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

THE WIDOW S SON. 3O3
resemblance which this bore to the Arabian Nights may be due
to common origin.
On the 5th I asked MacPhie if he knew the story. He did ;
and I got him to tell it twice over. It was vain to attempt to make
him dictate, for he broke down directly he was stopped, or his pace
altered ; and I could not write Gaelic, at all events, fast enough
to do any good ; so I took notes in English. The Magic Box was
in both versions, but the transport of the castle to a foreign
country, and back by the help of the box, was not in old Mac-
Phie's story.
There is a long story about the country of rats, of which I
have only heard part as yet.
BiOR NiMH, spike of hurt, and the big pin, maybe " the thorn
of sleep " referred to in the introduction to Norse Tales, as men-
tioned in the Volsung Tale.
The town under the waves is common in Gaelic stories ;
the phrase probably arose from the sinking of hills beneath the
horizon as a boat sails away from the shore. In another story it
is said, Thog end Eilean — they " raised an Island " — when they
were approaching one.
The bag of skin with the man inside, is remarkably like a tra-
dition of the skin boats in which the old inhabitants of Caledonia
used to invade England.
The great birds belong to popular tales of many lands, and
are common in Gaelic. I have one story in which the hero is
carried into a dragon's nest, and does much the same as this
one did.