“O no! O no! Thomas,” she said,
“That name does not belang to me;
I am but the queen of fair Elfland,
That am hither come to visit thee.”
By some spell this fairy queen made Thomas her slave. She became changed into a hideous hag, yet he was compelled to follow her. They entered a cavern, and after wading through pools of blood, in pitchy darkness for three days, they reached a beautiful orchard, where the lady resumed her former dignity and stateliness. She took him to a gorgeous castle, where he joined with lords, and knights, and ladies in dancing to the most exquisite music. At the end of what he thought a short time, the queen told him that he had been seven years in the castle, and that he might return home. On parting, she gifted him “with a tongue that could never lie”. There are numberless such fairy legends, but one is enough for a specimen. Some of the poor creatures arraigned in Scotland for witchcraft admitted having had correspondence with the fairies. The trials of Bessie Dunlop in 1576, and of Alison Pearson in 1588, illustrate this statement. Bessie Dunlop avowed that the ghost of one Thomas Reid appeared to her—a soldier slain at Pinkie in 1547—that he took her to fairyland, and introduced her to the queen. Alison Pearson also admitted her familiarity with the fairies, from whom she had received herbs for the cure of diseases. It is remarkable that Patrick Adamson, an able scholar and divine, who was created Archbishop of St. Andrews by James VI., actually took the medicines prescribed by this poor woman, in the hope that they would transfer an illness with which he was seized to the body of one of his horses. These poor women were both convicted, and both were put to death at the stake. No doubt there are some in the Highlands and Islands who still believe in the existence of the fairy race. The “sithiche,” or fairy, is the most active sprite in Highland mythology. It is a dexterous child-stealer, and must be carefully guarded against. At birth many covert and cunning ceremonies are still used to baffle the fairy’s power, otherwise the new-born child would be taken off to fairyland, and a withered, little, living skeleton of a child laid in its stead. If offended, they are wantonly mischievous, and hurt severely, and perhaps kill with their arrows, such as annoy them. These arrows are of stone, like a yellow flint, and shaped like a barbed arrow-head. They are called “saighdean sithe,” or fairy arrows. These arrow-heads must have been extensively used in their warfare by the aboriginal people of the Isles (and not, of course, by the fairies), as they are still picked up here and there in the fields, and are all much of the same size and shape. In Skye, and in the Hebrides in general, the fairies dwelt in green knolls or hillocks, called “sitheanan,” and there is hardly a parish or district which has not its “sithean,” or fairy-hill. I knew an old man in Skye who died about thirty years ago, at the age of about 100, whose name was Farquhar Beaton. He so firmly believed in fairies and other superstitions that in his “grace before meat” he prayed thus:—
O Thi bheannuichte, cum ruinn, agus cuidich leinn, agus na tuiteadh do ghras oirn mar an t-uisge air druim a’ gheoidh. An uair a bhios fear ’na eigin air gob rutha, cuidich fein leis; agus bi mu’n cuairt duinn air tir, agus maille ruinn. Gleidh an t-aosda agus an t-oga, ar mnathan agus ar paisdean, ar spreidh agus ar feudal, o chumhachd agus o cheannas nan sithichean, agus o mhi-run gach droch-shula. Bitheadh slighe reidh romhainn, agus crioch shona aig ar turas.
Which may be translated thus:—
O Blessed One, provide for us and help us, and let not thy grace fall on us like the rain-drops on the back of a goose. When a man is in danger on the point of a promontory at sea, do thou succour him; and be about us and with us on dry land. Preserve the aged and the young, our wives and our children, our sheep and our cattle, from the power and dominion of the fairies, and from the malicious effects of every evil eye. Let a straight path be before us, and a happy end to our journey.
Many throughout the Highlands and Islands entertained the same firm belief in the existence of fairies as poor old Farquhar Beaton did. They were generally deemed harmless sprites—“Daoine-sithe,”—beings that loved kindness and peace, yet they had their differences and quarrels; and desperate were their disputes when they took place. Old Farquhar spoke of many occasions when the fairy fights became fast and furious. The Macleods of Dunvegan, and the Macdonalds (commonly called the Lords of the Isles) at Duntulm, had their particular pipers, and their pipe-music colleges. The Macleods had the distinguished race of MacCrimmons for centuries, as family pipers, and they had their college at Boreraig, a tenement near Dunvegan, which they held free. In the same way, the Macdonalds had the famed MacArthurs as pipers, with the free possession of Peingowen for their college. A continued rivalry existed between the MacCrimmons and MacArthurs for supremacy in the musical art, and both had their particular fairy friends, who were said to supply them with reeds, and even, at times, with sets of bagpipes. As the famed Muses of Parnassus inspired their favourite bards with poetic powers, so the fairies conferred the requisite power on these family pipers to progress in the proficiency of their art. But at times, so keen were these gay coadjutors for the success of their particular musical protegés, that they disputed, and actually fought for the victory, thereby causing their “sian” dwellings to ring with the din of the conflict. Old Farquhar, when questioned as to his belief in these things, would raise his hands, and say, “Mo dha shuil fein a chunnaic iad; mo dha chluas fein a chual iad.” (My own two eyes beheld them; my two ears heard them.) Farquhar was a thin, spare, hard-featured, little man, who prided himself on his ancestry, as a race distinguished for their knowledge of medicinal herbs. He could trace his genealogy from son to sire, back to ten or twelve generations, as many others in Skye could do in regard to themselves. Poor Farquhar had a superstitious dislike to bacon or pork. For many years before his death he had dinner at the Manse every Sabbath by the minister’s special request, when he invariably said the above grace before commencing his meal. It frequently happened that the servants’ dinner consisted of pork or bacon, the look of which Farquhar could not bear, and yet he often dined on it. The servants, knowing his prejudices, had beforehand prepared a quantity of the lean parts of the meat for the old man, which they passed off as mutton, and which he never suspected. While partaking of it, however, he frequently said, to the no small amusement and tittering of the domestics—“Bu tu fein an fheoil mhaith, cheart, agus cha b’i a’ mhuc ghrannda, shalach”; (Thou art the good, right meat, and not the filthy, unclean pig).