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

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
his outpost on Ben Ime reported the advance on the Green
Hollow of a number of men from the direction of Loch
Fyne, moving up from Butterbridge, in Glen Kinglas.
Time to conceal their apparatus there was none. So,
after hurried deliberations, they agreed to abandon finally
their good work, and to teem their dye-stufi:s with their
secrets into the pool.
And this explains how, to this day, the waters of this pool
in the Green Hollow among the mountains have such a
wonderful green colour.
Faery Arrows.
If ever you should find your way to North Uist, you will
be told of the tiny arrows, beautifully fashioned, that the
faeries are believed to have hurled at the children of men.
A specimen of these faery arrows was picked up at
Lochmaddy some years ago by a young girl who, on going
out into the darkness to gather an armful of peats, heard
something whizz through the air, and drop at her feet.
The story is told in Skye of how a man and his wife,
while reaping their corn by the light of the moon, were
perturbed by a happening they could not explain at the time.
Without the slightest warning, the sickle fell to the ground
and the man's hand was found to be bleeding, as though
some sharp instrument had pierced it. In the belief that
their labouring by moonlight might have given oflience to
the faeries living in great numbers in this locality, man and
wife returned to their croft, resolved that never again
would they reap after sundown.
It was not until the following morning, when they
returned to the scene of their reaping, that they found a
faery dart {saighead sithe) lying among the corn. And so
they concluded that they had offended the faeries by labouring
in moonlight.
The folk-tale still survives in Lome of a local man who,
while trimming a ditch by the roadside with a sharp-pointed
spade, suddenly heard something hit the spade. He then
proceeded to search the ditch for the object that he thought
might have accounted for the strange occurrence. Soon he
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