The Hair and the Dog

Abstract

AT first it was somewhat startling to discover close parallels between a group of tales about deer-hunters in the Scottish Highlands who encountered supernatural women in the mountains, and another series of hunting tales from the Caucasus which dealt with similar themes. It seemed worthwhile to compare these two sets of tales and to consider two main problems. First there is that of distribution since, in Britain, the Scottish tales seem to be confined to the Highland region and no similar examples have appeared from the Lowlands or from England and Wales. The second and major point of interest for the authors is the interpretation of the nature of the supernatural women who play a part in the tales. The Scottish tales were mostly recorded at the end of the nineteenth century. James MacDougall, minister at Duror from 1871 until his death in 1906, took down a number in Gaelic and these, together with his English translations, are found in a collection entitled Folk Tales and Fairy Lore, edited by his friend George Calder, minister at Strathfillan, and published in 1910.' Some similar tales are told by J. G. Campbell, minister at Tiree, in Superstitions of the Highlands, which was published in 1900.2 All three were keenly interested in local folklore and Celtic studies and Calder is described by Alan Bruford as a 'conscientious and scholarly editor' and a trained Celtic scholar.3 Some of the tales were told of well known local hunters, such as Donald MacIan, famous for his great skill with the bow.4 The supernatural woman in the mountains is usually called a hag or glaistig, and is represented as the guardian of the deer, which she herds and milks. She sometimes resents the shooting of her animals by the hunter, particularly if he kills the hinds. James MacDougall records a tale about Donald Cameron, who was told by the glaistig of Buinach not to be so heavy on the hinds, but in this case Donald was quick with his answer: 'I never killed a hind where I could find a stag, and he had no further trouble with the tall glaistig whom he met driving a herd of hinds through the forest.5 Sometimes, however, the glaistig might permit one of her animals to be shot. Donald MacIan of Lochaber got the better of her with the help of his dogs and he was allowed to shoot the White Hind, which he had long pursued without success. As he let his arrow fly, he heard the glaistig cry out 'in a spiteful tone' 'Stick in the stomach, arrow!' 6 Another tale, retold more recently by Affleck Gray, is of two poachers who wounded a hind and then were overtaken by a blizzard. They took refuge in a hut where there was an old woman, who told them that they must leave a fat hind for her on the first Monday of each month on a certain cairn in Atholl during the hind season.' It seems that some shooting was permitted as long as an offering was made to the herder of the deer. The place where the crucial encounter with the glaistig takes place is a bothy, a little hut on the mountain where hunters might spend the night in bad weather. Sometimes the woman is already there beside a fire and sometimes one or more hunters have kindled a fire and are roasting some of their meat when she comes up, looking frail and old, and asks leave to warm herself by the fire. Once invited in, she attempts to persuade the hunter to tie up his dogs in case they attack her, and offers him one of her own