FAIRIES STEALING WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

Themachair(or links) adjoining the hill of Kennavarra, the extreme south-west point of Tiree, is after sunset one of the most solitary and weird places conceivable. The hill on its northern side, facing the Skerryvore lighthouse, twelve miles off, consists of precipices, descending sheer down for upwards of a hundred feet, with frightful chasms, where countless sea-birds make their nests, and at the base of which the Atlantic rolls with an incessant noise, which becomesdeafening in bad weather. The hill juts into the sea, and the coast, from each side of its inner end, trends away in beaches, which, like all the beaches in the island, have, after nightfall, from their whiteness and loneliness, a strange and ghostly look. On the landward side, the level country stretches in a low dark line towards the horizon; little is to be seen and the stillness is unbroken, save by the sound of the surf rolling on the beach and thundering in the chasms of the hill. It is not, therefore, wonderful that these links should be haunted by the Fairies, or the timid wayfarer there meet the big black Elfin dog prowling among the sand-banks, hear its unearthly baying in the stormy night-wind, and in the uncertain light and the squattering of wildfowl, hear in wintry pools the Banshi washing the garments of those soon to die.

Some seventy or eighty years ago the herdsman who had charge of the cattle on this pasture, went to a marriage in the neighbouring village of Balephuill (mud-town), leaving his mother and a young child alone in the house. The night was wild and stormy; there was heavy rain, and every pool and stream was more than ordinarily swollen. His mother sat waiting his return, and two women, whom she knew to be Fairies, came to steal the child. They stood between the outer and inner doors and were so tall their heads appeared above the partition beam. One was taller than the other. They were accompanied by a dog,and stood one on each side, having a hold of an ear and scratching it. Some say there was a crowd of ‘little people’ behind to assist in taking the child away. For security the woman placed it between herself and the fire, but her precautions were not quite successful. From that night the child was slightly fatuous, ‘a half idiot’ (leth oinseach). The old woman, it is said, had the second sight.

A shepherd, living with his wife in a bothy far away among the hills of Mull, had an addition to his family. He was obliged to go for assistance to the nearest houses, and his wife asked him, before leaving her and her babe alone, to place the table beside the bed, and a portion of the various kinds of food in the house on it, and also to put the smoothing-iron below the front of the bed and the reaping-hook (buanaiche) in the window. Soon after he had left the wife heard a suppressed muttering on the floor and a voice urging some one to go up and steal the child. The other answered that butter from the cow that ate the pearlwort (mòthan) was on the table, that iron was below the bed, and the ‘reaper’ in the window, how could he get the child away? As the reward of his wife’s providence and good sense the shepherd found herself and child safe on his return.

A man in Morvern, known by the nickname of the ‘Marquis’ (a mor’aire), left a band of women watching his wife and infant child. On returning at night, hefound the fire gone out, and the women fast asleep. By the time he had rekindled the fire he saw a Banshi entering and making for the bed where his wife and child were. He took a faggot from the fire and threw it at her. A flame gleamed about his eyes and he saw the Fairy woman no more. His wife declared that she felt at the time like one in a nightmare (trom-a-lidhe); she heard voices calling upon her to go out, and felt an irresistible inclination to obey.

A woman from Rahoy (Ra-thuaith) on Loch Sunartside was taken with her babe to Ben Iadain (Beinn Iadain), a lofty hill in the parish of Morvern, rising to a height of above 2000 feet, and at one time of great note as an abode of the Fairies. Her husband had laid himself down for a few minutes’ rest in the front of the bed, and fallen asleep. When he awoke his wife and child were gone. They were taken, the woman afterwards told, to the ‘Black Door’ (a chòmhla dhu), as the spot forming the Fairy entrance into the interior of the mountain is called. On entering, they found a large company of men, women, and children. A fair-haired boy among them came and warned the woman not to eat any food the Fairies might offer, but to hide it in her clothes. He said they had got his own mother to eat this food, and in consequence he could not now get her away. Finding the food offered her was slighted, the head Fairy sent off a party to bring a certain man’s cow. They came back saying theycould not touch the cow as its right knee was resting on the plantbruchorcan(dirk grass). They were sent for another cow, but they came back saying they could not touch it either, as the dairymaid, after milking it, had struck it with the shackle or cow-spancel (burach). That same night the woman appeared to her husband in his dreams, telling him where she was, and that by going for her and taking the black silk handkerchief she wore on her marriage day, with three knots tied upon it, he might recover her. He tied the knots, took the handkerchief and a friend with him, entered the hill at the Black Door, and recovered his wife and child. The white-headed boy accompanied them for some distance from the Black Door, but returned to the hill, and is there still in all probability.

Another wife was taken from the neighbourhood of CastleLionnaig, near Loch Aline (Loch Aluinn, the pretty loch), in the same parish, to the same hill. She was placed in the lap of a gigantic hag, who told her it was useless to attempt escaping; her arms would close round her

“As the ivy to the rock,And as the honeysuckle to the tree;As the flesh round the bone,And as the bone round the marrow.”27

“As the ivy to the rock,

And as the honeysuckle to the tree;

As the flesh round the bone,

And as the bone round the marrow.”27

The woman answered that she wished it was an armful of dirt the Fairy held. In saying so, she made use of a very coarse, unseemly word, and, as no such language is tolerated among the Fairies, the big woman called to take the vile wretch away, and leave her in the hollow in which she had been found, (an lag san d’ fhuaradh i) which was done.

A man in Balemartin, on the south side of Tiree (air an leige deas), whose wife had died in childbed, was sitting one night soon after with a bunch of keys in his hands. He saw his wife passing and repassing him several times. The following night she came to him in his dreams, and reproached him for not having thrown the bunch of keys at her, or between her and the door, to keep the Fairies from taking her back with them. He asked her to come another night, but she said she could not, as the company she was with was removing that night to another brugh far away.

Another, somewhere on the mainland of Argyllshire, suspecting his wife had been stolen by Fairies, hauled her by the legs from bed, through the fire, and out at the door. She there became a log of wood, and serves as the threshold of a barn in the place to this day.

A woman, taken by the Fairies, was seen by a man, who looked in at the door of a brugh, spinning and singing at her work.

A wife, taken in childbed, came to her husband in his sleep, and told him that, by drawing a furrowthrice round a certain hillock sunwise (deiseal) with the plough, he might recover her. He consulted his neighbours, and in the end it was deemed as well not to attend to a dream of one’s sleep (bruadar cadail). He consequently did not draw the furrow, and never recovered his wife.

A child was taken by the Fairies from Killichrenan (Cill-a-Chreunain), near Loch Awe, to the shï-en in Nant Wood (Coill’ an Eannd). It was got back by the father drawing a furrow round the hillock with the plough. He had not gone far when he heard a cry behind him, and on looking back found his child lying in the furrow.

A trampling as of a troop of horses came round a house, in which a woman lay in childbed, and she and the child were taken away. At the end of seven years her sister came upon an open Fairy hillock, and thoughtlessly entered. She saw there her lost sister, with a child in her arms, and was warned by her, in the lullaby song to the child, to slip away out again.

“Little sister, little loving sister,Rememberest thou the night of the horses?Seven years since I was taken,And one like me was never seen.Ialai horro, horro,Ialai horro hì.”28

“Little sister, little loving sister,

Rememberest thou the night of the horses?

Seven years since I was taken,

And one like me was never seen.

Ialai horro, horro,

Ialai horro hì.”28

Back to Index Next