Excerpt from Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales In his tour through the Islands, Campbell Of Isla - my authority for these particulars - visited one of the Old story-tellers in his home. The man was far advanced in years, and he lived in a rude hut on the shore at South Uist. Campbell describes the scene in detail. The hut consisted of one room only. The fireplace was the floor, and the chimney a hole above it, - so that the air was dense with peat-smoke, whilst the rafters were hung with streamers and festoons of soot. The Old man himself had the manner Of a prao tised narrator, - he would chuckle at certain places in his story, and, like an Ancient Mariner or like one of the Weird Sisters, would lay a withered finger on the listener's knee when he came to the terrifying parts. A little boy in a kilt stood at his knee, gazing in his wrinkled face, and devouring every word. Whilst the story lasted, three wayfarers dropped in, listened for a while, and then proceeded on their way. The daylight streamed down the chimney, lighting up a tract in the blue mist Of the peat-smoke and falling on the white hair and brown wrinkled face Of the Old man, as he sat On a low stool by the fire, and on the rest Of the dwelling, with its furniture of boxes and box-beds, dresser, dishes, gear of all sorts, - until at last it faded away, through shades of deepening brown, to the black darkness of the smoked roof and the corner where the peat was stored. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.