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

XXXIX.
THE THREE WIDOAVS.
From Hector Boyd, Fislaerman, Barra.
^HEPiE ■s\-ere three widows, and every one of them
-^ had a son apiece. Domhnull was the name of
the son of one of them.*
Domhnull had four stots, and the rest had hut two
each. They were always scoldiug, saying that he had
more grass than they had themselves. On a night of
the nights they went to the fold, and they seized on
the stots of Domhnull and they hilled them. "When
DomlmuU rose and went out in the morning to see the
stots, he found them dead.
He flayed the stots, and he salted them, and he
took one of the liides with him to the Lig town to sell.
The way was so long that the night came on him before
he reached the big town. He went into a wood and
he put the hide about his head. There came a heap of
birds, and they lighted on the hide ; he put out his
hand and he seized on one of them. About the bright-
ening of day he went away ; he betook himself to the
house of a gentleman.
The gentleman came to the door, and he asked
what he had there in his oxter. He said that he had
a soothsayer. " What divination will he be doing ?"
* (Lit.) It was Domhnull that was on the son of one of them.