Popular Tales of the West Highlands Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 edition. Excerpt: ... to dance. The neighbours bought the horn and tried Feaktan Na HAdharc, the trick of the horn, on their own wives. They killed them, and blew, but though they were blowing still, their wives would not get up. Then they caught Hugh and put him in a sack, to throw him over a fall. They went into an inn to drink beer. A drover came past, and Hugh in the sack began, --"I am going to the good place, I am going to the good place," etc. "Where art thon going?" said the drover. "It is," said Hugh, "they are going to put me where I will feel neither cold, nor weariness, nor hunger more. I shall not feel them, nor thirst." "Wilt thou let me there?" said the drover. And so the man was enticed into the sack, and thrown over the fall, and they heard him saying, "o Choch o Choch 's o Mo Cheann Mo CHEANti1 alas, alas and oh, my head my head " When the neighbours came home and found Hugh counting money, and heard that he had got it at the bottom of the fall, they got sacks, and the one threw the other over the fall till there was but one left, and he tied the sack to his sides and threw himself over, and every one of them was killed; and Eobhan lurach got the farms to himself, and the cattle that his neighbours had, and he took the possession of both artfully, Aqus Oabii E Seilbu Ann DA QU 8EOLDA. The incident of getting riches by accusing people of killing a dead body is common to one of the African tales. Appendix to Norse tales--" The Ear of Corn and the Twelve Men." The selling of something valueless, as a source of riches, is common to a story which I used to hear as a child, from John Piper my guardian, and which I lately found in another shape, in an English translation of Master...