A young wife had not, as was customary at that time, learned to spin and weave. She tried in every way to learn, but try as she might she made no progress, till one noon-day she wished some one would come to help her. She then saw a woman standing in the door, who said she would help her on condition that she would give her her first child when born, but if she could tell the shi woman’s name when she came to take away the child she would be free from her promise. The young woman rashly agreed to this, and in a short time could make clò (cloth) better than any one around her. After some time, however, she began to be afraid her visitor would return, and she went about eagerly listening to hear the name, when suddenly one day she saw an opening in a grassy hillock beside her, and on looking in saw the same woman standing inside, and heard another one calling to her. She went home joyously repeating the name all the way, and told her husband how she heard it. When the Bean shi came again, the mother of the child called out to her by the name she had heard, and invited her to come in, but she only said, “A blessing on the name, but banning on the mouth that taught you,” and she never afterwards darkened the door.
On another day the husband was with his wife in the fields working and looking about, when they saw a great company of riders on white horses coming where they were, and as they came near one of the riders caught hold of her and took her away. Her husband did not know what to do. He went wandering about looking for her, but never finding her, till one day, to his great wonderment, he saw a glimmer of light on the side of the hill. He reached it, and saw an opening. He put a pin in the side and went in, and saw a great company feasting and dancing, with his lost wife in the middle of the dancers. She saw him also, and began to sing loudly:
“Take no food here Ialai o horro horro,
Ask no drink here Ialai o horro hee.”
No one took any notice of him. He got near her, and putting his arm around her, whisked her out of the circle of dancers. He took her home, but she became discontented, and was never the same being as she had been before. At last it happened when they were again out together that the riders on white horses came their way. On parting with him this time she said, “If at any time he wished her to come back, he was to throw her marriage dress, which had craobh uaine, i.e. green tracery on the right shoulder, after her when he saw her passing in the company, and she would return home.” Thinking she did not belong to this world, he did nothing, and she passed and never returned to him.
FAIRIES AND THE HANDMILL.
The invention of the handmill or quern, in the infancy of the arts, must have formed an era in the history of human progress. Whoever first found out a handy way of reducing the solid grain into meal bestowed an inestimable blessing on the human race. The instrument is still to be occasionally met with in the Hebrides, in houses not convenient to mill or market. It is usually worked by two women, like the mills in use in the East.
“A pair of thick-set hussies
Winding round a quern.”[48]
It is a common practice with women to sing at their work, as indeed they did in the Highlands in olden times at most of their labours, such as reaping, sowing, milking.