Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/365

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Collectanea.
343

Laxey, and sometimes even the lives of the men. The farmers and crofters, too, had often to thank him that they were able to gather their flocks down from the hillsides into places of safety. Like the Fynoderee, the Night-Man was always ready to help the people in every way he could, and many a piece of work would he do for them while they were in their beds asleep.

Once on a time he took a notion that he could give the warning of storms that were coming on, to more of the people in the gills around, if he could find a way to get on to the breast of Lhergy Grawe, so he took a whole month of planning, and at last he made a big chariot with two little wheels on one side and two big wheels on the other, and with it he was able to go on the sides of the Lhergy without any fear of getting capsized, and he had the seat hanging to the frame on strips of hide to save him from getting bumped going over the rough places on his road. Now he was putting the horses to one end to go, and then putting them to the other end to go back, and that was always keeping his chariot safe. After that the whole of Glen Roy and the Granane, and Glen Drink, as well as the Laxey gill, were able to look out in time. The spot where he was making his stand was right on the point of the breast of Lhergy Grawe. It was there he would blow his horn. One time a young man of the name of Joe Steveson was coming home late one still September night, and the moon shining bright on Lhergy Grawe, when he heard the horn of the Dooinney-Oie. He saw something strange shining in the ling on the brow of the mountain. He crossed over the river and climbed up the Lhergy to the place, and for sure there was the bugle horn the Dooinney-Oie was using left behind on the brow. But Joe, after looking well at it, though careful not to try it, was too terrified to carry it away with him, so he hid it. The Dooinney-Oie came back that night, and when he found that his horn was gone he went into a terrible rage, and the noise that he made was something to be remembered. The gills were echoing to his cries like rolls of thunder, and the people said that he was that wild that fire was flying out of his mouth. Poor Steveson got such a fright that he never did any more good.

And one night, when the Night-Man had just come to his stand on Lhergy Grawe, a Baldhoon man who had often vexed him by