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

IXTRODUCTIOX. lÌX
these romances is supposed to be of great antiquity, on account
of some of the Gaelic words being out of use now. I remember,
about forty years ago, of being in company with a man that was
watching at night ; he wished me to stop with liim, and he told
me a (sgeulachd) romance ; and last year 1 heard a man telling
the same story, about therty miles distante from where I had
heard it told forty years before that ; and the man which told
me the tale could not tell me the meanijig of some of the old
Gaelic words that was in it. At first I thought they were foreign
words, but at last I recollected to have heard some of them re-
peated in Ossian's poems, and it was by the words that was
before, and after them, that I understood the meaning of them.
The same man told me another stoiy, which he said he learned
from his granfather, and Denmark, Swedden, and Noraway was
named in it in Gaelic, but he forgot the name of the two last-
named places.
It appears likely to me, that some of these tales was invented
by the Druids, and told to the people as sermons ; and by these
tales the people was caused to believe that there was fairies which
lived in little conical hills, and that the fairies had the power of
being either visible or invisible, as they thought proper, and that
they had the power of enchanting people, and of taking them
away and make fairies of them ; and that the Druids had charms
which would prevent that; and they would give these charms to the
people for payment; and maney stories would be told about people
being taken away by the fairies, and the charms which had to
be used to break the spell, and get them back again ; and others,
on account of some neglidgeance, never got back aney more.
Also that there was witches ; people which had communica-
tion with an evil spirit, from which they got the power of chang-
ing themselves into aney shape they pleased ; that these witches
often put themselves in the shape of beasts, and when they were
in the shape of beasts, that they had some evil design in view,
and that it was dangerous to meet them. Also that they could,
and did, sometimes take away the produce of people's dairy, and
sometimes of the whole farm. The Druidical priests pretended
that they had charms that would prevent the witches from doing
aney harm, and they would give a charm for payment. When
the first day of summer came, the people was taught to put the