And bring the seal off the waves,
The sickle in your hand is sharp,
You will in two swaths reap a sheaf.
Phòs, phòs Ealasaid Odhar,
’S tha mac aice—Torcuil.
Torcuil donn ’dhìreadh sròin,
’S a bheireadh ròn bhàrr nan stuadh,
Bu sgaiteach do chorran ’n ad dhòrn
’S dheanadh tu dhà dhlòth an sguab.
Whatever gifts the brown-haired only child of her sister was favoured with, besides others, he was a noted reaper, but this gift proved fatal to him (dh’ fhòghainn e dha). When he grew up to manhood, he could reap as much as seven men, and none among them could compete with him. He was then told that a strange woman was seen coming to the harvest fields in autumn, after the reapers had left, and that she would reap a field before daylight next morning, or any part of the ripe corn that the reapers could not finish that day, and in whatever field she began, she left the work of seven reapers, finished, after her. She was known as the Maiden of the Cairn (Gruagach[28] a’ chùirn), from being seen to come out of a cairn over opposite. One evening then, brown-haired Torquil, who desired to see her at work, being later than usual of returning home, on looking back saw her beginning in his own field. He returned, and finding his sickle where he had put it away, he took it with him, and after her he went. He resolved to overtake her and began to reap the next furrow, saying, “You are a good reaper or I will overtake you;” but the harder he worked, the more he saw that instead of getting nearer to her, she was drawing further away from him, and he then called out to her,