The peat-fire flame : folk-tales and traditions of the Highlands & Islands

THE PEAT-FTRE FLAME
a signal to the Spirit-Multitude that its adjudication was at
an end. And, so, its members returned to the lairs they
had left in their respective territories. Soon the MacLeod
protagonist found himself once again on the threshold of
his own home at Fearann na Leatha. But where was the
black knife, with which he had been flaying the sheep? He
could not find it anywhere !
It was not until some days after the gathering of the
Spirit-Hosts that a number of men, while collecting the
cattle pastured on the vast machar-lands fringing the seaboard
of South Uist, came upon the lifeless body of one
of their kinsmen, who had a sgian-dnhh fast in his breast.
Black Donald of the Faery Throng.
While ploughing a strip of land on the farm of Bailepheutrais,
on the Isle of Tiree, a man, who later became
known as Black Donald of the Faery Throng, was caught
in a heavy shower that came upon him out of the west.
Not a sight could be seen of Donald when the shower had
passed. There, in the field, were the horse and plough, sure
enough ; but no Donald. Late the same evening, however,
he returned to the township from an easterly direction,
carrying his jacket over his arm. He then related the story
of his disappearance—of how the Little Folk of the Isles
had borne him away invisibly in an eddy of wind to the
islands lying to the north—to Coll, and then on to Skye.
Donald, by way of proving his account of this adventure,
informed the Tiree folks that a person, whom he proceeded
to name, had died on the adjacent Island of Coll, and that
in the morning a number of the inhabitants of that Isle,
in preparation for the funeral, would be coming across the
Gunna Sound to procure whisky at a township of Tiree
noted in olden times for its secret stills. Scarcely had
Donald uttered these words when a group of men from Coll
was seen to approach the said township with an empty cask.
In passing behind Baile-pheutrais, the men told the natives
of the death of a friend in Coll, and also of the object of
their visit to Tiree that day.
Donald assured his kinsfolk, moreover, that he had
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