A woman in Skye was taken to see a sick person in a _dùn_, and after attending to her patient, she saw a number of women in green dresses coming in and getting a loan of meal. They took the meal from a skin bag (_balgan_), which seemed as if it would never be exhausted. The woman asked to be sent home, and was promised to be allowed to go, on baking the meal left in the bag, and spinning a tuft of wool on a distaff handed to her. She baked away, but could not exhaust the meal bag; and spun, but seemed never nearer the end of her task. A woman came in, and advised her to “put the remnant of the meal she baked into the little bag, and to spin the tuft upon the distaff as the sheep bites the hillock”[19]—_i.e._, to draw the wool in small tufts, like sheep bites, from the distaff. On doing this, the task was soon finished, the Fairies saying, “A blessing rest on you, but a curse on the mouth that taught you.”[20] On coming out, the woman found she had been in the _dùn_ for seven years. LIFTED BY THE FAIRIES. Black Donald of the Multitude (_Dòmhnull du an t-sluaigh_), as he was ever afterwards known, was ploughing on the farm of Baile-pheutrais, in the island of Tiree, when a heavy shower came on from the west. In these days it required at least two persons to work a plough, one to hold it, and one to lead the horses. Donald’s companion took shelter to the lee of the team. When the shower passed, Donald himself was nowhere to be found, nor was he seen again till evening. He then came from an easterly direction, with his coat on his arm. He said the Fairies had taken him in an Eddy wind to the islands to the north—Coll, Skye, etc. In proof of this, he told that a person (naming him) was dead in Coll, and people would be across next day for whiskey for the funeral to Kennovay, a village on the other side of Bally-pheutrais, where smuggling was carried on at the time. This turned out to be the case. Donald said he had done no harm while away, except that the Fairies had made him throw an arrow at, and kill, a speckled cow in Skye. When crossing the sea he was in great terror lest he should fall. _Nial Scrob_ (Neil the Scrub), a native of Uist, was on certain days lifted by the Fairies and taken to Tiree, and other islands of the Hebrides, at least so he said himself. Once he came to Saälun, a village near the north-east end of Tiree, and at the fourth house in the village was made to throw the Fairy arrow. There is an old saying— “Shut the north window, And quickly close the window to the south; And shut the window facing west, Evil never came from the east.”[21]