People go with thee!”
A smith in Torosa, Mull, was said to have got a charm of this kind from his father. He afterwards enlisted, and was in thirty battles. On coming home without a wound, he said he had often wished he was dead, rather than be bruised as he was by bullets. They struck him, but could not pierce him because of the charm.
Red Hector of the Battles (Eachunn Ruadh nan Cath), a celebrated chief of the M’Leans of Dowart, had a sian, which made him invulnerable in the many conflicts, from which he derived his designation. It failed him at the battle of Inverkeithing, in 1652, when he fell with 1500 of his clan. Surrounded by overwhelming numbers, and sorely wounded, he maintained a hopeless struggle, his gallant clansmen defending him to the last, “each stepping where his comrade stood the instant that he fell,” and calling out, in an expression which has been since proverbial in his native island, “Another for Hector!” (Fear eile air son Eachuinn).
The charm, which his fairy mistress gave to Thinman (Caoilte), the fastest hero of the Fians, has been already referred to.
When washing new-born babes wise women made use of these words:
“Hale fair washing to thee,
Hale washing of the Fians be thine;
Health to thee, health to him,
But not to thy female enemy.”