“Then said Gearran to Faoilleach, Where left you the poor stirk? I left it with Him who made the elements, Staring at a stack of fodder. If I catch it, said the May month, With the breath in the points of his ears, I will send it racing to the hill With its tail upon its shoulders.”[60] The beast will pull through if it can “lift its ear higher than its horn,” which at that age (one year), it ought to do. The high winds coming at this time, and well known in the south as the winds of March, were said in their violence to “send seven bolls of driving snow through one augur hole” (_Chuireadh an Gearran seachd bola catha, stigh air aon toll tora, leis co gailbheach’s a bha ’n t-sìd_). The Gearran is deemed the best time for sowing seeds. The high winds dry the ground, and all agricultural seeds are the better of being put in “a dry bed” (_leaba thioram do’ n t-sìol_). It is a disputed point what precise date. The Perthshire rhyme also testifies to the still stormy character of the weather. The calling the Gearran short supports the opinion of many, that it was properly only seven days: “Then, said the short Gearran, I will play you a trick that is no better, I will put the big cow in the mud, Till the wave comes over its head.”[61] Some say the Gearran is the month before St. Patrick’s day O.S., others fourteen days before it and fourteen days after, _i.e._ before and after 29th March. _A Chailleach_, the old wife. This old wife is the same as the hag of whom people were afraid in harvest, the last done with the shearing had to feed her till next harvest, and to whom boys bid defiance in their New-Year day rhyme, viz.: “The Famine, or Scarcity of the Farm.” In spring she was engaged with a hammer in keeping the grass under. “She strikes here, she strikes there, She strikes between her legs,” but the grass grows too fast for her, and in despair she throws the hammer from her, and where it lighted no grass grows. “She threw it beneath the hard, holly tree, Where grass or hair has never grown.”[62] _Trì làithean nan ōisgean_, THREE HOG DAYS. In the rural lore of the south of Scotland, the three hog days are held to be the last three days of March, and to have been borrowed by that month from April (Brand, ii. 42). Dr. Jamieson (_Etym. Dict. of Scot. Lang._) says, “Some of the vulgar imagine, that these days receive their designation from the conduct of the Israelites in borrowing the property of the Egyptians.” There is a Highland explanation also connecting them with the departure from Egypt. They were days borrowed by the Israelites for the killing of the Paschal lamb. “Some went on this side of the hillock, some on that” (_Chàidh cuid an taobh so ’n Chnoc_, etc.). They are perhaps the days called in Tiree “_trì latha na bo ruaidhe_” _i.e._ “the red cow’s three days.” _Mhàrt_, SEED-TIME.