Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/696

386 and took over the property. Descendants of Hagar's son still exist, but it is said that the first family is extinct.

(9) In a certain place in the island there is a lonely cairn, which was built over the body of a shepherd who was murdered. The story goes that it holds also the bodies of his two dogs who refused to leave the place where their master lay, and becoming fierce, had to be killed and buried with him.

(10) Misers are not uncommon in the island. The writer knew one very well. One story goes of an old woman "in the days long vanished," who, to the great annoyance of her family, persisted in hiding her money and keeping her family in penury. At length her sons discovered her hiding place, namely, under the doorstep. They tempted her out under pretence of showing her a scarecrow with quite good garments on, which she might appropriate. While she was away on her thrifty errand, the sons lifted the doorstep and abstracted the money. Legends of buried hoards are quite common in the islands, arising from actual finds of pirates' or sea-rovers' money. But there are still many places where money is said to be hidden, notably at Woodend, where formerly a large sum was found. Now Woodend is quite as far inland as it is possible to get in the island, and it is quite unlikely that sea-rovers would take the trouble to go so far. Some feeling of superstitious awe, the result of some legend attaching to the spot which is now forgotten, forbids the people, however needy, from attempting to find these hidden hoards.

All these traditional stories bear the mark of antiquity, though some of them are modernized, as in the case of emigration to America and so on. There is another and rather remarkable group of legends of a religious cast which I shall now proceed to give. These appear medieval, though they may be older, and have assumed a Christian dress.

(1) The first of these religious legends is exactly the same as one which occurs in an apocryphal Gospel, but I am absolutely certain that my informant never heard of such a book, and that the story has descended in an unbroken line from early time.

Our Lord with a number of childish companions was engaged