark shadow coming about the door, and then a woman snatching at the pieces of flesh he threw to the dogs. She had one tooth as big as a distaff projecting from her upper gum. The dogs prevented her entering the hut, so that she got but little of the food. She asked Donald to leash up his dogs, and on his refusing, cried out, “This is poor hospitality for the night, Donald, son of Patrick.” Donald answered, “It will be no better and no worse than that.” “You proved expert at raising a fire,” she said. “How do you know?” he asked. “I was,” she said, “on the top of the Cruach of Rannoch (a hill far away) the first click you gave to the flint, and this is poor hospitality for the night, Donald, son of Patrick.” “It will,” he said, “be no better and no worse than that.” In a while again she said, “This is poor hospitality for the night, Donald, son of Patrick.” “Take,” he said, “as you are able to win.” She remained all night, and repeatedly asked him to leash up his dogs, which he refused to do. The dogs kept her at bay till she left.

Another version says that the foxhunter’s name was _Iain Mac Phàruig_, that he was accompanied by sixteen dogs, that his strange visitant disappeared at the cock-crowing, and that she then told she was ‘the wife of Fe-chiarain’ (_Cailleach Fe-chiarain_). Some identify her with the Carlin of Ben Breck.

THE WIFE OF BEN-Y-GHLOE.

Donald and Big John (_Dòmhnull ’s Iain mòr_) were out deer-hunting on the lofty mountain of Ben-y-ghloe, in Athol in Perthshire, when a heavy snowstorm came on, and they lost their way. They came to a hut in a hollow and entered. The only one in was an old woman, the like of whom they said they had never seen. Her two arms were bare, of great length, and grizzled and sallow to look at. She neither asked them to come in nor go out, and being much in need of shelter, they went in and sat at the fire. There was a look in her eye that might ‘terrify a coward,’ and she hummed a surly song, the words of which were unintelligible to them. They asked for meat, and she set before them a fresh salmon trout, saying, “Little you thought I would give you your dinner to-day.” She also said she could do more, that it was she who clothed the hill with mist to make them come to her house. They stayed with her all night. She was very kind and hospitable. She told her name to them when leaving, that she was ‘the wife of Ben-y-Ghloe.’ They could not say whether she was _sìth_ or _saoghalta_ (Elfin or human), but they never visited her again.

FAIRY WOMEN AND DEER.

On the lands of Scalasdal in Mull, a deer was killed, which turned out afterwards to be a woman.

It is perhaps this belief in the metamorphosis of Fairy women and deer that was the origin of the tradition that Oisian’s mother was a deer. In Skye it is said that after the poet’s birth his mother could touch him but once with her tongue on the temple. On that corner (_air an Oisinn sin_) a tuft of fur like that of a deer grew, hence the poet’s name. An informant in the centre of Argyllshire said he did not hear Oisian’s mother was a deer, but he had heard the poet was nurtured by a deer. In the Northern Hebrides, a song is sometimes heard which Oisian is said to have composed to the deer.[43]

O’CRONICERT’S FAIRY WIFE.[44]

There was a man in Ireland, whose name was O’Cronicert, and his dwelling place was Corr-water, and he spent all he had on the great nobles of Ireland, bringing them for days’ entertainment and for nights’ entertainment, till he had nothing left but an old tumble-down black house, and an old wife, and an old lame white horse. The thought that came into his head was, to go to the King of Ireland for assistance, to see what he would give. He cut a cudgel of grey oak in the outskirt of the wood, and sat on the back of the old lame white horse, and set off at speed through wood, and through moss, and through rugged ground, till he reached the King’s house. The custom was, that a man should be a year and a day in the King’s house before being asked the object of his journey. After being there a year and a day, the King said, “O’Cronicert, it is not without a cause for your journey you have come here.” “It is not,” said O’Cronicert, “it is for assistance I have come here. You know it was for yourself and your great nobles I spent my property entirely.” “You will wait,” said the King, “till I bring in the children”; and they were there as men called them Murdoch Mac Brian, and Duncan Mac Brian, and Torgill Mac Brian, and Brian Borr Mac Cimi, and his sixteen foster brothers with every one of them.

“I will give,” said Murdoch Mac Brian, “a hundred milch cows to him.”

