Our next witness from Barra is John Campbell, who is ninety-four years
old, yet clear-headed. He was born on Barra at Sgalary, and lives near
there now at Breuvaig. We were on our way to call at his home, when we
met him coming on the road, with a cane in each hand and a small sack
hanging from one of them. Michael saluted him as an old acquaintance,
and then we all sat down on a big boulder in the warm sunshine beside
the road to talk. The first thing John wanted was tobacco, and when this
was supplied we gradually led from one subject to another until he was
talking about fairies. And this is what he said about them:--
_The Fairy and the Fountain._--'I had a companion by the name of James
Galbraith, who was drowned about forty years ago, and one time he was
crossing from the west side of the island to the east side, to the
township called Sgalary, and feeling thirsty took a drink out of a
spring well on the mountain-side. After he had taken a drink, he looked
about him and saw a woman clad in green, and imagined that no woman
would be clad in such a colour except a fairy woman. He went on his way,
and when he hadn't gone far, looked back, and, as he looked, saw the
woman vanish out of his sight. He afterwards reported the incident at
his father's house in Sgalary, and his father said he also had seen a
woman clad in clothes of green at the same place some nights before.'
_A Step-son Pitied by the Fairies._--'I heard my father say that a
neighbour of his father, that is of my grandfather, was married twice,
and had three children from the first marriage, and when married for the
second time, a son and daughter. His second wife did not seem to be kind
enough to the children of the first wife, neglecting their food and
clothing and keeping them constantly at hard work in the fields and at
herding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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