BEAN SHITH, ELLE WOMAN, OR WOMAN OF PEACE.
While supper was being prepared in a farmer’s house in Morvern, a very little woman, a stranger to the inmates, entered. She was invited to share the supper with the family, but would take none of the food of which the meal consisted, or of any other the inmates had to offer. She said her people lived on the tops of heather, and in the loch called Lochan Fasta Litheag. There does not seem to be any loch of the name in Morvern. The name is difficult to translate, but indicates a lakelet covered with weeds or green scum. The little woman left the house as she came, and fear kept every one from following her, or questioning her further.
A woman at Kinloch Teagus (Ceann Loch Téacais), in the same parish, was sitting on a summer day in front of the house, preparing green dye, by boiling heather tops and alum together. This preparation is called ailmeid. A young woman, whom she had never seen before, came to her, and asked for something to eat. The stranger was dressed in green, and wore a cap bearing the appearance of the king’s hood of a sheep (currachd an righ caorach). The housewife said the family were at the shielings with the cattle, and there was no food in the house; there was not even a drink of milk. The visitor then asked to be allowed to make brose of the dye, and received permission to do what she liked with it. She was asked where she stayed, and she said, “in this same neighbourhood.” She drank off the compost, rushed away, throwing three somersaults, and disappeared.
A young man, named Callum, when crossing the rugged hills of Ard-meadhonach (Middle Height), in Mull, fell in with some St. John’s wort (Achlusan Challum-chille), a plant of magic powers, if found when neither sought nor wanted. He took some of it with him. He had dùcun (small swellings below the toes) on his feet, and on coming to a stream sat down and bathed them in the water. Looking up, he saw an ugly little woman, having no nostrils, on the other side of the stream, with her feet resting against his own. She asked him for the plant he had in his hand, but he refused to give it. She asked him to make snuff of it then and give her some. He answered, “What could she want with snuff, when she had no nostril to put it in?” He left her and went further on. As he did not come home that night his friends and neighbours next day went in search of him through the hills. He was found by his father asleep on the side of a cnoc, a small hillock, and when awakened, he thought, from the position of the sun, he had only slept a few minutes. He had, in fact, slept for twenty-four hours. His dog lay sleeping in the hollow between his two shoulders, and had ‘neither hair nor fur’ on. It is supposed it had lost the hair in chasing away the Fairies, and protecting its master.
In what seems to be only another version of this story, a herd-boy was sitting in the evening by a stream bathing his feet. A beautiful woman appeared on the other side of the stream, and asked him to pull a plant she pointed out, and make snuff of it for her. He refused, asking what need had she of snuff, when she had no nostrils? She asked him to cross the stream, but he again refused. When he went home his step-mother gave him his food and milk as usual. He gave the whole of it to his dog, and the dog died from the effects.
A herdsman at Baile-phuill, in the west end of Tiree, fell asleep on Cnoc Ghrianal, at the eastern base of Heynish Hill, on a fine summer afternoon. He was awakened by a violent slap on the ear. On rubbing his eyes, and looking up, he saw a woman, the most beautiful he had ever seen, in a green dress, with a brooch fastening it at the neck, walking away from him. She went westward and he followed her for some distance, but she vanished, he could not tell how.
A person in Mull reported that he saw several Fairy women together washing at a stream. He went near enough to see that they had only one nostril each.
The places in Tiree where cailleacha sìth (Fairy hags) were seen were at streams and pools of water on Druim-buidhe (the Yellow Back), the links of Kennavara, and the bend of the hill (lùbadh na beinne) at Baile-phendrais. They have long since disappeared, the islanders having become too busy to attend to them.
A Skyeman was told by one of these weird women never to put the burning end of a peat outside when making up the fire for the night.