Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/516

206 man or his still less wife appearing with new requests. The nuisance became intolerable, and the old man beat his brains for a means whereby he might put a stop to it. He at last hit on a plan. One day, when his troublesome visitors were as usual asking for something, he suddenly called out, "Dun Borve is on fire with all in it, dog or man." Instantly the fairy disappeared, and from that time troubled the ingenious old man no more. But at Portree Market he once more saw the little man. Unwisely, he spoke to him, and the fairy said, "How will you be seeing me?" "With this eye," said the old man. Instantly the fairy put spittle in the eye indicated, and, though the old man retained the normal use of it, the supernormal power disappeared.

(8) There was once a poor woman about forty years ago, and she was making a piece of twilled cloth for the children, and besides she had to do the spring work. When she was going to bed, she said, "I wish the cloth was finished and the spring work done." Shortly after she went to bed she heard the fairies at the fire. The fairies as they worked repeated some sort of rhyme or charm, which given in my informant's words, written down for me, are: "A wife for teething the wool, and wife for carding and wife for spinning and wife for cudal." The last word is a mystery, as it does not appear to be Gaelic, and I imagine it can only mean "cuddle." The different aspects of a wife I suppose to be intended. At all events, after singing this, the fairies put a pot of water on to boil in order to thicken the cloth. This was the last process and the cloth was finished. The fairies then asked the woman what more work had she to do. She told them the spring work was still undone. They therefore planted the potatoes, turned the ground, sowed the corn and harrowed. In this way the woman's work was done, and the fairies asked what further was to be done. "Nothing but you to fight," the woman answered somewhat ungratefully and forthwith the fairies fell to fighting. Never a bit of grass will grow in that place, concludes my story-teller.

(9) Mrs. Macdougall, a middle-aged woman in 1910, told me that the fairies reaped, in one night, all her grandmother's corn, leaving it in good order. This was in Kilmaluag.

(10) Mrs. Buchanan, quite a young woman about the same