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

222 WEST HIGHLAND TALES.
" Kill you your niotliers, and take tliem Avitli you on
top of you, and take them about tlie big town, and
be shouting, ' Who will buy old dead carlins f and you
will get your fortunes."
When they heard that they Avent home, and each
one of them began upon his mother with a stone in a
stocking till he killed her.
They went on the morrow to the big town. They
began at shouting, " Who will buy old carhns dead 1 "
And there was no man who would buy that,
, When the people of the big town were tired
making sport of them, they set the dogs at them
home.
When they came home that night they laid down
and they slept. On the morrow, when they rose, they
went where Dòmhnull was, and they seized on him and
they put him into a barrel. They went with it to reel
it down from a peak of rock. They were thus, and
they had time about carrying it. The one said to the
other, " Since the way was so long, and the day so hot,
that they should go in to take a dram." They went
in, and they left him in the barrel on the great road
without. He heard a " tristrich "* coming, and who
was there but the shepherd, and a hundred sheep with
him. ' He came down, and he began to play a "trump "
{Jew's harp) which he had in the barrel. The shep-
herd struck a stroke of his stick on the barrel.
"Wlio's in here?" said he. "It's me," said Dòmh-
nuU. " What art thou doing in it Ì " said the shep-
herd. " I am making a fortune in it, " said Dòmh-
nuU, " and no man ever saw such a place with gold
and silver. I have just filled a thousand purses here,
and the fortune is nearly made."
* TnisTRicii : a word whicli exactly describes the tripping
sound of a lot of slicep on hard ground.