Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/248

224 when he gave his third the woman made a spring towards the rider, when up came the dog and laid hold of her and held her back. She struggled hard to reach the man; but the dog held her, and the man galloped away. The dog did not reach home till the following day, and when it did there was not a hair on its body."

Another similar tale is from the Island of Coll:

"It is told of a man, who at one time lived at Gorton, in the island of Coll, that one night, when he was on his way home, having passed the Hangman's Hill, and just as he was entering the Fasach, a woman came up to to him and walked alongside of him. Knowing that it was not a real woman, but a taibhse, he did not speak to her, nor did she to him; but they went along side by side until they came to a house, and he went in, in hopes that she would go on, and that so he would get quit of her. But no, after staying in the house for some time he started again, and to his annoyance she rejoined him, and kept alongside of him as before, until they came to a running stream near his house. The woman (taibhse) leaped over it first, and he leaped after her; and then and there she took hold of him, and would not let him go. At length the dogs at the house heard the noise, and they ran out, and when they came to the place they attacked the taibhse, and she then let the man off. On reaching home, he whistled for the dogs, but they did not come. The following morning one of them came to the door without a single hair left on its skin, but the other was never again seen."

In the last stories the singeing (?) was the result of female interference. It will be shown immediately that the Will-o'-the-Wisp in the Western Highlands is a woman. In them there is no mention of light, but there is such a thing in folklore as the "ghost of a flame." The two Malabar gipsies who precipitately quitted the tent of the officer who blew out a light in their presence did so "lest the ghost of