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

352 WEST HIGHLAND TALES.
They had wrestled hard and long, when at length she brought
him on his knees, and she said, " Thou art in extremity, a
Mhic Meadh Bhuie, and pity it is so." "My grandmother, on
the hinderside of Alba, is here, and will come to help me if I
be," said he, as he put his hand on his dirk.
They engaged again, and she brought him on his knees again,
saying the same words, Tha thu a t eigin a Mhic Meadh Bhuie
s' b olc an arraidh e, when he drew his dirk and stabbed her to
the heart.
MacDonald performed his promise of giving the Buies Largie
Breae, which they held for centuries after.
3. There is a song about the same personage, whoever she
may have been. I give it, though 1 do not quite understand it.
Caileach Bheinna Bhric horo
Bhric horo Bhric horo
Caileach Bheinna Bhric horo
Caileach mhor leathan ard
Cha deachaidh mo bhuidheann fhiadh
Bhuidheann fhiadh bhuidheann fhiadh
Cha deachaidh mo bhuidheann riamh
A dh'iarraidh chlabba do n traigh
Carlin of Ben Breac horo, &c.,
Carlin great broad high,
There went not my troop of deer, &c.
There went not my troop ever
To seek her clack to the strand.
Now this old woman, or set of old women guarding a sword,
or owning magic clues, and living in an island, are surely the
same as the Groach, of whom so many stories are told in Brittany,
and these are presumed to have been a college of Druidesses.
See Foyer Breton, vol. i. p. 157 ; and if so, the Carlin may be a
fiction founded upon fact.
The spelling Diura and Diurath for the Island of Jura, does
not change the sound, but seems to indicate a reasonable deriva-
tion for the name which is common to the " Jura" mountains,
and may well be an old Celtic name preserved, an diu rath, the
waste steep, the Jura.