Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/232

 224 v.—.

She seems to have been rather migratory in her habits, for it was by a loch on the south side of Ben Stack that a man met her. Now this man had a large white and yellow dog which his neighbours had often advised him to kill, as it had the "bad name" which is fatal to one of his species. However, it proved useful on this occasion, for it attacked the Vaugh. Whether from his size and courage, or from being, as was supposed, a devil, he prevailed. Both woman and dog fell over the steep terraces of the north side of the hill, where they disappeared.—(J. Macleod, Laxford.)

[Some ascribe this feat to DonaldDuival Mackay.]

vi.—,

An Assynt witch—but the stories of her are disjointed and half-forgotten, excepting the circumstances of her death by strangulation.

Some boys attacked her one Sunday, and fastened a rope to her neck. She struggled, and managed to get them outside the door, but the knot in the rope would not yield, and, as they continued dragging it, the unfortunate creature died, predicting for them and for their descendants violent or self-inflicted deaths. The story is well-known, and the last inheritor of the curse was drowned not many years ago, the rest having in the interim all perished: one hung himself, another fell over a precipice. Another was lost at sea, and so on. The memory of the Mohr Bhain lives, but her manes are now appeased.

vii.—.

[Vaugh, or Baugh, is a water-fairy, attached to this mill. The word is spelt "fouah" in the maps and survey of the estate made when it was bought by Captain J. Hamilton Dempster.

This story was told by widow Mary Calder, a pauper, in Gaelic, to D. M., gamekeeper, and transcribed by him for C. H. D.]

One of John Ray Bethune's forbears, who lived at Inveran, laid a bet that he would seize the kelpie of MoulinnaVaugha, or Moulinna