Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/517

Rh date, said that when her grandfather would be attending to the sheep and cows on the shieling (the small hut which was inhabited for the summer months in the high country), the fairies would come to him and creep in under his overcoat. They told him that if a soldier going to war would drink the fairy women's milk he would come home safe, and that if he refuse to do so he will be killed.

(11) On the farm of Scorybreck there is a kind of fairy in the form of a long-haired woman. She lies on the roof of the byre and drinks the milk of the cows. This is Gruagach, to whom libations of milk are made in some parts.

(12) A midwife of Flodigarry was attending a confinement, when, one day, a message came for her to go some distance away. She obeyed the summons and found herself inside a fairy mound. She begged to be allowed to go, but the fairies refused to let her till she had performed two tasks. She was provided with a spindle, some wool- and some meal in a girnal. When the wool was all spun, and the meal made into bread, she might go. She toiled very assiduously to get all finished up, but it was of no avail. The wool and the meal remained undiminished. Despairing of ever seeing her home again, she begged of a fairy who was alone with her to tell her what to do. The fairy was moved by her prayers, and told her to spin the wool as the sheep eats the grass. This instruction has no meaning, so I suspect there has been some mistranslation from the Gaelic, which is, of course, the language in which all these stories were originally told. At all events the midwife understood, and soon finished that task. As to the meal, the fairy told her that she must take some of the dough and form a cake with it. This cake she must bake in front of (before?) the others, and eat it entirely herself. In this way the task was done. The fairies saw she must have had help from one of their own number, but she stoutly refused to tell. They were therefore forced to allow her to go. Joyfully she sped back to her "case," and on arriving at her patient's house she found it full of music and merry-making. Astonished, she asked a bystander what it all meant. "A wedding," was the surprised answer. "Whose wedding will it be?" she queried impatiently. What was her surprise