Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/512

202 cases to other parishes. Some came from Woodend, a township off the main road, a mere collection of small crofts scattered along a mountain road leading to the remote valley and township of Glenmore. One of these, Donald Murchison, who worked in our garden and also acted as postman to his township at the magnificent salary of four shillings a week, could read English and was fond of reading. But I have reason to know that his stories were those told round the glowing peat fire on winter evenings, when the blackened teapot nestled in the ashes. For Donald's house had the hearth in the middle of the floor, just some more or less flat stones heaped with peat, while the pungent smoke issued from every crack in the walls or blew about the kitchen in blinding clouds. The kitchen was divided by a wicker door and a narrow passage from the cow's stall where cow and calves contentedly munched their poor hay. But I have taken tea in this house, and was served with a courtesy worthy of a ducal palace.

Others of my informants came from Woodend, namely, Mrs. Mackinnon, Mrs. Morag Buchanan, and Mrs. Beaton. Another of my story-tellers, Mrs. Macdougall, though many years in Portree, had no English, and belonged to the remote township of Kilmaluag, in the north of the island. Another of my informants was Bella Nicolson, then in my service, and belonging to the township of Sconser, right under the mighty Glamaig, a township which sees no sun during several months of the winter. These people came into contact with, and knew stories from, all parts of the island, and represented a much wider area than just the few miles round Portree.

(1) Some people in the north of Skye wished to make tweed, but were evidently too lazy to begin the task. They exhausted their energies, therefore, in loud-spoken wishes that it were done. It is always bad to utter a wish of this kind aloud, for who knows what may be listening. In this case the fairies were the hearers. In the rather peremptory manner of their race they came to the house and demanded the necessary tools, carding comb, spindle, and so on. These were gladly produced, and the indolent crofters found, to their joy, a fine web of tweed when they rose the next morning. But such delight was not without its