Matheson Collection > Popular tales of the west Highlands > Volume 4

PUBLISHED AND TRADITIONAL. 149
found themselves one morning close to land. They cast
anchor and went to sleep, and when they awoke the
man and his cargo were gone. The Jura skipper did
not like to lose his freight, landed, and walked up to a
large house, where he found "seem duine mor cròsgach*
— a large, big-boned old man — seated in an arm-chair,
who offered him a drink. The drinking vessels were so
large that the skipper could not lift them, so the big
man called his daughter to give him a draught, and a
girl came in and raised the vessel (" soitheach "), and he
took a long drink of beer. He told his story, and the
big man asked him if he could recognise the man who
had engaged the ship. He said he could, and a number
of people were sent for, and passed in review before
him. At last the delinquent appeared, and was recog-
nised, and made to pay the freight, upon which he
thrust his finger into the skipper's eye, and put it out,
saying, "If I had done that to thee before, thou wouldst
not have known me." *
The inhabitants then made the Jura men brush every
particle of the dust of the island from their feet, and
sent them away with their money ; and when they
sailed, the island seemed to disappear in a mist. This
Jura man, it is said, was well known afterwards, and
was blind of an eye, and the big man is supposed to be
" FlONN."
In Berneray, near Harris, a similar story is told
of men still alive, but it wants much of the marvellous
element. The men, as it is said, took a cargo from
* There is a popular tale known all over Europe, in which a
mortal acquires the power of seeing immortals, betrays the power
by speaking to one, and is deprived of one eye. I have got the
story in many shapes from the Highlands. — J. F. C.