Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/518

208 to find it was the wedding of the very child she had helped to bring into the world, for she had been absent more than twenty years.

A variation of this story has a girl as the person who was carried off. In her case the device advised was that she must put back into the meal kist or girnal all the meal that she used to rub the dough off her hands. Like the other, this device succeeded; she soon exhausted the meal and was accordingly restored to her home.

(13) About six miles from Portree, where was once a large and prosperous township, there now remain only a few scattered crofts. In the days of its prosperity two men occupied adjacent crofts. One fine spring these two men were busy at their spring work in adjoining fields. It was hot, and one of the two stopped to breathe, exclaiming, "Oh, that I were a dairymaid." As he said the words a little woman dressed in green suddenly appeared, carrying a pail of milk. This she offered to the man, but he refused to touch it. On offering it, however, to the second man, it was accepted with thanks. Fairies are notoriously irritable beings, and this one was no exception. Indignant at the refusal, the small woman prophesied that the churlish man would eat no bite of bread made from the barley he was sowing. Time went on and a bountiful harvest was reaped. As the custom is a bannock was baked of the first fruits, and the man, then in robust health and prosperity, remembering the little woman's words, called his neighbour to share in the eating of it. Laughing at the failure of the fairy's prophecy he began to eat. But as the bite was yet unswallowed, a fairy dart fell suddenly and struck the ground beside him. Startled at the suddenness of the fall and sound, he swallowed carelessly, choked, and died.

(14) Two men, coming home one new-year time with a "grey-beard of whiskey" slung round the neck of one of them, came upon a fairy mound, open, and filled with fairies dancing the reel. The pipes were alluring, and the men joined in the dance. One of them, however, came to his senses, and urged his friend to come away. The latter refused and went on dancing, and the other had to make his way home alone. He told his