THE BAKER OF BEAULY.
A Highland Version of the Tale of the "Three Precepts".
THE following Highland version of the folk-tale of the "Three Precepts" was got by me in 1887 from Dr. Corbet, Beauly, and published in the original Gaelic in the Celtic Magazine for July of that year. As I see that Mr. Jacobs is unaware of the existence of this Gaelic rendering of the tale, from the fact of his not mentioning it in his notes to the "Tale of Ivan" in his excellent book of Celtic Fairy Tales, I here give an English literal translation of it.
Dr. Corbet heard it nigh thirty years ago from the lips of a farm-hand of the name of MacCallum, resident then at Bogroy, near Inverness. An Aberdeen friend informed me that in his younger days—some two-score years ago—he remembered seeing the story printed on the old broadsheets, like the story of "Long Pack" and others, and sold at feeing markets and by pedlars throughout the country. Whether this Aberdeenshire English version was exactly the same as the Gaelic one here translated, my friend could not distinctly vouch; but the general outlines were certainly the same. That the story of the "Three Precepts" was known among the Gaels in mediaeval times, is evidenced by its being woven into the tale of the "Wanderings of Ulysses", of which indeed it forms the last and principal text. Dr. Kuno Meyer has published a corrected text and translation of this Gaelic-Irish piece,[1] and he
- ↑ Merugud Uilix Maicc Leirtis, The Irish Odyssey. D. Nutt, London, 1886.
