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

476 WEST HIGHLAND TALES.
her finger into his mouth and he bites it off. She has a tooth for
a staif, and a tooth as, hrod griosach, a poker, one eye in the
midst of her face, one leg; and her heart, her liver, and her
lungs could be seen through her mouth when it was opened.
She is, in short, the same mythical carlin who so often appears,
on whom the tellers of stories expend their powers in describing
all that is hideous and monstrous. The hero cuts her head ofl',
it leaps on again, he cuts it off again, and it flies up into the
skies ; he. holds the sword on the neck, and looks up, and sees
the head coming down and aiming at him ; he leaps to one side,
and the head goes four feet into the earth, and the victory is
gained. The three warriors carry him home and bathe him in
balsam, and he recovers. He raises their father and mother from
the dead, and they promise him tlieir daughter and realm. He
gets a brown mare, recovers the king's teeth, returns to Ireland
with a magic shoe, rides into the hall, presents the magic cup
with the teeth in it to the king, saying " I have travelled Christen-
dom with my brown mare, and I have found out the king's teeth."
He looses his father, the Eed Knight, in whose stead he had set
off, ties the knights to his shoe-ties and marries the fair lady,
who is the daughter of the king of the town under the waves.
In short, it is manifest that this Gaelic story, now told by the
poorest of the inhabitants of the western coasts and isles of Scot-
land, and very widely spread, is the ruin of some old romance^
similar to those of the middle ages.
It is surely worth attention, though it is not strictly "true."
Certain persons, in a place which I abstain from naming, were
so zealous in the cause of " truth," that they assured a simple old
man who had repeated a number of stories to one of my collectors,
that he would have to substantiate every word he had uttered, or
suffer punishment for telling falsehoods. I found him in great
perturbation, evidently expecting that I had arrived for the pur-
pose of calling him to account, and I had some trouble in setting
his mind at rest. He repeatedly assured me that he only told
what others had told him. In this instance, as it seems to me.
"truth" might well say, "keep me from my friends."