Donald, son of Patrick.” “Take,” he said, “as you are able to win.” She remained all night, and repeatedly asked him to leash up his dogs, which he refused to do. The dogs kept her at bay till she left. Another version says that the foxhunter’s name was _Iain Mac Phàruig_, that he was accompanied by sixteen dogs, that his strange visitant disappeared at the cock-crowing, and that she then told she was ‘the wife of Fe-chiarain’ (_Cailleach Fe-chiarain_). Some identify her with the Carlin of Ben Breck. THE WIFE OF BEN-Y-GHLOE. Donald and Big John (_Dòmhnull ’s Iain mòr_) were out deer-hunting on the lofty mountain of Ben-y-ghloe, in Athol in Perthshire, when a heavy snowstorm came on, and they lost their way. They came to a hut in a hollow and entered. The only one in was an old woman, the like of whom they said they had never seen. Her two arms were bare, of great length, and grizzled and sallow to look at. She neither asked them to come in nor go out, and being much in need of shelter, they went in and sat at the fire. There was a look in her eye that might ‘terrify a coward,’ and she hummed a surly song, the words of which were unintelligible to them. They asked for meat, and she set before them a fresh salmon trout, saying, “Little you thought I would give you your dinner to-day.” She also said she could do more, that it was she who clothed the hill with mist to make them come to her house. They stayed with her all night. She was very kind and hospitable. She told her name to them when leaving, that she was ‘the wife of Ben-y-Ghloe.’ They could not say whether she was _sìth_ or _saoghalta_ (Elfin or human), but they never visited her again. FAIRY WOMEN AND DEER. On the lands of Scalasdal in Mull, a deer was killed, which turned out afterwards to be a woman. It is perhaps this belief in the metamorphosis of Fairy women and deer that was the origin of the tradition that Oisian’s mother was a deer. In Skye it is said that after the poet’s birth his mother could touch him but once with her tongue on the temple. On that corner (_air an Oisinn sin_) a tuft of fur like that of a deer grew, hence the poet’s name. An informant in the centre of Argyllshire said he did not hear Oisian’s mother was a deer, but he had heard the poet was nurtured by a deer. In the Northern Hebrides, a song is sometimes heard which Oisian is said to have composed to the deer.[43] O’CRONICERT’S FAIRY WIFE.[44]