Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning; With Some Account of Dwellers in FairylandBunce, John Thackray
History
Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning; With Some Account of Dwellers in Fairyland
Bunce, John Thackray
Fairy tales -- History and criticism
Sometimes the water-spirit appears in the shape of a great bird, which
the West Highlanders called the Boobrie, who has a long neck, great
webbed feet with tremendous claws, a powerful bill hooked like an
eagle's, and a voice like the roar of an angry bull. The lochs,
according to popular fancy, are also inhabited by water-spirits. In
Sutherlandshire this kind of creature is called the Fuath; there are,
Mr. Campbell says, males and females; they have web-feet, yellow hair,
green dresses, tails, manes, and no noses; they marry human beings, are
killed by light, are hurt by steel weapons, and in crossing a stream
they become restless. These spirits resemble mermen and mermaids, and
are also like the Kelpies, and they have also been somehow confused with
the kind of spirit known in Ireland as the Banshee. Many stories are
told of them. A shepherd found one, an old woman seemingly crippled, at
the edge of a bog. He offered to carry her over on his back. In going
over, he saw that she was webfooted; so he threw her down, and ran for
his life. By the side of Loch Middle a woman saw one--"about three years
ago," she told the narrator--she sat on a stone, quiet, and dressed in
green silk, the sleeves of the dress curiously puffed from the wrists to
the shoulder; her hair was yellow, like ripe corn; but on a nearer view,
she had no nose. A man at Tubernan made a bet that he would seize the
Fuath or Kelpie who haunted the loch at Moulin na Fouah. So he took a
brown right-sided maned horse, and a brown black-muzzled dog, and with
the help of the dog he captured the Fuath, and tied her on the horse
behind him. She was very fierce, but he pinned her down with an awl
and a needle. Crossing the burn or brook near Loch Migdal she grew very
restless, and the man stuck the awl and the needle into her with great
force. Then she cried, "Pierce me with the awl, but keep that slender
hair-like slave (the needle) out of me." When the man reached an inn at
Inveran, he called his friends to come out and look at the Fuath. They
came out with lights, and when the light fell upon her she dropped off
the horse, and fell to the earth like a small lump of jelly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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