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

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
immediately altered the direction in which he was making
for home. Reflecting on this sinister spectacle the following
morning, he resolved to put his courage to the test, and
re-visit the sand-dune. Upon the sand at this spot he
discovered the imprints of a dog's paws, " as large as the
spread of his
distance, until
palm." The imprints he traced for some
they came to an end. He saw no dog anywhere,
nor any beast likely to have left marks of this kind
and so he concluded that the object he had seen the previous
evening was not of earthlv origin,
faery dog.
and must have been a
Lair of the Faery Dog.
By the shore elsewhere in Tiree there is a cavern known
traditionally as the Lair of the Faery Dog, whence the
barking of a huge dog has been heard. And a shepherd,
sheltering one day behind a rock in Lome, noticed in a
hollow beside him what he took to be two fairly large pups.
However, when he ventured to examine the pups more
closely, he was startled at finding that they were considerably
larger than his own full-grown collies. On his realising
them to be the whelps of a faery dog, he departed with all
celerity, lest the mother should make her appearance.
Tradition in Argyll has it that the shepherd's dogs on this
occasion exhibited the same apprehension as did their master.
And, then, there is the case of the old woman who, on
searching the beach of Tiree for driftwood, just at that part
of the island known as Reef, heard a faery hound barking
mysteriously and ominously. When telling of this weird
experience, she used to describe how a neighbour, who
accompanied her at the time, instantly seized her by the arm,
and hurried home with her-r-for, as I have said, it was
faithfully held in the Isles that, if the faery dog were heard
to bark thrice, it would assuredly overtake the hearer.
Yet another tale of the faery dog is told in Tiree. In the
days when the summer shieling still constituted a feature of
West Highland and Hebridean life, a family set out with its
cows for the pastures at the base of Heynish Hill, in the
south-west of Tiree. One night two young boys of the
38
;