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

94 WKST HIGHLAI^D TALES.
coming, the herd was wearying that the herd woman was not
coming. Then he put the cattle to rights agus bhugh e eud,
and he milked them, and there were wild showers of snow in the
beginning of the night. He went home when the beginning of
night was, and he set in order his own food, after he had taken a
thought — DuiL A THOiET DETH — that the herd woman would not
come. He took his food, and he shut the door as well as he
could, thinking that no man would come near him that night. He
put NA BEAiKTEAN FRAOiCHE the bundles of heather behind the
CÒMHLA door,* and then he sat to toast himself at the fire because
the SIDE weather was so cold. He was taking his dinner there,
when he heard a great tartar noise coming towards the door.
Then he got up from the door with great fear, and he noticed a
being striking the door again. He was thinking, and he did not
know what to do, that if the door were struck a third time it
would be^in.
He got up, and the door was struck a third time. Then he
crouched in a corner at the lower end of the shealing when he
saw the door being driven in.
He did not know now whether he should stay as he was or
hide himself. When he noticed the door being pushed in, there
came in a beast, and she went up to the fire.
The heather took fire and he saw this nasty beast standing at
the fire. And she had a great long hair, and that creature was —
A CNAMH a cir — chewing the cud, as though there were a sheep
or a cow. The horns that were on her were up to the top of the
shealing. The poor man that was within thought that it was
time for him to take his legs along with him, and he went out
through the night and the winnowing and snow in it.
He found one of the horses, and he reached his master's
house before the day came. Here there he struck in the door of
his master furiously, and his master awoke and he went where he
was, and he told his master the uamhas — terrible wonder that
had come upon him since the herd woman left him.
* It is quite common in Highland cottages to keep a large
bundle of heather or brushwood to stufi" into the doorway on the
windward side ; sometimes it is the sole door.