Upon the strand she fainting fell.
Then from her trance when she awoke,
In her soft hand she seized his hand:
"Although for wild birds thou art food,
Thy last exploit was nobly done."
'Tis from that death which he met then.
The name is given to Loch Mai;[1]
That name it will for ever bear.
Men have called it so till now. A sigh.
The rowan-tree bearing fruit of exceptional power, Mai's desire that Fraoch should pluck it, and Fraoch's consequent fight with a monstrous guardian of the tree, are features that recall the legend of Diarmuid. The knife of gold in Fraoch's hand, though used for attacking the monster not the tree, suggests the golden sickle with which the sacred olive of Zeus at Olympia was cut[2] or, to come nearer home, the golden sickle with which the druids cut the mistletoe,[3] not to mention the new dirk with which the same plant was cut by the Hays at Errol.[4] The location of the rowan-tree at the bottom of Loch Mai, like that of the Tree of Virtue at the bottom of the Lake of Wonders in the tale of Cod, or that of the Tree of the Green Cloth at the bottom of Loch Guirr,[5] implies that Fraoch's exploit was in the nature of a visit to the Otherworld. Diarmuid too, according to a West Highland folk-tale,[6] had sunk to the bottom of the sea in his quest for the daughter of King Under-waves and had there obtained for her the magic cup of King Wonder-plain, returning afterwards in safety to Erin. A more famous
- ↑ The Rev. T. M'Lauchlan ib. p. 54 n. 3 says: 'It is generally believed in Perthshire that the scene of Fraoch's death was in Glen Cuaich, a valley lying between those of the Tay and the Almond. We have a Loch Fraoch there … I cannot find any lake in Scotland now called Loch Mai, although Loch Fraoch may have been so called.'
- ↑ Folk-lore xv. 400.
- ↑ Plin. nat. hist. 16. 251.
- ↑ Folk-lore xvii. 318 ff.
- ↑ Ib. 347 n. 3.
- ↑ J. F. Campbell Popular Tales of the West Highlands iii. 403 ff., Lady Gregory Gods and Fighting Men p. 319 ff.
