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

ANIMAL LORE
If this artful fox be in the habit of using this sapling, he
said to himself, he ought to be found dead at the foot of
the gorge, when next he is chased in this direction. And,
sure enough, the fox met his death shortly afterwards. He
was found dead at the base of the cleft, with the sapling
shoot in his teeth.
This fox, sav the folks of Kintyre, exhibited greater
sagacity than has any other member of his tribe in his ha\ing
selected an ash sapling to a less flexible one, in arresting his
fall in mid-air by catching the sapling with his teeth and
claws, and in discovering that he could bend it in such a
way as to make it possible for him to land on the opposite
precipice. And this spot is known in Kintyre to this day as
Creag na t-Sionnaich, Rock of the Fox.
The unusual wisdom and cunning of this particular fox
are proverbial in many parts of the Highlands. In Argyll
an over-confident person is often warned against being led
after the manner in which the red fox of the Mull of
Kintyre led the dogs over the cliffs; and a cunning person
is sometimes described as being as craftv as the fox of the
Mull.
Three Kindly Kidlings.
:
About eighty years ago, there lived in Barra a certain
Hector Boyd, who was far famed for the mode in which he
could recount traditional fragments concerning animals.
He used to tell a story of how a grey goat, on returning to
the fold, discovered that a fox had made off with her three
kids. Black with real melancholy was the grey goat, to
find that in her absence her three little ones had been stolen.
So, she took her way to the abode of the russet-dog (fox).
On coming to it, she scrambled on to the roof ; and the
russet-dog. hearing movement about the thatch of his
dwelling, cried out
" Who is that on the top of my bothy, maiden my dearie,
That will not leave my cauldrons to boil,
That will not leave my bannocks to bake.
That will not let my little ones go to the well? "
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