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

FAIRY STOrUES. 7 I
believe in Piskies ;" they are " never seen, but they are
often heard laughing at people iii the dark, and they lead
them away." My informant said that when he was yoimg
he used to hear so many stories about piskies from the old
women about the fii-eside, that he used to be frightened to
go out at night.
" When the young colts are out running wild, their
manes get rough and hang down on both sides, and get
tangled with the wind like; not like manes of horses that
are well kept (here the speaker pointed i\ith his whip at
the sleek parr which he was dri\ing); and when the far-
mers find stiiTups like in the hair of the mane, they say
the piskies has been a ridin' of them."
In short, this notice of fairy belief might be extended
to fill volimies ; every green knoll, every well, every hill
in the Highlands, has some fairy legend attached to it. In
the west, amongst the imlearned, the legends are firmly
believed. Peasants never talk about fairies, for they live
amongst them and about them. In the east the belief is
less strong, or the believers are more ashamed of their
creed. Li the Lowlands, and even in England, the stories
survive, and the belief exists, though men have less time
to think abovit it. - In the south the fairy creed of the
peasants has been altered, but it still exists, as is proved
occasionally in courts of law. There is a ghost which
walks imder the North Bridge in Edinbrn-gh ; and even in
the cultivated upper strata of society in this our country,
in France, and elsewhere, fairy superstition has only gone
down before other stronger beliefs, in which a table is
made the sole partition between this world and the next.
Whether we are separated from the other world by a deal
board or a gi-een mound, does not seem to make much
difference ; and yet that is the chief difference between
the vagrant beliefs of the learned and unlearned.
An old highlander declared to me that he was once in
a boat with a man who was struck by a fairy arrow. He