“I will give,” said Duncan Mac Brian, “a hundred farrow cows to him, in case they should be in calf all in one year.”

“I will give him,” said Torgill Mac Brian, “a hundred brood mares.”

“I will give him,” said Brian Borr Mac Cimi, “a hundred sheep.”

After O’Cronicert got this, he was not going away. The King told him to go away, that it was difficult to keep his herd separate from the King’s own, and to take it away. He said to the King that he had one thing in view, and if he got it from the King, he would prefer it to all he had already got.

“It is certain,” said the King, “it must be some bad thing or other; you had better tell it, that I may let you away.”

“It is,” he said, “the lap-dog, that is out and in after the Queen, that I wish for”; and the King gave him permission to take it with him.

He took the lap-dog, leapt on the back of the old lame white horse, and went off at speed, without one look at the herd, through wood, and through moss, and through rugged ground. After he had gone some distance through the wood, a roe-buck leapt out of the wood, and the lap-dog went after it, and in an instant they were out of sight.

Close upon the evening, he saw the lap-dog coming, and a royal stag before it, and the deer started up as a woman behind O’Cronicert, the handsomest that eye had ever seen from the beginning of the universe till the end of eternity. O’Cronicert caught her, and she asked him to let her go, and he said there would be no separation in life between them.

“Well,” said she, “before I go with you, you must come under three conditions to me”; and he promised to come under the conditions.

“The first condition is, that you will not go to ask the King of Ireland or his great nobles for a day’s or a night’s entertainment without telling me. The next condition is, that you will not go to a change-house without putting it in my option; and the third thing, that you will never cast up to me that you found me an unwise animal (_beathach mi-chéillidh_) in the wood.”

They reached the old tumble-down black house, and the wife he had left there was a faggot-bundle of bones in a pool of rain-drip in the middle of the floor. They cut grass in clefts and ledges of the rocks, and made a bed, and laid down.

O’Cronicert’s wakening from sleep was the lowing of cattle, and the bleating of sheep, and the neighing of mares, while he himself was in a bed of gold on wheels of silver, going from end to end of the Tower of Castle Town, the finest eye had ever seen from the beginning of the universe till the end of eternity.

“It is no wonder,” he said, “the like of this should happen to me, when I found you an unwise animal in the wood.”

“As well as you broke that condition you will break the rest; rise, and drive the cattle away to pasture.”

When he went out, there was no number to the multitude of his flock, and on a day of the days after that, while looking at the flock, he thought he would go to ask the King of Ireland for a day and night’s entertainment. He sat on the back of the old lame white horse, and went through wood, and moss, and rugged ground, till he reached the King’s house.

The King said to him, “Do you at all intend, O’Cronicert, to take your flock with you? They are to-day so numerous that the herdsmen do not know them from my own.”

“No, I have no need of them. I have a larger stock than yourself, and what has brought me is to ask yourself and nobles for a day and night’s entertainment.”

The King said to him, “We are ready, my good fellow, to go”; and there were there, as men called them, Murdoch Mac Brian, and Duncan Mac Brian, and Torgill Mac Brian, and Brian Borr Mac Cimi, and his sixteen foster-brothers with every one of them. It was when they were near the house O’Cronicert remembered he had left without telling her. He told them to make their way slowly, and he himself would go before to tell they were coming.

“You did not need, I knew very well that you went; let them come on, everything is ready.”

When the King thought he had been seven days and seven nights drinking there, he said to Murdoch, his son, that it was time for them to be going. She then said to the King that it was high time for him—“You have been seven days and seven years in this place.”

“If I am,” said he, “I need not go back; there is not a man or living creature awaiting me.”

Murdoch had a foster-brother, whose name was Keyn, the son of Loy (_Kian Mac an Luaimh_), and he fell in love with O’Cronicert’s wife. He pretended to be ill and remained behind the rest. She made a drink for him and went with it to him, but instead of taking the drink he laid hold of herself. She suddenly became a filly, and gave him a kick and broke his leg. She took with her the tower of Castle Town as an armful on her shoulder and a light burden on her back, and left him in the old tumble-down black house, in a pool of rain-drip, in the middle of the floor.

