Blair Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 1

IXTRODUCTIOX. li
even tlieir houses, are Celtic. I know one turf dwelling
which might be a house in North Uist. There was the
fire on the floor, the children seated around it, the
black haired Celtic mother on a low stool in front, —
the hens quarrelling about a nest under the table, in
which several wanted to lay eggs at once.
" Get out, Polly ! Drive her out, John ! " And
then John, the son, drove out Polly, the hen, with a
stick ; and the hen said, " Gurr-r-m j " and ran in under
the table again and said, " Cluck, cluck," and laid the
egg then and there. Tliere was the same kindly, hospi-
table manner in the poorest cottage ; and I soon found
that a Scotch Highlander could speak Manks as soon as
he could acquire the art of mispronouncing his own lan-
guage to the right amount, and learn where to introduce
tlie proper English word. " La fine " — fine day — was
tlie salutation every^vhere ; and the reply, " Fine, fine."
But though nouns are almost the same, and the lan-
guage is but a dialect of Gaehc, the foreigner was
incomprehensible, because he could not pronounce as
they did ; and I was reduced to English. Now this
island is visited every summer by shoals of visitors
from the mainland ; steam-boats bring them from
Liverpool, a thousand at a time, and they sweep over the
whole country. If visitors import stories, here, there
are plenty of strangers, and I was a stranger myself.
K stories are imported in books, here are the books also.
The first picture I saw on landing was a magnificent Blue-
beard in a shop window. He was dressed as an Eastern
potentate, and about to slice off his wife's head with a
crooked scimitar, while the two brothers rode up to the
gate on prancing steeds, with horror on their faces and
swords in their hands. But there was not a trace of
any of that kind of story to be found amongst the
peasants with whom I spoke in the Isle of Man.