J. F. Campbell Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 2

XXIV.
THE TULMAN.
From Alexander M'Donald, tenant, and others, Barra. July 1859.
rpHEEE was a woman in Baile Tliangusdail, andslie
J- was out seeking a couple of calves ; and the night
and lateness caught her, and there came rain and tem-
pest, and she was seeking shelter. She went to a
knoll with the couple of calves, and she was strildng
the tether peg into it. The knoll opened. She heard
a gleegashing as if a pot-hook were clashing beside a
pot. She took wonder, and she stopped striking the
tether-peg. A woman put out her head and all above
her middle, and she said, " What business hast thou
to be troubling this tulman in wlrich I make my dwell-
ing ?" "I am taking care of this couple of calves,
and I am but weak. WHiere shall I go with them ? "
" Thou shalt go with them to that breast down yon-
der. Thou wilt see a tuft of grass. If thy couple of
calves eat that tuft of grass, thou wilt not be a day
without a milk cow as long as thou art alive, because
thou hast taken my counsel."
As she said, she never was without a milk cow
after that, and she was alive fourscore and fifteen years
after the night that was there.