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

50 WEST HIGHLAND TALES.
his shoulders, clapped his wings lustily, and crowed
loud and long.
The fairies, incensed, seized the smith and his son,
and throwing them out of the hill, flung the dirk after
them, " and in an instant a' was dark."
For a year and a day tlie boy never did a turn of
work, and hardly ever spoke a word ; hut at last one
day, sitting by liis father and watching him finishing
a sword he was making for some chief, and wliich he
was very particular about, he suddenly exclaimed,
" That is not the way to do it ;" and taking the tools
from his father's hands he set to work himself in his
place, and soon fasliioned a sword, the like of which
was never seen in the country before.
From that day the young man wrought constantly
with his father, and became the inventor of a peculiarly
fine and well-tempered weapon, the making of which
kept the two smiths, father and son, in constant em-
ployment, spread their fame far and wide, and gave
them the means in abundance, as they before had the
disposition to live content with all the world and very
happily with one another.
The walls of the house where this celebrated smith, the arti-
ficer of the " Claidheamh Ceaiin-lleach," lived and wrought, are
standing to this day, not far from the parish church of Kilcho-
man, Islay, in a place called Caonis gall.
Many of the incidents in this story are common in other col-
lections ; but I do not know any published story of the kind in
which tlie hero is a smith. This smith was a famous character,
and probably a real personage, to whom the story has attached
itself.
The gentleman who has been kind enough to send me this
tale, does not say from whom he got it, but I have heard of the
Islay smith, who could make wonderful swords, all my life, and
of the " Swords of the Head of Islay." The Brewery of Egg-
shells, and the Throwing of the Fairy Changeling into the Fire, are