vis a' chnaumh gheal). "The black beetle to the white bone," he cried out. The people looked at him, and said that the strange man of the Reay country was through other (mad). The next day Farquhar stood at the gate, and cried, "The black beetle to the white bone." And the king sent to know who it was that cried outside, and what was his business. "The man," they said, "was a stranger, and men called him the physician." So the king, who was wild with pain, said to call him in, and Farquhar stood before the king and aye. "The black beetle to the white bone," said he. And so it was proved. The doctors, to keep the king ill and get their money, put at whiles a black beetle into the wound which the king had in his knee; and the beast was eating his bone and his flesh, and made him to cry day and night. Then the doctors took it out again for fear he should die; and when he was better they put it back again that it might eat him more. This Farquhar. knew by the serpent's wisdom that he had whenever he laid his finger under his teeth. And the king was cured, and had all the doctors hung. Then he said to Farquhar that he would give him lands or gold or whatever he asked. Then Farquhar asked him the king's daughter, and all the isles that the sea runs round from Point of Storr to Stromness in the Orkneys. So the king gave him a grant of all the isles. But Farquhar the physician never came to be Farquhar the king, for he had an ill-wisher that poisoned him, and he died.—(J. MacLeod, Laxford.)
[I have taken the story as it was told me, bad grammar and all, and got the chief sentences in Gaelic. It was by serpents' tree that Michael Scott got his knowledge, and the wisdom of the mouth is said, in county Clare, to have belonged to Fingal, who began life as a herd-boy on the Shin. Some giants came to him one day, and bade him roast a fish for them, threatening to kill him if he burnt it. He did so on one small spot. On this spot he quickly put his finger, and as quickly transferred the hot finger to his mouth (putting it under his teeth). A gift of omniscience was the result, and this quality became the foundation of his future greatness. Cassandra had been licked by a serpent before she became a prophetess.]
