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

THE INHERITANCE. 1 9
band." "Then," said the youngest, "I don't know
myself ; but perhaps the wisest of all were the robbers
who got the money." Then the old man rose up, and
he said, " Thou hast thy father's gold and silver. I
have kept you here for ten days ; I have watched you
well. I know your father never told a lie, and thou
hast stolen the money." And so the youngest son had
to confess the fact, and the money was got and
diidded.
I know nothing like No. 19. No. 20 begins like a German
story in Grimm ; but the rest is unlike anything I have read
or heard. The first part has come to me in another shape,
from Ross-shire ; and some men whom I met in South Uist
seemed to know these incidents.
The two belong to the class referred to in the Introduction,
page xliii, as fourth. Many of the novels in Boccaccio might be
ranked with the same class ; they are embryo three-volume
novels, which only require nursing by a good writer to become
full-grown books. There are plenty of the kind throughout the
Highlands, and, as it seems to me, they are genuine popular tra-
ditions, human stories, whose incidents would suit a king or a
peasant equally well. Without a wide knowledge of books, it is
impossible to say whence these stories came ; or whether they
are invented by the people. Maclntyre said he had learned those
which he told me from old men like himself, in his native island :
and all others whom I have questioned say the same of their
stories.