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

384 WEST HIGHLAND TALES.
lucky infant nearly died in the snow, and I do not know that the
sacrament was administered to it.
7. The Assynt man once went to Tain to buy meal. Outside
the town, a man asked liim if he knew what o'clock it was.
" Last time it was 12. If it is striking still, it must he at 50."
8. His wife, like the Miitter in the story of Michel and Cor-
delia, had all the wit of the family, and was much distressed at
his stupidity and simplicity.
He was carrpng two bags of cheeses to market for her one
day ; one bag burst, and he saw all the cheeses rolling fast down
hill. Pleased at their newly discovered power of locomotion, he
undid the second bag, and sent its contents after the first, and
walked on himself to market. When he got there, he asked if
his dairy stuff had not turned up yet?
'■ No," said the neighbours. So he waited all day, and then
returned to tell his wife, who, guessing his mistake, bid him look
at the bottom of the hill, where he was enchanted to find the
ig cheeses.
9. Seeing a hare for the first time, he backed from it, repeat-
ing the Lord's Prayer, till he fell into a duck pond, from which
his wife drew him with difSculty.
This last adventure is Hke the " Seven Swabians" in Grimm,
and that is like the Hunting of the Hare, a very old ballad ; and
all this was gathered from people whose names are not given, but
who belong to Sutherland, and whose occupations generally are
such as to make it probable that their stories are what they pro-
fess to be — traditions.
They are a people whose native language is Gaelic, but who
generally speak English.
10. I have another version of the story in Gaelic, from Islay,
called " FiGHEADAiK MOR BAiLE NA Gaillearain," " The Big
Weaver of the Strangers' Town," written by Hector MacLean,
from which I translate the following extracts, told by Alexander
Macalister, Bowmore : —
There was a poor woman before now, and she had a son, and
he was reckoned a kind of leith-bhukraidh — half booby.