A young lad was sent for the loan of a corn sieve to a neighbour’s house. He was a changeling, and in the house to which he went there was another like himself. He found no one in but his fellow-elf. A woman, in a closet close by, overheard the conversation of the two. The first asked for the sieve, and the other replied, “Ask it in an honest way (that is, in Fairy language) seeing I am alone.”[33] The first then said (and his words have as much sense in English as in Gaelic): “The muggle maggle Wants the loan of the black luggle laggle, To take the maggle from the grain.”[34] The words are a ludicrous imitation of the sound made by the fan in winnowing corn, and several versions of them exist. A child, in Skye, ate such a quantity of food, people suspected it could not be ‘canny.’ A man of skill was sent for, and on his saying a rhyme over it, the changeling became an old man. A changeling in Hianish (some say Sanndaig), Tiree, was driven away by a man of skill who came, and, standing in the door, said: “Red pig, red pig, Red one-eared pig, That Fin killed with the son of Luin, And took on his back to Druim-derg.”[35] Drim-derg, or the Red Ridge, is a common in the neighbourhood of Hianish. Fin’s sword, ‘the son of Luin,’ was of such superior metal that it cut through six feet of whatever substance was struck by it, and an inch beyond. Its peculiar virtue was “never to leave a remnant from its blow.” When the changeling heard the bare mention of it, with the aversion of his race to steel, he jumped, like a fish out of the water (_thug e iasg-leum as_), rushed out of the house and was never seen again. The real child was found outside the house. A woman was told by her neighbours that her child, which was not thriving, was a changeling, and that she ought to throw it in the river. The imp, frightened by the counsel, advised the contrary in an expression, which is now proverbial, “Whether it be fat or lean, every man should rear a calf for himself” (_Air dha bhi reamhar na caol, is mairg nach beathaicheadh laogh dha fhéin_). TAKING AWAY COWS AND SHEEP. A farmer had two good cows that were seized one spring with some unaccountable malady. They ate any amount of food given them, but neither grew fat nor yielded milk. They lay on their sides and could not be made to rise. An old man in the neighbourhood advised that they should be hauled up the hill, and rolled down its steepest and longest incline. The brutes, he said, were not the farmer’s cows at all, but two old men (_bodaich_) the Fairies had substituted for them. The farmer acted on this advice, and at the bottom of the descent, down which the cows were sent rolling, nothing was found, neither cow nor man, either dead or alive. There are old people still living in Iona who remember a man driving a nail into a bull that had fallen over a rock, to keep away the Fairies.