Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/240

232 ii.—.

At Loch CorrieMohr there lived for many years a flying serpent, so terrible and wild that nobody could fish in the loch, nor come within a mile of it. At last one summer, when there was a drought and a dearth, a man said to his son, "Let us go and fish in Loch CorrieMhor, and maybe the serpent will not heed us." So they went; but they had not made two casts when they see her coming, swimming across the loch. The man said, "It is time we should be out of this." And they ran together, but the serpent outran them, and they could feel her hot breath. "Run you, my son, for my hour is come," said the man. So the lad fled, and his father went up into a tree, having put his cap upon his sword, and struck that into the trees root, hoping to frighten the beast. But she snuffed at the cap, and knocked down the sword, and began to wind round the tree. Then he began to shoot arrows at her; but she pulled them out with her teeth as fast as he put them into her. The last arrow had an iron head and two barbs, and was of the kind which men call saidth baiseh, or the death arrow, which they do not part with till the last struggle. Just as the serpent reached him, and opened her jaws to seize his feet, he shot at her open jaws with the two-barbed dart. It fastened there, and could not be pulled out. So, after a struggle, the terrible beast died, and the man got home to tell the tale.

N.B.—A whole kid was taken out of the serpent at her death.—(D. M., Stack.)

iii.—.

There were a pair of dragons, one of them had wings and another had not. They lived one on each side of the loch. They were in girth about twice that of a man, and the flying one roared so as to be heard a mile off. A carrier killed the one and a soldier the other and rendered the place safe for travellers.—(J. MacLeod.)

[The wings with which dragons are endowed are only the emblem of the promptitude with which the serpent pounces on his prey, or in order to seize it gets into trees.—The Philosophy of Magic, by Eusébe Salverte.]