Page:Cuthbert Bede - The White Wife.djvu/37



HE Western Highland popular stories, or Sgeulachdan, were as various in style as in subject, according to the period to which they referred. The older Ossianic legends, and the Seanachas na Feinne, or History of the Feinne, being filled with heroes and warriors, whose manners and actions and modes of life were a curious mingling of traditionary history and the actual experience of the tale-tellers. These legends vie in popularity with the more modern anecdote, and with the records of Highland chieftains and notabilities, which the lapse of two centuries has even now invested with semi-mystic attributes and overladen with extraneous incidents.

The following story contains a Cantire version of "St. George and the Dragon;" but has its characteristic peculiarities. It is called—