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

XC INTRODUCTION.
tion. Dog, or son of the dog, is a term of abuse in
Gaelic as elsewliere, though cuilein is a term of endear-
ment, and the hound is figured beside his master, or at
his feet, on many a tombstone in the Western Isles.
Hounds are mentioned in Gaehc poetry and in Gaelic
tales, and in the earliest accounts of the Western Isles ;
and one breed still survives in these long-legged, rough,
wiry-haired stag-hounds, vi'hich Landseer so loves to
paint.
In one story, for which I have no room, but which
is well worthy of preservation, a step-mother sends two
step-children, a brother and sister, out into the world
to seek their fortune. They live in a cottage with
three bare yellow porkers, which belong to the sister.
The brother sells one to a man for a dog with a green
string, and so gets three dogs, whose names are Know-
ledge, Fios ; Swift, LuATH ; Weighty, Trom. The
sister is enraged, and allies herself with a giant who
has a hot coal in his mouth. Knowledge tells his
master the dangers which await him : how the giant and
his sister had set a venomous dart over the door.
Swiftness runs in first, and saves his master at the
expense of his own tail, and then the three dogs upset
a caldron of boiling water over the giant, who is hid in
a hole in the floor, and so at the third time the giant
is killed, and the only loss is a bit of the tail of Luath.
Then the king's son goes to dwell with a beautiful
lady ; and after a time he goes back to visit his sister,
armed with three magic apples. The sister sets three
venomous porkers at him, and he, by throwing the
apples behind him, hinders them with woods, and moors,
and lakes, which grow up from the apples ; but they
follow. The three dogs come out and beat the three pigs,
and kill them, and then the king's son gets his sister
to come with him, and she was as a servant-maid to