Deviation Actions
Description
MacGregor, Alasdair Alpin, The Ghost Book: Strange Hauntings in Britain (London: Robert Hale Ltd., 1955), pp. 57-58:
This creature is usually said to be about the size of a two-year-old heifer. As a rule, it is green in colour, though toward the feet the green takes on a lighter hue. White specimens have been seen; but these are rare. Some faery dogs possess a tail. This they coil over their backs, as in the case of the creature Morag MacCartney saw in South Uist. Others have a flat tail, “plaited like the straw of a pack-saddle,” I once read somewhere. The bark of this terrifying quadruped is loud and clamorous. They say in the Isles that it barks but thrice. Since there is a fair interval of time between each bark, the human being, terror-stricken at hearing it, is often afforded an opportunity of reaching safety before the final and fatal bark is heard.
The faery dog’s motion is as rhythmic as it is silent. Moreover, the creature always moves in a straight line. Its footprints, some aver, are very large. Others declare them to be no larger than the spread of the average adult’s hand. These footprints have been seen in the snow, like those of the Abominable Snowman in the Himalaya. They are also found in muddy places, and upon the sands of the seashore.
In Tiree, round the peatfire of a winter’s evening, one may still hear the story of how an islander, when crossing the moor near Kennavarra, came within sight of a strange creature crouching by a sand-dune, and, in order to avoid it, instantly altered the direction in which he was proceeding home. Putting his courage to the test the following morning, he returned to the dune to discover upon it imprints as of a huge, pawed animal. These were as large as the spread of his palm . . . Elsewhere in Tiree there is a cavern known traditionally as the Lair of the Faery Dog, whence the barking of a huge dog has been heard. Then, one day a shepherd, sheltering with his dogs behind a rock in Lorne, noticed in a hollow beside him what he thought were two fairly large pups. However, when he ventured to examine them more closely, he was startled at finding that they were considerably larger than his own fully-grown collies. Certain now that they were the whelps of a faery dog, he departed with alacrity, lest the mother should make her appearance.
. . . An old woman searching the beach of Tiree for driftwood, just at that low-lying part of the island known as the Reef, once heard a faery hound barking ominously. When telling of her experience, she used to describe how a neighbour, accompanying her at the time, instantly seized her by the arm and hurried home with her, lest the faery dog, having barked thrice, overtook the hearer.