nion had missed him, there found
him dancing with the fairies and dragged him out of the ring. The
unfortunate man, imagining it was the same night and that he was with
his companion, immediately asked if it were not better to go home. He
was offered some food, which he began to eat; but he had no sooner done
so than he mouldered away. A similar tradition attaches to a certain
yew-tree near Mathafarn in the parish of Llanwrin. One of two
farm-servants was lost at that spot, and found again, a year after,
dancing in a fairy-circle. On being dragged out he was asked if he did
not feel hungry. "No," he replied, "and if I did, have I not here in my
wallet the remains of my dinner that I had before I fell asleep?" He did
not know that a year had passed by. His look was like a skeleton; and as
soon as he had tasted food he too mouldered away.[125]

In Scotland the story is told without this terrible end. For example, in
Sutherlandshire we learn that a man who had been with a friend to the
town of Lairg to enter his first child's birth in the session-books, and
to buy a keg of whisky against the christening, sat down to rest at the
foot of the hill of Durcha, near a large hole from which they soon
heard a sound of piping and dancing. Feeling curious, he entered the
cavern, and disappeared. His friend was accused of murder, but being
allowed a year and a day to vindicate himself, he used to repair at dusk
to the fatal spot and call and pray. One day before the term ran out, he
sat, as usual, in the gloaming by the cavern, when, what seemed his
friend's shadow passed within it. It was his friend himself, tripping
merrily with the fairies. The accused man succeeded in catching him by
the sleeve and pulling him out. "Why could you not let me finish my
reel, Sandy?" asked the bewitched man. "Bless me!" rejoined Sandy, "have
you not had enough of reeling this last twelvemonth?" But the other
would not believe in this lapse of time until he found his wife sitting
by the door with a yearling child in her arms. In Kirkcudbrightshire,
one night about Hallowe'en two young ploughmen, returning from an
errand, passed by an old ruined mill and heard within music and dancing.
One of them went in; and nothing was seen of him again until a year
after, when his companion went to the same place, Bible in hand, and
delivered him from the evil beings into whose power he had fallen.[126]

The captive, however, does not always require to be sought f