DEER 127 



Professor MacKinnon says that the foregoing is "traditionally 

 connected with a creagh from Glenlyon, some two hundred years 

 ago." It is frequently referred to as a fonn sith or fairy song. 

 Anciently the hunter was admired as a person of manly courage, 

 who, in the pursuit of a livelihood, exerted the virtues of patience 

 and fortitude, and followed Nature into her most sublime retire- 

 ments. Herdsmen were then accounted the sons of "little men," 

 sordid, inferior beings, who preferred ease and safety to noble 

 daring and boundless variety, and were considered to be as 

 much below the hunter as the cattle they tended were inferior in 

 grace and agility to the deer which the others pursued. Interest, 

 however, reversed such opinions ; in process of time the maidens 

 boasted of the numerous herds of their lovers, and viewed the 

 huntsman as a poor wandering adventurer, who crawled with 

 " glunachain " on his bare knees for an existence. 



About the transition time this song seems to have been com- 

 posed ; the enamoured nymph, willing to think Colin as rich as 

 others, talks (or rather sings) in an obscure and figurative manner 

 of the " Cattle of Colin " (crodh Chailein), and pursues the metaphor 

 through many playful allusions to the deer, roes, fawns, etc., and 

 their manner of sporting and feeding, in a style too minute for 

 perfect translation. 



Ten verses of an amusing dialogue between a hunter and a 

 deer were composed by another Lochaber worthy, Donald 

 Cameron, Lochaber, many years ago. The tenor shows that the 

 Highlander and the deer looked upon each other with a suspicious 

 eye in the past as in the present day. One verse of each will 

 suffice : — 



An Sealgair, loq. 

 Na'm faighnin a so slaodadh, gu cul na craoibhe caorainn, 

 Gu'ra biodh mo ghunna craosach 'g a taomadh na do chorp. 



Am fiadh, ioq. 

 Gu'm b'fhearr dhuit cur 'na cliathadh, 'bhi 'g iomain cruidh na 'g 



am biathadh, 

 Na staoic de m' shithinn bhlionaich, 's nach fhiach i 'cur a'n phoit. 



Hunter, loq. 

 If hence I could but scramble to the back of that rowan tree, 

 The contents of my deadly gun I'd empty into your body. 



Deer, loq. 

 'Tw^ere better for you to harrow and sow, or drive and feed the 



cows. 

 Than a steak of my tasteless venison, in the pot 'tis not worth 



while to boil. 



In a certain other poem a deer is made to say to the hunter, 

 " Glac an cuib (caib) 'us an crann, is cuir gu teann ri aran, tha do 

 chrodh amis a ghleann 's ro mhath an t-annlann bainne." Seize 