In the parting O’Cronicert went to the change-house to bid the party good-bye, and it was then Murdoch Mac Brian remembered he had left his own foster-brother, Keyn, the son of Loy, behind, and said there would be no separation in life between them, and he would go back for him. He found Keyn in the old tumble-down black house, in the middle of the floor, in a pool of rain-water, with his leg broken; and he said the earth would make a nest in his sole, and the sky a nest in his head, if he did not find a man who would cure Keyn’s leg.

The rest of the tale consists principally of _true_ tales, necessary to be told, before Keyn will consent to stretch his leg for a salve to be applied to it. The King of Lochlin, or, according to others, the King of Ireland, who is bound not to allow any one to remain in distress, when he can relieve, tells a series of marvellous adventures that befell himself, all jointing into one another, before Keyn stretches his foot. The composition is of a kindred character with the _Arabian Nights’ Entertainment_.

The reader will observe that in this tale, as in that of “Macphie’s Black Dog,” the Fairy wife is first encountered in the shape of a deer, that (as is alleged of her race in other tales) she dislikes being reproached with not being of mortal race, and calls up in one night a palace of enchanting magnificence, in which time passes unobserved, and in the end disappears, leaving matters worse than at the beginning.

THE GRUAGACH BAN.

In Campbell’s _West Highland Tales_ (ii. 410) will be found a tale also highly illustrative of this part of the superstition. The hero of the tale, the Fair Long-haired One, son of the King of Ireland, encounters a woman with a narrow green kirtle (the Fairy dress), and after playing cards with her, is placed under the following spell:—“I place thee under enchantments and crosses, under the nine shackles of the roaming, wandering Fairy dame, that the most stunted and weakliest little calf take off your head, and your ears, and your livelihood, if you rest night or day, where you take your breakfast, that you will not take your dinner, and where you take your dinner, you will not take your supper, till you find out the place I am in, under the four red divisions of the world.”[45]

There is also in the tale an Elfin old woman, the Carlin of the Red Stream, who is of the same class with the old wife of Ben Breck. She has a wonderful deer, which she can restore to life if she can get any of its flesh as juice to taste, and her yells split the iron hoops the prudent Fin had put round his men’s heads in anticipation of her outcries.

DEER KILLED AT NIGHT.

Big Hugh, of Ardchyle (_Eòghan mòr àird-a-chaoil_), in the east of the island of Mull, a noted deer-hunter in his day, killed a deer at Torness (_Torr-an-Eas_, the eminence by the ravine), some seven miles away in Glenmore, and conveyed it home at night. He was accompanied by a man of the name of Sinclair. Sinclair asked him if the deer was heavy, and Big Hugh said he felt as if he had a house on his back. Sinclair then stuck his pen-knife in the deer, and asked again if the burden felt heavy. Big Hugh said it was now so light he could hardly believe he had a burden on his back at all. The weight had been laid on by the Fairies.

FAIRIES AND GOATS.

In Breadalbane and the Highlands of Perthshire it is said the Fairies live on goat’s milk. A goat was taken home by a man in Strathfillan, in Perthshire, to be killed. In the evening a stranger, dressed in green, came to the door. He was asked to enter and rest himself. He said he could not, as he was in a hurry, and on his way to Dunbuck (a celebrated Fairy haunt near Dunbarton), an urgent message having come for him. He said that many a day that goat had kept him in milk. He then disappeared. He could be nothing but a Fairy.

FAIRIES AND COWS.

A strong-minded headstrong woman in Kianish, Tiree, had a cow, the milk of which strangely failed. Suspecting that the cow was being milked by someone during the night, she sat up and watched. She saw a woman dressed in green coming noiselessly and milking the cow. She came behind and caught her. In explanation the Fairy woman said she had a child lying in the smallpox, and as a favour asked to be allowed to milk the cow for one month, till the child got better. This was allowed, and when the month was out, the cow’s milk became as plentiful as ever.

That the Fairies took away cows at night in order to milk them, and sent them back in the morning, was a belief in Craignish, Morvern, Tiree, Lochaber, and probably in the whole Highlands. When milk lost its virtue, and yielded neither cream, nor butter, nor cheese, the work was that of witches and such like diabolical agencies. When the mischief was done by the Fairies the whole milk disappeared.

FAIRY COWS.

