SHADOW FOLK OF HEATHER HAUNTS. 



which Mrs. Grant of Laggan says were conical shaped, 

 rising in dry gravelly ground and thickly covered with 

 Heath. 



Geikie thus describes their haunts : "The mounds 

 rose so conspicuously from the ground, and whether 

 in summer heat or winter frost, wore ever an aspect so 

 smooth and green, where all around was rough with 

 dark moss-hags and sombre moor, that they seemed to 

 have been raised by no natural power, but to be in very 

 truth the work of elfin hands, designed at once to 

 mark and guard the entrance to the fairy world below. 

 The hapless wight who, lured by their soft verdure, 

 stretched himself to sleep on their slopes, sank gently 

 into their depths, and after a seven years' servitude in 

 fairyland awoke again on the self-same spot." 



Mrs. Grant furnishes the following legend con- 

 cerning one of these fairy hillocks, from which the 

 Highlanders were accustomed in their solitude to hear 

 issuing "the music of small sweet pipes" ; 



"A little girl had been innocently loved by a fairy 

 who dwelt in a tomhan near her mother's habitation. 

 She had three brothers who were the favorites of her 

 mother. She herself was treated harshly and taxed 

 beyond her strength ; her employment was to go every 

 morning and cut a certain quantity of turf from dry. 

 heathy ground for immediate fuel ; and this with some 

 uncouth and primitive implement. As she passed the 

 hillock which contained her lover, he regularly put out 

 his hand with a very sharp knife of such power that it 

 quickly and readily cut through all impediments. She 

 returned cheerfully and early with her load of turf, 

 and as she passed by the hillock she struck on it twice 

 170 



