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

THE BROWNIE
and your clan that you had me with you than against you !
" In very truth " ! conckided Sir James.
Brownies of the Great Glen.
Until comparatively recent times there were several
Brownies in Glen Moriston ; and they all were renowned for
their capacity for work. Farmers observed that, however
much corn was put out for them at night, it was all threshed
by morning. That occasionally Brownies expected some
recompense for their toil is shown by the fact that a Brownie,
who used to assist a farmer in Glen Moriston and then
deserted, frequently returned to the scene of his former
activities during the night-time, and disturbed the farmer's
repose by exclaiming at his window :
" If Brownie wont be getting bread and a hood,
Brownie will not be working any more."
In the Great Glen of Scotland there were many Brownies
and I have it on reliable authority that some of them still
reside there. One of the best known was the little fellow
ministering to the needs of the inmates of the Old Castle of
Invergarry. Nothing has been heard of him in recent years,
however. More than a decade has passed since anyone has
seen either the Brownie associated with old Cullachy House,
once the residence of the Erasers of Abertarff, or of the
Brownie who scoured the pots and pans in old Inchnacardoch
House, near Fort Augustus. The Brownie of Cullachy
House was known both among mankind and among his own
kind for the readiness with which he took offence. His usual
mode of showing displeasure was by shifting the furniture
about with a great commotion during the small hours, and
duly replacing it by daybreak. Not so very long ago, there
lived at Fort Augustus a native who knew the Cullachy
Brownie intimately, and who was convinced that, by his
noisy, nocturnal activities, he manifested his resentment
toward strangers, who happened to be sojourning at
Cullachy.
Near Moniack Castle there stands a house, now in ruins,
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