A strong man named Dugald Campbell was one night, about the end of last century, watching the cattle on the farm of Baile-phuill, in the west of Tiree. A little red cow came among the herd and was attacked by the other cows. It fled and they followed. Dugald also set off in pursuit. Sometimes the little red cow seemed near, sometimes far away. At last it entered the face of a rock, and one of the other cows followed and was never again seen. The whole herd would have followed had not Dugald intercepted them.

A poor person’s cow, in Skye, was by some act of oppression taken from him. That night the Fairies brought him another cow, remarkable only in having green water weeds upon it. This cow throve.

Some four generations ago cows came ashore on Nisibost beach, on the farm of Loscantire (_Losg-an-tìr_), in Harris. The people got between them and the shore, with such weapons as they could get, and kept them from returning to the sea again. Even handfuls of sand thrown between the cows and the shore kept them back. These sea-cows were in all respects like ordinary highland cattle but were supposed to live under the sea on the sea-weed called _meillich_. They were called Fairy cows (_Cro sìth_), and the superiority of the Loscantire cattle was said to have originated from them. It is more probable the superiority of the stock was the origin of the Fairy cattle.

Cows of the same kind were also said to have come ashore in Bernera, in Uist, and at MacNicol’s Big Rock (_Creag mhòr mhic Neacail_), on the farm of Scorrybreck, in Skye. In the latter place they were kept from returning by tossing earth between them and the sea. Earth from a burying-ground was thought to be the most effective in such cases. On the evening of the day on which the cows came ashore a voice was heard from the sea calling them by name. From the rhyme in which this was done we learn the cows were of different colours, one black, another brown, brindled, red, white-faced, etc.:

Sisgein, Brisgein, Meangan, Meodhran, Bo dhu, bo dhonn Bo chrom riabhach Sliochd na h-aona bhà maoile ruaidhe, Nach d’ fhàg buaile riasnh na h-aonar; Bo chionnan Thonn, È bhlàrag.

THE THIRSTY PLOUGHMAN.

A ploughman while engaged at his work heard, or fancied he heard, a sound of churning, and said he wished his thirst “was on the dairymaid.” In a short time after a woman appeared and offered him a drink of buttermilk. Her green dress and sudden appearance made him refuse the offer, and she said that next year he would not need the drink. When the twelve months were nearly out the man died.[46]

THE FAIRY CHURNING.

A woman, near Portree, in Skye, was coming home in the evening with her milk pails from the cattle fold, accompanied by a dog, which went trotting along before her. Suddenly the dog was observed to run to a green hillock, fall down on its knees, and hold its ear to the ground. The woman went up to see what the matter was, and on listening heard a woman inside the hillock churning milk, and singing at her work. At the end of every verse there was a chorus or exclamation of _hŭ_. The song was learnt by the listener, and became known as the “Song of the Hillock” (_Òran a chnuic_). The writer has not been able to fall in with a copy of it. The incident occurred three generations ago.

MILK SPILT.

There was a Fairy hillock near Dowart, in Mull, close to the road which led from the cattle fold to the village. If any milk was spilt by the dairymaids on their way home with the milk pails, it was a common saying that the Fairies would get its benefit.

FAIRY MUSIC.

Two children, a brother and sister, went on a moonlight winter’s night to Kennavarra Hill, to look after a snare they had set for little birds in a hollow near a stream. The ground was covered with snow, and when the two had descended into the hollow, they heard most beautiful music coming from under ground, close to where they were standing. In the extremity of terror both fled. The boy went fastest, and never looked behind him. The girl was at first encumbered by her father’s big shoes, which she had put on for the occasion, but, throwing them off, she reached home with a panting heart, not long after her brother. The story was told by her when an old woman. She had never forgot the fright the Fairy music gave her in childhood.

In the Braes of Portree there is a hillock called “The Fairy Dwelling of the Pretty Hill” (_Sìthein Beinne Bòidhich_). A man passing near it in the evening heard from underground the most delightful music ever heard. He could not, however, tell the exact spot from which the sound emanated.

Sounds of exquisite music, as if played by a piper marching at the head of a procession, used to be heard going underground from the Harp Hillock to the top of the Dùn of Caolis, in the east end of Tiree. Many tunes, of little poetical, whatever be their musical merit, said to have been learned from the Fairies, are to be heard. One of these, which the writer heard, seemed to consist entirely of variations upon the word ‘do-leedl’em.’

