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

FEAKACHUR LEIGH. 363
threatening to kill him if he burnt it. He did so, all
but one small spot. On this spot he quickly put his
finger, and as quickly transferred the hot finger to his
mouth, putting it under his teeth : a gift of omniscience
was the result, and this became the foundation of his
future greatness.
The very same incident with a dragon's heart is in
the Volsung tale, see Dasent's introduction, p. 65. It
is told in Chambers' Nursery Songs, of some laird in
Scotland. Mrs. MacTavish tells it, and I have heard
it in the west in various shapes ever since I can
remember. Grimm found it in Germany in the story
of the White Snake ; and there are varieties of the
same incident scattered throughout Grimm ; for instance
in the Two Brothers, where children eat the heart
and liver of a golden bird, and find gold under their
pillows ; and this story has a relation in Gaelic also.
But to return to Farquhar Leech.]
He set up as a doctor, and there was no secret hid
from him, and nothing that he could not cure.
He went from place to place and healed men, and
so they called him Farquhar Leigheach (the healer).
Now he heard that the king was sick, and he w^ent to
the city of the king, to know what would ail him.
It was his knee," said aU the folk, " and he has many
doctors, and pays them all greatly ; and whiles they can
give him relief, but not for long, and then it is worse
than ever M-ith him, and you may hear him roar and
cry with the pain that is in his knee, in the bones of
it." One day Farcj^uhar walked up and clown before
the king's house. And he cried —
" An daol dubh ria a chnamh gheal."
The black beetle to the wbite bone.
And the people looked at him, and said that the