Bean Shith, Elle Woman, Or Woman Of Peace

A young man, named Callum, when crossing the rugged hills of _Ard-meadhonach_ (Middle Height), in Mull, fell in with some St. John’s wort (_Achlusan Challum-chille_), a plant of magic powers, if found when neither sought nor wanted. He took some of it with him. He had _dùcun_ (small swellings below the toes) on his feet, and on coming to a stream sat down and bathed them in the water. Looking up, he saw an ugly little woman, having no nostrils, on the other side of the stream, with her feet resting against his own. She asked him for the plant he had in his hand, but he refused to give it. She asked him to make snuff of it then and give her some. He answered, “What could she want with snuff, when she had no nostril to put it in?” He left her and went further on. As he did not come home that night his friends and neighbours next day went in search of him through the hills. He was found by his father asleep on the side of a _cnoc_, a small hillock, and when awakened, he thought, from the position of the sun, he had only slept a few minutes. He had, in fact, slept for twenty-four hours. His dog lay sleeping in the hollow between his two shoulders, and had ‘neither hair nor fur’ on. It is supposed it had lost the hair in chasing away the Fairies, and protecting its master.