MACCRIMMON.

The MacCrimmons were pipers to Macleod, of Macleod, and the most celebrated musicians among the Scottish Gaël. The founder of the family is said to have been an Italian harper from Cremona, who came with Macleod to Dunvegan, and took the surname from his native town. There are several versions of the story, which ascribes the excellence of the MacCrimmons in music to the Fairies. The following two will suffice.

The first of the MacCrimmons, when a young lad, was sent to a music master to learn bagpipe playing. There was to be a competition of pipers at a wedding in the neighbourhood, and MacCrimmon asked from his master permission to attend, but was refused. He resolved to go notwithstanding, and set off alone, taking a short cut across the hills. On the way he fell in with a Fairy dwelling, which he entered. He found no person in but an old woman, who spoke kindly to him, saying she knew the object of his journey, and, on his promising to go half loss and gain with her, gave him a black chanter, which, placed in his pipes, would enable him to excel his master, and every other performer. She added that she and her people were about to remove from their present dwelling, but, if he came on a certain night (naming one near at hand), they would have time to give him some lessons. To this one night’s instruction, and the magic chanter, which remained in the family as an heirloom, the MacCrimmons were indebted for their acknowledged superiority as pipers. Their fame will last “while wind is blown into sheepskin.”

‘The Blind Piper’ (_am Piobaire dall_) was the first of the MacCrimmons who acquired fame as a piper. Two Banshis found him sleeping in the open air, and one of them blinded one of his eyes. The second Banshi asked that the other eye might be spared. It, however, was blinded also. The benevolent Fairy then suggested that some gift should be given that would enable the poor man to earn his living. On this the Fairy Carlin gave MacCrimmon a brindled chanter, which, placed in the bagpipes, enabled the player to outrival all pipers. When the Laird of Dungallon obtained the brindled chanter for his own piper Macintyre, the MacCrimmons never did well after. The chanter was last known to be at Callart.

Mac-an-sgialaiche, pipers at Taymouth Castle, were also said to have got their pipes from the Fairies.

FAIRY DOGS (‘CU SITH’).

A large black dog, passing by with a noiseless and gliding motion, was a common object of terror in the Hebrides on winter nights. The coil in the animal’s tail was alone sufficiently alarming. Much of its shape depended, no doubt, on how his own hair hung over the eyes of the frightened spectator.

A man, coming across the links near Kennavara Hill in Tiree, came upon a large black dog, resting on the side of a sandbank. On observing it, he turned aside, and took another road home. Next day he recovered courage, and went to examine the spot. He found on the sand the marks of a dog’s paw, as large as the spread of his palm. He followed these huge footmarks till he lost them on the plain. The dog had taken no notice of him, and he felt assured, from its size, it could be no earthly hound.

On the north shore of Tiree there is a beach of more than a mile in length, called _Cladach a Chrògain_, well calculated to be the scene of strange terrors. The extensive plain (about 1500 acres in extent), of which it forms the northern fringe, is almost a dead level, and in instances of very high flood-tides, with north-west gales of wind, the sea has been known to overflow it, and join the sea on the south side, three miles away, dividing Tiree into two islands. The upper part of the beach consists of loose round stones, a little larger than a goose’s egg, which make, when the tide is in, and under the influence of the restless surf, a hoarse rumbling sound, sufficiently calculated, with the accompaniment of strange scenery, to awaken the imagination. An old woman, half-a-century ago, asserted that, when a young girl, she had heard on this beach the bark of the Fairy hound. Her father’s house was at a place called Fidden, of which no trace now remains beyond the name of the Fidden Gate (_Cachla nam Fidean_), given to a spot where there is no gate. It was after night-fall, and she was playing out about the doors, when she was suddenly startled by a loud sound, like the baying of a dog, only much louder, from the other end of the shore. She remembered her father having come and taken hold of her hand, and running with her to the house, for if the dog was heard to bark thrice, it would overtake them. It made a noise like a horse galloping.

