2 88 Notes on Sport and Travel i 



a cog of milk ; and it took it from her, and set it 

 down on the ground, and lapped it like a dog. 

 When the shepherd came home, and saw the awfu' 

 beast on the floor, he went almost off his head for 

 fear, and felt a motion in his heart to attack it, as 

 if it had been a wolf, and the dogs snarled, and 

 yelled, and bristled up their backs, as if they saw 

 something uncanny ; and their snarling so startled 

 the thing that it sprang up and fled over the moor 

 like a stag. 



' Another time, a forester met it, or another one, 

 on Morven, and talked to it. The creature told 

 him that it fed on grass, like the deer, and that it 

 had kept the forest since it had killed a herd-boy 

 in Dunrobin Glen, and that it believed it would 

 never go to heaven. The last one that was seen 

 gave old John Pope, the forester, a sair fleg.^ He 

 and another had gone to sleep in a bit bothy on 

 Ben Ormin, and were awakened by an awful yell 

 outside, and a screeching voice saying, in Gaelic, 

 " My bed ! my bed ! " and then the door opened, 

 and something came in. John Pope was not to be 

 daunted by man nor de'il, and so he grappled with 

 it, and a sair tussle they had, for though John was 

 the strongest man in Sutherland, the thing was as 

 strong as the iron and as hard as Brora stone under 

 his fingers. The ither forester took up a gun, but 

 could not put out, for it was as mirk as pick, and he 

 only knew where the two were by the noise they 



1 This took place in 1746. 



