The lameter, who was over, said, “It is a wrong thing you are doing in allowing him to lose the wager. If I had the use of my feet, I would go and take his leg off as well as his shoe before I would let Lochbuie lose the wager.”
“Come you here,” said the big lad, “and I will put a pair of feet that you never had the like of under you.” He put the lameter round his neck (lit. the bone of his neck), and off he went. When they came in sight of the man who was warming himself the lameter sought to return. MacFadyen said they would not return. They went nearer to the man who was warming himself. The one that was at the fire lifted his head and observed them coming. He thought it was his own companion, the one who had gone to steal the ox, who was come. He spoke and said, “Have you come?” “I have,” said MacFadyen. “And have you got it?” “Yes,” said MacFadyen. “And is it fat?”
“Whether he is fat or lean, there he is to you,” and he threw the lameter on to the fire.
MacFadyen took to his heels (lit. put on soles) and fled as fast as ever he did. Off went the lameter after him. He put the four oars on for making his escape. The one at the fire rose, thinking there were some who had come to pry upon himself, and that he was now caught. He went after the lameter to make his excuses to the Laird of Loch Buie. The lameter was observing him coming after him, feeling quite sure that it was the one who had been hanged.
MacFadyen reached, and they asked him if he had taken the shoe off the man. He said they did not; that he asked him if the lameter was fat, and that he was sure he had him eaten up before now. The lameter came, and that cry in his head for to let him in, for that yon one was coming. He was let in. The moment this was done, the one who had been on the gallows knocked at the door, to let him in. Lochbuie said he would not.
Editor’s Note:
The translation of lines 6 and 7 renders the Gaelic idiom exactly. Translated more freely into English it would run, “and the lameter came, and with yon terrified cry demanded admittance, saying that the hanged man was coming after him.”
“I am your own herdsman.” They now let him in. He then began to tell how he and the other herdsman went to steal the ox, and that he thought it was the other herdsman who had returned, and it was that made him ask if he was fat. Lochbuie and his guests had much sport and merriment over this all night. They kept the herdsman till it was late on in the night telling them how it happened to him.
The one who went to steal the ox now came back and reached the tree where he left the other herdsman, but found no one. He began to search up and down, and became aware of the one dangling from the tree.
“Oh,” said he, “you have been hanged since I went away, and I will be to-morrow in the same plight that you are in. It has been an ill-guided object, and the tempting of women that sent us on the journey.”