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

2 00 WEST HIGHLAND TALES.
but myself The seanagal (soothsayer) came the way
one day, and he said to me, if I would go so far as the
white Sibearta, that I would get knowledge in it. I
went tliere one fine summer's day, and who was there
but the Gruagacli of the island and the Gruagach
of the dog setting a combat. The Gruagach of the
island said to me, if I would go in before her to
help her, that she would give me her daughter to
marry when we should go home. I went in on
her side, I struck a fist on the Gruagach of the
dog, and I knocked her brains out. Myself and the
Gruagach of the island went home, and a wedding and
a marriage was made between mj'self and her daughter
that very night ; but, with the hero's fatigue, and the
reek of the bowl, I never got to her chamber door.
If the day came early on the morrow, 't was earher still
that my father-in-law arose shouting to me to go to the
hunting hill to himt badgers, and vermin, and foxes.
At the time of lifting the game and laying it do-\vn,
I thought that I had left my own wife without a watch-
man to look on her. I went home a hero, stout and
seemly, and I found my mother-in-law weeping ; and
I said to her, ' "Wliat ails thee ? ' ' Much ails me,
that tliree monks have just taken away the Avoman
thou didst marry thyself
" Then took I the good and ill of that on myself,
and I took the track of the duck on the ninth mom.
I fell in with my ship, and she was drawn her own
seven lengths on tbied dry land, where no wind could
stain, or sim could burn, or the scholars of the big
town could mock or launch her. I set my back to
her, and she ^vas too heavy ; but I thought it was
death before or behind me if I did not get my wife,
and I set my pith to her, and I put her out. I gave
her prow to the sea, and her stern to the land ; helm