Hew Morrison Collection > Adhamh agus Eubh, no Craobh Sheanachais nan Gàël

CELTIC LANGUAGE. 207
vvomen in child-bed. Many a plump child it has
carried away to Fairy-land, leaving a withered
brat in its stead, and many a good cow its ^^sagat"
or fairy arrow has laid low. To call this being a
thing of peace is a perversion of language. The
truth is, the ideal meaning of shì, in the latter
sense, is in echo — in the hissing sibilant noise issu-
ing from rocks and hills in the very opposite
direction, it may be, of where the cause is at work,
which may be the rustling of trees in the wind,
the souch of the ocean, or the reflection of a water-
fall, magnified by ignorance, soUtude, and super-
stition, into Uving beings, inhabiting rocks and
hills. That this is the ideal meaning is corrobor-
ated by the song : —
" Gun sheiun a bhean-sìù a torman mulaid."
/. e. The fairy had sung her murmuring lay.
The writer, when a boy, knew the terror of
these sounds in the rocks of Caledonia. He does
not forget the day he ran home in no ordinary
haste, with the awful tale, that the bcan-shì, or
fairy women, were grinding with the quern in a
certain rock. It was certamly a good imitation,
but after-experience found it out to have been the
dashing of the waves reverberated. Again, if we
mean to wTÌte a correct echo of the process of
tuning a bag-pipe, we require to assume the
aspirate, thus, h-ilili. This root is employed in