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

XLIV.
THE WIDOW'S SON.
From John MacPhie, South Uist, aud Donald MacCraw,
North Uist.
THERE was a poor fisher's widow in Eirinn, and
she had one son ; and one day he left his mother
with a lump of a horse, and a man met him with a
gun, a dog, and a falcon (gunna cu agus seobhag) ; and
he said, " Wilt thou sell me the horse, son of the fisher
in Eirinn ?" and he said, "What wilt thou give me?
Wilt thou give me thy gun and thy dog, and thy
falcon ?" And he said, " I will give them j" and the
bargain was struck ; and Iain, the fisher's son, went
home. When his mother saw him she was enraged,
and she beat him ; and in the night he took the gun
and went away to be a liunter.* He went and he
went till he reached the house of a farmer, who was
sitting there with his old wife. The farmer said, " It
was fortune sent thee here with thy gun ; there is a
deer that comes every night to eat my corn, and she
will not leave a straw." And they engaged Iain the
fisherman's son to stay with them, and shoot the deer ;
and so he stayed ; and on the morrow's day he went
out, and when he saw the deer he put the gun to his eye
to shoot her, and the lock was up ; but when he would
* MacCraw started him with a big bonnoch and a little one,
and his mother's blessing.