Blair Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 2

THE THREE WISE MEN. 2 1
these peats fallen on my head, I should now be finished
and all my posterity ;" and she gave a great burst of
weeping, and sat doA\Ti lamenting and bewailing. The
mother was longing for her daughter to come back, so
she went out and found her sitting crying in the end
of the peat-stack, and she said, " Wliat is on thee ? "
and the daughter said, " Oh, mother, the peat-stack fell
on my head, and I thought if I were now married to
that man, and about to be a mother, I was done, and
all my posterity ;" and the mother said, "That is true
for thee, my daughter ; that is true, indeed," and she
sat down and cried too. Then the father was getting
cold, so he too went out, wondering what kept the women,
and when he found them, they told liim what had hap-
pened, and he said, " That would have been unfor-
tunate indeed," and he began to roar and cry too. The
wooer at last came out himself, and found them all
crying in the end of the peat-stack, and when they had
told him why they were lamenting, he said, " l^ever
you mind. It may be that this will never happen at
all. Go you in-doors, and cry no more." Then he
took his horse and saddle, and rode home ; and as he
went, he thought, " What a fool I am to be stopping
here all my Hfe. Here I sit, and know no more of the
world than a stock. I know how to grow corn, and
that is all I know. I will go and see the world, and
I will never come home till I find three as wise as
those were foolish whom I left crying in the peat-stacL"
And so when he got home, he set everytliing in order,
and took the horse and went away. And he travelled
the Gffildom and the Galldom Highlands and strange
lands for many a day, and got much knowledge. At
last, one fine evening he came to a pretty plot of green
ground in a glen, by a river ; and on it there were
three men standing. They were like each other, and