from Michael Newton’s fantastic collection of folklore:

Into the Fairy Hill: Classic Folktales of the Scottish Highlands

Donald C. Macpherson, a native of Bohuntin, Lochaber, contributed this tale to the periodical An Gàidheal in 1872. It was one of the most popular items shared in the céilidhs of Brae Lochaber around the turn of the twentieth century. 

In order to gain a better understanding of the tale’s significance, it is useful to compare it to two other Gaelic variants: a version that Calum Maclean collected from noted tradition-bearer John “the Bard” MacDonald of Highbridge, Lochaber, in 1951, and a version collected in County Mayo, Ireland, for the Irish Folklore Commission in the early twentieth century. These all belong to a Gaelic ecotype based on the tale type AT-221 “The Legend of the Oldest Creature,” which was popular in Celtic literature and tradition. What might seem to be a quaint children’s tale has incorporated archaic motifs from Gaelic cosmology.

In all three tales, an unusually frigid Beltane morning sends someone on a quest to find out if there has ever been a colder Beltane. In both the Irish variant and that from John MacDonald, the first character to appear is the local manifestation of the chthonic goddess figure (Cailleach Bhéarrthach in Mayo and Cailleach Beinne Bhric in Lochaber), who helps to begin the quest. Although she has been lost to this variant, her presence in the ecotype indicates its mythic nature.

Beltane marks the end of the dark and cold half of the year, and the beginning of the light and warm half of the year. For a Beltane to be unusually cold suggests that there were unusual climactic conditions that broke the expected norms of the calendar’s cycles. Gearóid Ó Crualaoich suggests that this refusal of the winter to yield to the summer may be an ancient memory of the Ice Age. The salmon asserts that even those who survived that extreme event suffered losses.

The place where the salmon is found in the Irish variant of this tale is also significant: Eas Rua (anglicized as “Assaroe”), where Fionn mac Cumhaill ate the salmon of wisdom (see the tale “How Fionn Got His Psychic Powers” in the next chapter). This association underlines the role of the salmon as a keeper and bestower of wisdom, as is befitting for the oldest of elders. The similarity between the name of Eas Rua in Ireland and the river Ruaidh in Lochaber likely helped to relocalize the tale in Scotland.

The name of the bird at Bunroy also requires comment, as there is a pun lost to translation. I have used the term “dipper-bird” in English for what is also called the “water-ouzel,” a bird that can dive, swim, and walk in the water. In Gaelic it is called the gobha dubh, which literally means “black smith.” That is why the eagle is told to find the bird at the smithy.

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There was once a great eagle elder dwelling in a peak in the middle of Loch Treig, where her kind often was. She was grey with old age for as long as she could remember. And so, because of that, she expected that she was the oldest creature alive in her era.

But to be sure that she did not have a contemporary who had survived somewhere, she decided, at the first chance she could get, to travel around.

That year there came the very coldest Beltane Eve she had ever felt or seen, and she thought that would give her a good excuse to put her plan into action. And early in the morning of that very Beltane Day, rather than any other day, before other birds had tasted water, she started on her journey’s quest.

She asked every living being she met, who appeared to be old, “Did you ever see a Beltane Eve as cold as it was last night?”

But not one had. However, the day had just begun and she kept moving on, without rest, until a kindly wren elder met her.

“Welcome to the wren, on this bright Beltane day,” she said. “Did you ever see a Beltane Eve as cold as it was last night?”

Although the form and complexion of the wren was old, he was not aware that he had seen such a night. He did not know of any creature that was older than himself, but he had heard that there was an old dipper-bird a long time ago at Bunroy, and if he were still alive, it was probable that he had seen the likes of it, if it had ever come. And he pointed out the way to her.

She gave thanks to the wren, and she took off for the smithy at Bunroy.

She arrived but there was nothing there but a cold ruin: everyone, high and low, had departed, except the dipper-bird, and he himself had long since become blind with old age, and had made a hole in the anvil cleaning his beak.

She gave a Beltane greeting to the dipper-bird, and she explained the reason for her journey.

“Did you ever see,” she said, “a Beltane Eve as cold as it was last night?”

The dipper-bird made a sad shrug, and he said that he had never seen one, and that he never heard of the likes of it, but that there was an elderly stag frequenting Coille Innse and that its bristles had been grey with old age from his earliest memories as a fledgling fluttering through the bushes.

“Many is the time since then,” he said, “that he has come to pay me a visit to while away the long winter’s evening, and to give me news about the state of the country. But that stopped. The last time that he was here, old age had come so heavily on him that I’m afraid that he cannot move very much. We spent so much time together as neighbors that I take great pleasure, as you will understand, in his aged bellowing, even if it is hoarse, when I hear it at twilight. He is the most elderly creature that survives today as far as I know, and if you speak to him on your way, tell him the reason for your journey and that you saw me. Unless he has declined greatly, he will make you entirely welcome.”

He then recounted to her the notable matters that happened during the era of the chieftains he remembered seeing, and the great deeds of his ancestors, and how his children had prospered. As they were sharing the morning together, he urged and exhorted her to visit him the next time that she was going off to Coille Innse.

And she found the stag stooped over in the shelter of an old alder stump with icicles in his nostrils.

She gave him a Beltane greeting, and she explained the reason for her journey: “Did you ever see,” she said, “a Beltane Eve as cold as it was last night?”

The stag was so old that he drooped his antler on his shoulder blade but he said very sluggishly that he could not remember that he had ever seen one.

He was warm and welcoming to her, and he asked kindly about the dipper-bird. They then spent a while discussing ancient lore and genealogy, and the eagle was going to assert her rank as the elder of the two. But just as they were parting, the stag said that there was a one-eyed salmon in the little loch of Coire na Ceanainn that he knew when he was a very young calf at his mother’s feet traveling over Làirig Leacach from Beinn a’ Bhric.

“Even then the dullness of age weighed heavily upon him,” he said, “and if you have time, it will be worthwhile for you to see him: he is a great talker.”

So it was that she took off again, and she reached the little loch.

She drank a toast of acquaintance to the one-eyed salmon and she explained the reason for her journey: “Did you ever see a Beltane Eve as cold as it was last night?”

The salmon said that he had: there was one other night that it was so cold that, although he was vigorous and at the height of his strength, he had to begin to leap and jolt through the water to keep himself warm.

“And,” he said, “on one of the leaps that I took, I jumped out of the water and struck the side of my head against the dark flagstone over there. But the depth of the freeze was so intense that before I could pull myself back, my eye stuck to the flagstone, and that left has me one-eyed to this day.”

When the eagle heard that, she gave the rank of age to the salmon. And she returned to the middle peak to tell her tale to her chicks.

They saw many a fair, sunny day after that but for as long as she could flap a wing, not a Beltane Day, whether hot or cold, went by without her going for a while to visit those excellent elders: the dipper-bird, the stag, and the salmon.