Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/515

Rh wise man the mother took the fairy child near this hill and slapped it hard. Immediately a voice was heard exclaiming in anger, "Throw her out her own ugly brat," and the fairy child disappeared, leaving, at her feet, her own comely infant.

(6) A man in Raasay, going to a black still at Suishnish for whiskey, and coming back with a skin bottleful on his back, saw a hill, which he had to pass, open before him, and looking in he saw tables laid. This was too good an opportunity to be missed, and he went in to join in the feast, which was being celebrated with all manner of splendour: linen of the finest, massive silver plate, and gaily dressed servants waiting. Dancing followed, and for a while he joined in; but, becoming sated with gaiety, he thought of returning home. He would have a fine story to tell, but who would believe him? He must have some evidence to show, so he snatched away a tablecloth. The hue and cry was up at once, and he was closely pursued. But he reached home safely with his prize, which he showed to all comers. Macgilliechallum, the chief of the Macleods of Raasay, asked for the cloth, and asking, in the case of a chief, being then much the same as taking, it was given up to him. It was long in the possession of the MacLeods of Raasay.

(7) An old man in Borve was very much later than his neighbours in cutting his corn. One day he was standing looking at it, and he said aloud, "This corn is ready to be cut." Waking next morning this easy-going old gentleman saw, to his amazement, his corn cut and put up in stooks. The next morning he was met by a man about four feet high and dressed in blue clothes. (This is probably meant for green, as my informant, Donald Murchison, while working in the garden always called grass "that blue sing.") The old man asked the stranger where he had come from. "From Dun Borve," answered the little man, "and want pay for cutting the corn." "What pay?" queried the old crofter. "A few potatoes and a little pot," was the reply. This seems a floating reminiscence of the demands of the much-dreaded tinkers, for, of course, potatoes were entirely unknown in the days when this story was first told. However that may be, the demands in this case were acceded to, and now hardly a day passed without the little