This Michaelmas my father put up a _buaile-mhart_, a square fold of wattle and whinstone, into which the herdsmen drove the lowing beasts at the mouth of every evening, and took turn about in watching them throughout the clear season. It was perhaps hardly needed, for indeed the men of Lochaber and Glenfalloch and the other dishonest regions around us were too busy dipping their hands in the dirty work of Montrose and his Irish major-general to have any time for their usual autumn’s recreation. But a _buaile-mhart_ when shifted from time to time in a field is a profitable device in agriculture, and custom had made the existence of it almost a necessity to the sound slumber of our glens. There was a pleasant habit, too, of neighbours gathering at night about a fire within one of the spaces of the fold and telling tales and singing songs. Our whole West Country is full of the most wonderful stories one might seek in vain for among the world of books and scholars--of giants and dwarfs, fairies, wizards, water-horse, and sea-maiden. The most unlikely looking peasant that ever put his foot to a _caschrom_, the most uncouth hunter that ever paunched a deer, would tell of such histories in the most scrupulous language and with cunning regard for figure of speech. I know that nowadays, among people of esteemed cultivation in the low country and elsewhere, such a diversion might be thought a waste of time, such narratives a sign of superstition. Of that I am not so certain. The practice, if it did no more, gave wings to our most sombre hours, and put a point on the imagination. As for the superstition of the tales of _ceilidh_ and _buaile-mhart_ I have little to say. Perhaps the dullest among us scarce credited the giant and dwarf; but the Little Folks are yet on our topmost hills. A doctor laughed at me once for an experience of my own at the Piper’s Knowe, on which any man, with a couchant ear close to the grass, may hear fairy tunes piped in the under-world. “A trick of the senses,” said he. “But I can bring you scores who have heard it!” said I. “So they said of every miracle since time began,” said he; “it but proves the widespread folly and credulity of human nature.” I protested I could bring him to the very spot or whistle him the very tunes; but he was busy, and wondered so sedate a man as myself could cherish so strange a delusion.