Away midst the solitary grandeur of the high lands of Galloway, where the Merrick lordly towers, and where the bleat of the sheep and the cry of the whaup, the tumble and plash of burn and stream, are the only sounds that greet the shepherd’s ear as he pursues his long and lonely beat, a beautiful fairy legend lingers, though human and homely enough in its trend:—
“A shepherd’s family had just taken possession of a newly-erected onstead, in a very secluded spot among ‘the hills o’ Gallowa’,’ when the goodwife was, one day, surprised by the entrance of a little woman, who hurriedly asked for the loan of a ‘pickle saut.’ This, of course, was readily granted; but the goodwife was so flurried by the appearance of ‘a neibor’ in such a lonely place, and at such a very great distance from all known habitations, that she did not observe when the little woman withdrew or which way she went. Next day, however, the same little woman re-entered the cottage, and duly paid the borrowed ‘saut.’ This time the goodwife was more alert, and as she turned to replace ‘the saut in the sautkit’ she observed ‘wi’ the tail o’ her e’e’ that the little woman moved off towards the door, and then made a sudden ‘bolt out.’ Following quickly, the goodwife saw her unceremonious visitor run down a small declivity towards a tree which stood at ‘the house en’.’ She passed behind the tree, but did not emerge on the other side, and the goodwife, seeing no place of concealment, assumed she was a fairy.
In a few days her little ‘neibor’ again returned, and continued from time to time to make similar visits—borrowing and lending small articles, evidently with a view to produce an intimacy; and it was uniformly remarked that, on retiring, she proceeded straight to the tree, and then suddenly ‘gaed out o’ sight.’
One day, while the goodwife was at the door, emptying some dirty water into the jaw-hole (sink or cesspool), her now familiar acquaintance came to her and said:
‘Goodwife, ye’re really a very obliging bodie! Wad ye be sae good as turn the lade o’ your jaw-hole anither way, as a’ your foul water rins directly in at my door? It stands in the howe there, on the aff-side o’ that tree, at the corner o’ your house en’.’
The mystery was now fully cleared up—the little woman was indeed a fairy; and the door of her invisible habitation being situated ‘on the aff-side o’ the tree at the house en’,’ it could easily be conceived how she must there necessarily ‘gae out o’ sight’ as she entered her sight-eluding portal.”[(50)]
Probably the most characteristic fairy story extant in the whole south-western district of Scotland is that which centres round the green mound on which the ruined Castle of Myrton, a stronghold of the M‘Cullochs in bygone days, stands. Within the policies of Monreith House, in the parish of Mochrum, on the beautifully-wooded shore of the White Loch of Myrton, this mound of Myrton is peculiarly interesting in the links its story joins of prehistoric days, fairy tradition, and seventeenth century family history.
The following account is drawn from The Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway:—
“Sir Godfrey M‘Culloch, having squandered his patrimony and sold his estates in Mochrum to the Maxwells of Monreith, took up house at Cardoness. Here a neighbour, William Gordon, having poinded some cattle straying on his lands, Sir Godfrey joined a party illegally convened to release them. A fray was the result, in which M‘Culloch, in the words of his indictment, ‘did shot at the said Gordon with a gun charged, and by the shot broke his thigh-bone and leg, so that he immediately fell to the ground, and within a few hours thereafter died of the same shot wound.’ Sir Godfrey fled the country, and some years after ventured on a Sunday to attend a Church in Edinburgh. A Galloway man was among the congregation, who, recognising him, jumped up and cried: ‘Pit to the door; there’s a murderer in the kirk!’ This was done, M‘Culloch arrested, tried, condemned, and his head ‘stricken fra his body’ the 5th of March, 1697.”
So say the Criminal Records. There is a very different local version of the story:—