At the foot of Heynish Hill, in the extreme south-west of Tiree, there is one of those small forts to be found in great numbers in the Hebrides (and said to have been intended, by fires lighted upon them, to give warning of the approach of the Danes), called Shiadar Fort. In former days a family resided, or was out at the summer shielings, near this fort. The byre, in which the milch cows were kept, was some distance from the dwelling-house, and two boys of the family slept there to take care of the cows. One night a voice came to the mother of the family that the two best calves in the byre were at the point of death, and as a proof of the warning, she would find the big yellow cow dead at the end of the house. This proved to be the case, and on reaching the byre the anxious woman found her two boys nearly frightened to death. They said they heard Fairy dogs trampling and baying on the top of the house.

There is a natural recess in the rocks of the shore at Baluaig in Tiree, to which tradition has given the name of the Bed of the Fairy Dog. It is not far from Crogan beach, already mentioned as a place where the Fairy dog was heard, and opposite the _Gràdor_, a low-water rock over which the sea breaks with terrible violence in stormy weather. The loneliness and wildness of the spot might well cause it to be associated with tales of superstition.

A shepherd in Lorn came to the top of a rock, and in a nest or lair below him he saw two pups about two months old with green backs and sides. They were larger and longer than his own dogs. He got afraid and fled before the old hound made her appearance. His dogs also were afraid. So the tradition says.

DOGS CHASING FAIRIES.

Two men from Mull were engaged building a march dyke across the hills in Kintail. To be near their work, they took up their residence by themselves in a hut among the hills. One night, before retiring to rest, they heard a horrible screaming coming in the direction of the hut. They went out with sticks of firewood in their hands. Though they could see nothing, they knew something was approaching. The shrieks came nearer and nearer, and at last a large dark object passed. A little dog, ‘Dun-foot’ by name, which accompanied the men, gave chase. When it returned there was no hair on any part of it but on its ears, and no hair ever grew after but a sort of down.

A number of young men were out at night on the moorlands of Cornaigbeg farm in Tiree watching the cattle, to keep them from wandering into the crop lands. They went to the moss about a mile away for peats, which at the time (some sixty years ago) were plentiful in Tiree, but becoming in some way alarmed they turned back on the road. When returning they heard strange noises coming towards them, and a dog that accompanied them began to course round and round between them and the noise. At last the noise passed, with sounds like the trampling of a herd of sheep, and the dog went off in pursuit. On its return its hair was found scraped off, as if by long sharp nails, and the whole skin was left bare and white, except where here and there it was torn and bloody. It died in a short time after.

A man in Mull was sent on a journey after nightfall, and about midnight, when crossing the hills from Loch Tuath (the North Loch) and Loch Cuän (_Loch Cumhan_, the narrow loch), saw a light in the face of a hillock. He was accompanied by his dog, and before long he heard the noise of dogs fighting, mixed with sounds of lovely music. He made off as fast as he could, and, on arriving at the house to which he had been sent, was offered supper. He was unable to take any. Before bed-time his dog came with every hair on its body pulled off. It smelt its master’s clothes all over, lay down at his feet, and was dead in a few minutes.

A gentleman of the name of Evan Cameron (it does not appear where) on his way home across the hills was overtaken by nightfall and lost his way. He was accompanied by a greyhound and three terriers. He saw a light in a bothy or hut, used in summer, when the cattle were at pasture among the hills, but deserted during the greater part of the year. He made towards it, and on looking in at the door, saw a woman sitting by the fire, all wet, and combing her hair. She looked towards him, and said, “Will you not come after your eye, Evan?” (_Nach d’thig thu ’n déigh do shùil, Eoghain_). “Not just now” (_Cha d’thig an dràsd_), he replied. After some further conversation he was obliged to allow his dogs to attack the strange creature. He himself held on his way, and in a few hours reached home. The greyhound found its way home, but without any hair upon its body. None of the terriers was ever heard of more.[47]

FAIRIES AND HORSES.

At Ruig, at the foot of the Storr Rock, in Skye, at the time it was occupied by small farmers (sixteen in number), all the horses on the farm, numbering as many as a hundred, were seen ridden by the Fairies, sitting with their faces to the tail, on Hallowmas night. The shore line of the farm consists of frightful precipices, and the horses, as if very madness (_an cuthach dearg_) had taken possession of them, went off at their utmost speed towards the shore. Every one thought they would be lost, but no harm arose after all from the stampede.

