Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland: Collected Entirely from Oral SourcesCampbell, John Gregorson
History
Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland: Collected Entirely from Oral Sources
Campbell, John Gregorson
Folklore -- Scotland
Murdoch had a foster-brother, whose name was Keyn, the son of Loy
(_Kian Mac an Luaimh_), and he fell in love with O’Cronicert’s wife. He
pretended to be ill and remained behind the rest. She made a drink for
him and went with it to him, but instead of taking the drink he laid
hold of herself. She suddenly became a filly, and gave him a kick and
broke his leg. She took with her the tower of Castle Town as an armful
on her shoulder and a light burden on her back, and left him in the old
tumble-down black house, in a pool of rain-drip, in the middle of the
floor.
In the parting O’Cronicert went to the change-house to bid the party
good-bye, and it was then Murdoch Mac Brian remembered he had left his
own foster-brother, Keyn, the son of Loy, behind, and said there would
be no separation in life between them, and he would go back for him.
He found Keyn in the old tumble-down black house, in the middle of the
floor, in a pool of rain-water, with his leg broken; and he said the
earth would make a nest in his sole, and the sky a nest in his head, if
he did not find a man who would cure Keyn’s leg.
The rest of the tale consists principally of _true_ tales, necessary to
be told, before Keyn will consent to stretch his leg for a salve to be
applied to it. The King of Lochlin, or, according to others, the King
of Ireland, who is bound not to allow any one to remain in distress,
when he can relieve, tells a series of marvellous adventures that
befell himself, all jointing into one another, before Keyn stretches
his foot. The composition is of a kindred character with the _Arabian
Nights’ Entertainment_.
The reader will observe that in this tale, as in that of “Macphie’s
Black Dog,” the Fairy wife is first encountered in the shape of a deer,
that (as is alleged of her race in other tales) she dislikes being
reproached with not being of mortal race, and calls up in one night a
palace of enchanting magnificence, in which time passes unobserved, and
in the end disappears, leaving matters worse than at the beginning.
THE GRUAGACH BAN.
In Campbell’s _West Highland Tales_ (ii. 410) will be found a tale
also highly illustrative of this part of the superstition. The hero
of the tale, the Fair Long-haired One, son of the King of Ireland,
encounters a woman with a narrow green kirtle (the Fairy dress), and
after playing cards with her, is placed under the following spell:—“I
place thee under enchantments and crosses, under the nine shackles of
the roaming, wandering Fairy dame, that the most stunted and weakliest
little calf take off your head, and your ears, and your livelihood, if
you rest night or day, where you take your breakfast, that you will not
take your dinner, and where you take your dinner, you will not take
your supper, till you find out the place I am in, under the four red
divisions of the world.”[45]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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