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

2 4 WEST HIGHLAND TALES,
eat without." On the morrow, the old man said, " I
must go to the funeral to my brother's house. Do
thou stay here ;" but he said, " I will not stay in any
man's house when he is away. I will go with you to
the funeral." When they came back he staid some
time in the old man's house. He married the daugh-
ter, and got a good share of the property. And, now,
was not that a lucky peat-stack for the farmer.
This story and No. 19 were told to me on the 6th of Sep-
tember 1859, in the inn at the Sound of Benbecula, by a man
whose name would sound to Saxon ears like Dolicolichyarlich ;
a Celt would know it for Donald MacDonald MacCharles, and
his sirname is Maclntyre ; he is a cotter, and lives in Benbecula.
Donald is known as a good teller of tales, so I walked six miles
to his house and heard him tell a long version of the tale of
Conal Gulbanach.
It lasted an hour, and I hope to get it written some day ; I
have other versions of the same incidents. There was an audi-
ence of all the people of the village who were within reach, in-
cluding Mr Torrie, who lives there near Baile nan Cailleach,
which is probably so called from an old nunnery. After the
story, the same man recited a fragment of a poem about Fionn
and his companions. A man returning from battle with a vast
number of heads on a withy, meets a lady who questions him, he
recites the history of the heads, and how their owners died. The
poem was given rapidly and fluently. The story was partly told
in measured prose ; but it was very much spun out, and would
have gained by condensation.
I told the old man that he had too many leaves on his tree,
which he acknowledged to be a fair criticism. He followed me
to the inn afterwards, and told me other stories ; the household
being assembled about the door, and in the room, and taking a
warm interest in the proceedings. After a couple of glasses of
4iot whisky and water, my friend, who was well up in years,
walked off home in the dark ; and I noted down the heads of his
stories in English, because my education, as respects Gaelic
writing, was never completed. They are given as I got them,
condensed, but unaltered. Donald says he has many more of
the same kind.