Near Killin in Perthshire, a man entered a Fairy Knowe, and found inside a woman making porridge. The dish boiled so fiercely that a spark from the porridge flew and struck him in the eye. He saw the Fairies ever after with that eye. At the St. Fillan market (_Feill Fhaolain_) at Killin, he saw them in great numbers riding about the market on white horses. Meeting one, whom he recognized, he remarked, “What a number of you are here to-day.” The Fairy asked which eye he saw ‘the folk’ with, and on being told put it out.

* * * * *

A young wife had not, as was customary at that time, learned to spin and weave. She tried in every way to learn, but try as she might she made no progress, till one noon-day she wished some one would come to help her. She then saw a woman standing in the door, who said she would help her on condition that she would give her her first child when born, but if she could tell the _shi_ woman’s name when she came to take away the child she would be free from her promise. The young woman rashly agreed to this, and in a short time could make _clò_ (cloth) better than any one around her. After some time, however, she began to be afraid her visitor would return, and she went about eagerly listening to hear the name, when suddenly one day she saw an opening in a grassy hillock beside her, and on looking in saw the same woman standing inside, and heard another one calling to her. She went home joyously repeating the name all the way, and told her husband how she heard it. When the _Bean shi_ came again, the mother of the child called out to her by the name she had heard, and invited her to come in, but she only said, “A blessing on the name, but banning on the mouth that taught you,” and she never afterwards darkened the door.

On another day the husband was with his wife in the fields working and looking about, when they saw a great company of riders on white horses coming where they were, and as they came near one of the riders caught hold of her and took her away. Her husband did not know what to do. He went wandering about looking for her, but never finding her, till one day, to his great wonderment, he saw a glimmer of light on the side of the hill. He reached it, and saw an opening. He put a pin in the side and went in, and saw a great company feasting and dancing, with his lost wife in the middle of the dancers. She saw him also, and began to sing loudly:

“Take no food here Ialai o horro horro, Ask no drink here Ialai o horro hee.”

No one took any notice of him. He got near her, and putting his arm around her, whisked her out of the circle of dancers. He took her home, but she became discontented, and was never the same being as she had been before. At last it happened when they were again out together that the riders on white horses came their way. On parting with him this time she said, “If at any time he wished her to come back, he was to throw her marriage dress, which had _craobh uaine_, _i.e._ green tracery on the right shoulder, after her when he saw her passing in the company, and she would return home.” Thinking she did not belong to this world, he did nothing, and she passed and never returned to him.

FAIRIES AND THE HANDMILL.

The invention of the handmill or quern, in the infancy of the arts, must have formed an era in the history of human progress. Whoever first found out a handy way of reducing the solid grain into meal bestowed an inestimable blessing on the human race. The instrument is still to be occasionally met with in the Hebrides, in houses not convenient to mill or market. It is usually worked by two women, like the mills in use in the East.

“A pair of thick-set hussies Winding round a quern.”[48]

It is a common practice with women to sing at their work, as indeed they did in the Highlands in olden times at most of their labours, such as reaping, sowing, milking.

Old Archibald, for half a century servant to the ministers of Tiree, would insist to his dying day that, coming home at night with a cart from the parish mill, he heard the handmill at work inside the Red Knolls (_na Cnocana ruadha_) near the road. He could put his foot on the very spot where he heard the noise. To ask him if he was naturally troubled with singing in the ears, or show any other symptom of unbelief, was resented as an affront, and neither minister nor elder, nor a whole synod, would persuade him there were no Fairies. He had heard them himself “with his own ears.”

The man who first got the loan of a quern from the Fairies never sent it home. In revenge, the elves took away all substance from his crop that year, and he derived no benefit from grain or fodder. His is the fate of many inventors. The benefit is not immediate. It seems the elves had no power but over the year’s crop.

FAIRIES AND OATMEAL.

A man in Islay got a loan of oatmeal from the Fairies, and when returning it, he, out of gratitude, left at the hole, which led to the Fairy residence, and where he had been in the habit of getting and leaving such loans, more meal than he had borrowed. The Fairies are a just race; they take no more than their exact due; they were offended by more being offered, and never after gave that man a loan of meal.

