Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/364

 332 Folk-Talcs fro7)i Western h'eland.

The Fairy Woman.

Red John Solan also told me the following. Only one name is mentioned, that of the boy who had a friend. He then disappears, and the friend becomes the central figure. This is how he told it.

" There was a boy named Rush, who lived back at Ballachy, and it's what he had a friend who went to the fair of Charlestown. The friend delayed in the town till late, and all the people had gone home from the fair. It was a fine night when he set out from the town, and on his coming along alone on the road, he seen a woman on before him. 'Well,' he says to himself, ' it's good to' have com- pany,' and walked out. As he was coming up with her, she turned her head away as if not wanting him to see her face, and he then thought she was one of the neighbours, and was ashamed to be seen out so late by herself. So he said to himself that he would not pass her by without knowing who was in it. With that he got beside her, and thought to look in her face, when she turned aiKl grinned back at him, with her long teeth showing. He thought to walk past then and leave her, but she kept on before him, looking back with the grin on her face. There was a stream before them with big rocks and stepping-stones, and when the woman got to the stream she went out on the stepping-stones till she was in the middle of the river, when she sat down on a stone with her face to the boy, and the grin on her. He seen he could not get by her, and he was troubled how to get home. It was then he heard a great noise, thrumming and thumping along the road on the other side. And what was making the noise but his own two dogs — a hound and a bull-dog — that he had left at home in the morning. They were coming at that rate to save him. The woman heard them coming, and he saw blood in her eyes, and she moved aside on the stone, and the hound passed and stood behind the boy. And she let