Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland / Collected Entirely from Oral Sources

by John Gregorson Campbell

THE WOMAN STOLEN FROM FRANCE.

“MacCallum of the Humming Noise” (Mac Challum a Chrònain), who resided in Glen Etive subsequent to the ‘45, was the last to observe the habits of the Fairies and ancient hunters. He ate three days’ allowance of food before setting out on his hunting expeditions, and when he got hungry merely tightened his belt another hole. The Indians of Labrador are said to do the same at the present day. These hunters can go for nine days without food, merely tightening their belts as they get thin. In MacCallum’s time, a woman was for seven years observed among the deer of Ben Cruachan, as swift of foot and action as the herd with which she consorted. A gathering was made to catch her. The herd was surrounded by men and dogs, and on her being caught, she was taken to Balinoe, where MacCallum resided. There were rings on her fingers, from which it was ascertained that she came from France. Inquiries were made, and she was sent home by a ship from Greenock. She had been taken away in childbed doubtless by the Fairies. This story was believed by the person from whom it was heard. He had heard it from good authority, he said.

CHANGELINGS.

A young lad was sent for the loan of a corn sieve to a neighbour’s house. He was a changeling, and in the house to which he went there was another like himself. He found no one in but his fellow-elf. A woman, in a closet close by, overheard the conversation of the two. The first asked for the sieve, and the other replied, “Ask it in an honest way (that is, in Fairy language) seeing I am alone.”[33] The first then said (and his words have as much sense in English as in Gaelic):

“The muggle maggle

Wants the loan of the black luggle laggle,

To take the maggle from the grain.”[34]

The words are a ludicrous imitation of the sound made by the fan in winnowing corn, and several versions of them exist.

A child, in Skye, ate such a quantity of food, people suspected it could not be ‘canny.’ A man of skill was sent for, and on his saying a rhyme over it, the changeling became an old man.