A kind-hearted woman, the wife of a well-to-do farmer in the rugged district of Kingairloch, was one day visited by a young woman, a stranger to her, who asked for, and got a loan of meal. In answer to the housewife’s inquiries, the visitor said she came from the hillock above the house, on which a rowan-tree, or mountain ash, was growing. She wore an upper dress like a grey tippet. This event took place shortly before Beltane, when ploughing and other farm operations were being proceeded with. In a week after Grey Tippet came back with the meal, _but it was barley-meal_, and told the good-wife to bless this every time she took any of it. This direction was carefully attended to, and the meal never got less. One day a scatter-brain member of the family asked if that cursed barley-meal was never to be done. The next time the mistress went to the chest there was no more barley-meal.

The house of one M‘Millan, at the foot of Ben Iadain in Morvern, a high hill already mentioned for its reputation as a Fairy residence, was visited by a stranger, a woman, who asked for a loan of meal. She said she stayed in that same neigbourhood, that the men were away just now in Lismore, and that the meal would be sent back on their return. This was done in due course, as promised, and M‘Millan’s wife was told never to allow any one but herself to bend over the chest, in which the meal was kept, and the meal would prove inexhaustible. At last, however, when Mrs. M‘Millan was ill, another opened the chest, and the meal disappeared.

Hector, son of Ferchar, in the Ross of Mull, was an easy-going, kind-hearted man, a weaver by trade, who would give away the last of his goods to any one he saw in distress. So weak was he in this respect, that his wife did not care to trust him with anything—he was sure to give it away to the first poor man that came his way. Having occasion to go to the summer pastures in the hill, and leave Hector alone in charge of the house, she measured out enough meal to last him for the fifteen days she expected to be away, and gave it to him in a skin bag. When returning, she met a beggar, who said he had got a handful of meal from her husband, and Hector himself, when questioned, said he had given away sixteen such handfuls. Yet the bag was found to be quite full.

FAIRIES AND IRON.

In Mull, a person, encountered by a _Bean shìth_, was told by her that she was kept from doing him harm by the iron he had about him. The only iron he had was a ring round the point of his walking stick.

In the North of Ireland, an iron poker, laid across the cradle, kept away the Fairies till the child was baptized.

The writer remembers well that, when a school-boy, great confidence was put in a knife, of which he was the envied possessor, and in a nail, which another boy had, to protect us from a Fairy (_sìthche_), which was said to have made its appearance at a spot near which the road to school passed the Hawthorn Bush between the Black Nose and the Pass of the Dead (_An Crògan Sgithich eadar an t-Sròn du ’s Bealach nam Marbh_). This was in Appin, Argyllshire.

The efficacy of iron, in warding off Fairy attacks, has already been illustrated.

NAME OF THE DEITY.

The Fairies were building a bridge across Loch Rannoch, between Camaghouran and Innis-droighinn, when a passer-by wished them God-speed. Instantly the work stopped, and was never resumed. (Cf. page 64.)

FAIRY GIFTS.

A smith, the poorest workman in his trade, from his inferior skill, only got coarse work to do, and was known as the “Smith of Ploughshares” (_Gobhainn nan Soc_). He was, besides, the ugliest man, and the rudest speaker. One day he fell asleep on a hillock, and three Fairy women, coming that way, left him each a parting gift (_fàgail_). After that he became the best workman, the best looking man, and the best speaker in the place, and became known as the “Smith of Tales” (_Gobhainn nan sgial_).

A man, out hunting, fell asleep in a dangerous place, near the brink of a precipice. When he awoke a Fairy woman was sitting at his head, singing gently.

STRUCK BY THE FAIRY ARROW SPADE.

Donald, who lived in Gortan du in Lorn, was working in a drain with a pointed spade. One evening, having left the spade standing in the drain, he was startled by something striking it with a loud knock. He found the noise was made by the blow of a smooth, polished, flint-like stone. He put this in his pocket and took it home. Some evenings after, “Callum Clever,” already mentioned as frequently carried about by the Fairies, was shown the stone. He declared that it had been thrown by himself at the instigation of the Fairies, who wanted to take Donald himself. Donald of Gortan du was a cooper, and was wanted to make a barrel for a cow the elves had just killed. (Cf. page 26.)