The Bridegroom's Burial

A young woman in Islay was promised in marriage to a rich neighbour, and the marriage day was fixed. She had a sweetheart who, on hearing this, said to a brother older than himself that if he had means to keep a wedding feast he would run away with the bride. His brother promised him all he had, being thirty-five gallons of whisky. On getting this, the young man took the bride away, and gave a nuptial feast himself that lasted a month. At the end of that time, when he was taking a walk with his wife, an eddy wind was seen coming. As it passed the young man was seized with sickness, which in a short time ended in his death. Before his death his wife said to him, “If the dead have feeling, I ordain that you be not a night absent from your bed.”[30] The night after the funeral he came back, to the consternation of his wife. He told her not to be alarmed, that he was still sound and healthy (_slàn fallain_), that he had only been taken in the eddy by the Lady of the Green Island (_Baintighearna ’n Eilein Uaiue_), and that by throwing a dirk at the eddy wind, when next she encountered it, she would get him back again. The wife threw a dirk at the next eddy wind she saw, and her husband dropped at her feet. He told he had been with the light people (_sluagh eutrom_), and in the tomb in which they supposed him buried would be found only a log of alder wood (_maide fearna_). His wife’s relatives were sent for, and they came, thinking the young widow had lost her wits through grief. The grave was opened, and an alder stick found in the coffin instead of