A native of the Shetland Isles writes me that Brownie was well known in that locality. He worked about the barn, and at night ground with the handmill for those to whom he was attached. He could grind a bag or two of grain in a night. He was once rewarded for his labours by a cloak and hood left for him at the mill. The articles were away in the morning, and Brownie never came back. Hence the bye-word, such a man is like Brownie,
“When he got his cloak and hood,
He did no more good.”
The same story is told of the ‘Cauld Lad of Hilton,’ in the valley of the Wear in England (Keightley’s Fairy Myth, p. 296), of Brownies in the Scottish Lowlands (p. 358), and of one in Strathspey (p. 395), who said, when he went away—
“Brownie has got a coat and cap,
Brownie will do no more work.”
It also made its way to Tiree, and was there told as follows:
GUNNA.
In olden times the tillage in Tiree was in common, the crop was raised here and there throughout the farm, and the herding was in consequence very difficult to do. In Baugh, or some farm in the west of the island (tradition is not uniform as to the locality), the cows were left in the pastures at night, and were kept from the crops by some invisible herdsman. No one ever saw him, or knew whence he came, nor, when he went away, whither he went. A taibhseir or seer (i.e. one who had the second-sight or sight of seeing ghosts) remained up to see how the cattle were kept. He saw a man without clothes after them, and taking pity upon him made him a pair of trews (triubhas[58]) and a pair of shoes. When the ghostly herdsman put the trews on, he said (and his name then, for the first time, became known):