I had the pleasure as well as the great privilege of setting out from
Inverness on a bright crisp September morning in company with Dr.
Alexander Carmichael, the well-known folk-lorist of Scotland, to study
the Fairy-Faith as it exists now in the Highlands round Tomatin, a small
country village about twenty miles distant. We departed by an early
train; and soon reaching the Tomatin country began our search--Dr.
Carmichael for evidence regarding rare and curious Scotch beliefs
connected with folk-magic, such as blood-stopping at a distance and
removing motes in the eye at a distance, and I for Highland ghosts and
fairies.
Our first experience was with an old man whom we met on the road between
the railway station and the post office, who could speak only Gaelic.
Dr. Carmichael talked with him awhile, and then asked him about fairies,
and he said there were some living in a cave some way off, but as the
distance was rather too far we decided not to call on them. Then we went
on to see the postmaster, Mr. John MacDougall, and he told us that in
his boyhood the country-folk round Tomatin believed thoroughly in
fairies. He said they thought of them as a race of spirits capable of
making themselves visible to mortals, as living in underground places,
as _taking_ fine healthy babes and leaving changelings in their place.
These changelings would waste away and die in a short time after being
left. So firmly did the old people believe in fairies then that they
would ridicule a person for not believing. And now quite the reverse
state has come about.[34]
THE TESTIMONY OF JOHN DUNBAR OF INVEREEN
We talked with other Highlanders in the country round Tomatin, and heard
only echoes, mostly fragmentary, of what their forefathers used to
believe about fairies. But at Invereen we discovered John Dunbar, a
Highlander, who really knows the Fairy-Faith and is not ashamed to
explain it. Speaking partly from experience and partly from what he has
heard his parents relate concerning the 'good people', he said:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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