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

386 WEST HIGHLAXD TALES.
foot, or rest on my head, till I hit upon three more silly than
you." And he went away.
The first fools he met were the same as in the Ross-shire
version, a man and a woman trying to put a cow on a house top
to eat GOiRT, corn, which was growing on the roof. He asked
what they would give him if he would make the cow eat it below ;
and when they said that could not be done, he cut the corn with
his knife and threw it down, and got fifty marks.
And here let me point out that there is nothing impossible in
this nonsense. In the first place, corn and hay do grow on
ihatched houses in the West Highlands, in Norway, and in Lap-
land, and it is by no means uncommon to see goats browsing
there. I have seen a Lapp mowing his crop of hay on the top
of the best house in the village of Xarasjok, a log-house which
is occupied in winter and deserted in summer.
I helped the people at their hay harvest one day, and tried to
teach them the use of a ibrk. Their manner was to gather as
much of the short grass as they could grasp in their arms, and
carry it to the end of the field. I and my comrade cut two
forked sticks, and, beginning at the end of the swathe, pushed the
heap before us, doing as much at one journey as the Lapps at
half-a-dozen trips. But we had fallen in with one of the old
school. He was an old fellow with long tangled elf-locks and a
scanty beard, dressed in a deerskin shirt full of holes, and exceed-
ingly mangy, lor the hair had been worn ofi" in patches all over.
He realized my idea of a seedy Brownie, a gruagach with long
hair on his head ; an old wrinkled face, and his body covered with
hair. He gave us one glance of sovereign contempt, his daughter
a condescending smile, and then they each gathered another arm-
ful of grass, and toddled away, leaving the forked sticks where
they were, as new-fangled contrivances, unworthy of the notice
of sensible men.
And let any inventor say whether this is not human nature
all over the world : but to go on.
He went on till he came to some men who were building a
dyke, with their feet bare. There came a shower of rain, and he
sat in the shelter of a dyke, and when it was clear they sat there,
and there was no talk of getting up.
" It is astonishing to me," said he, " that yqu should keep on