DONALD, SON OF PATRICK.
Donald, the son of Patrick (Dòmhnull Mac Phàruig), or, as others say, the son of Lachlan, was a brocair, that is, a foxhunter or destroyer of ground vermin, in Lorn. Persons following this profession were employed by the hill farmers, and had generally long tracts of country to travel over. Their companions were their gun, a pack of terriers, and perhaps a wiry deer-hound. With these they led as lonely a life as anyone who had at all to descend to the strath and men’s houses could do. Many a lonely night they watched by the fox’s cairn in some remote corrie for an opportunity ‘to put a hole in the red rogue’s hide,’ and they often passed the night in bothies and shielings far from the haunts of men. One day Donald, the son of Patrick, killed a roe, and took it to a bothy in the hills. He kindled a fire with the flint of his gun, and having cut up the roe, roasted pieces of the flesh by a large fire. As he helped himself, he threw now and then a piece to his dogs. Before long he observed, the night being moonlit, a large dark shadow coming about the door, and then a woman snatching at the pieces of flesh he threw to the dogs. She had one tooth as big as a distaff projecting from her upper gum. The dogs prevented her entering the hut, so that she got but little of the food. She asked Donald to leash up his dogs, and on his refusing, cried out, “This is poor hospitality for the night, Donald, son of Patrick.” Donald answered, “It will be no better and no worse than that.” “You proved expert at raising a fire,” she said. “How do you know?” he asked. “I was,” she said, “on the top of the Cruach of Rannoch (a hill far away) the first click you gave to the flint, and this is poor hospitality for the night, Donald, son of Patrick.” “It will,” he said, “be no better and no worse than that.” In a while again she said, “This is poor hospitality for the night, Donald, son of Patrick.” “Take,” he said, “as you are able to win.” She remained all night, and repeatedly asked him to leash up his dogs, which he refused to do. The dogs kept her at bay till she left.
Another version says that the foxhunter’s name was Iain Mac Phàruig, that he was accompanied by sixteen dogs, that his strange visitant disappeared at the cock-crowing, and that she then told she was ‘the wife of Fe-chiarain’ (Cailleach Fe-chiarain). Some identify her with the Carlin of Ben Breck.
THE WIFE OF BEN-Y-GHLOE.
Donald and Big John (Dòmhnull ’s Iain mòr) were out deer-hunting on the lofty mountain of Ben-y-ghloe, in Athol in Perthshire, when a heavy snowstorm came on, and they lost their way. They came to a hut in a hollow and entered. The only one in was an old woman, the like of whom they said they had never seen. Her two arms were bare, of great length, and grizzled and sallow to look at. She neither asked them to come in nor go out, and being much in need of shelter, they went in and sat at the fire. There was a look in her eye that might ‘terrify a coward,’ and she hummed a surly song, the words of which were unintelligible to them. They asked for meat, and she set before them a fresh salmon trout, saying, “Little you thought I would give you your dinner to-day.” She also said she could do more, that it was she who clothed the hill with mist to make them come to her house. They stayed with her all night. She was very kind and hospitable. She told her name to them when leaving, that she was ‘the wife of Ben-y-Ghloe.’ They could not say whether she was sìth or saoghalta (Elfin or human), but they never visited her again.
FAIRY WOMEN AND DEER.
On the lands of Scalasdal in Mull, a deer was killed, which turned out afterwards to be a woman.
It is perhaps this belief in the metamorphosis of Fairy women and deer that was the origin of the tradition that Oisian’s mother was a deer. In Skye it is said that after the poet’s birth his mother could touch him but once with her tongue on the temple. On that corner (air an Oisinn sin) a tuft of fur like that of a deer grew, hence the poet’s name. An informant in the centre of Argyllshire said he did not hear Oisian’s mother was a deer, but he had heard the poet was nurtured by a deer. In the Northern Hebrides, a song is sometimes heard which Oisian is said to have composed to the deer.[43]