{"collection":"Northern European Mythology","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/celt/pt3/pt319.htm","path":"neu/celt/pt3/pt319.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/pt3/pt319.htm","text":"From Catherine Macfarlane in 1809. John Dewar.\nTHERE was one before now whose name was T\u00f3mas na h \u00f2rdaig, and he was no bigger than the thumb of a stalwart man. T\u00f3mas went once to take a walk, and there came a coarse shower of hailstones, and T\u00f3mas went in under a dock leaf; and there came a great drove of cattle past, and there was a great brindled bull amongst them, and he was eating about the docken, and he ate T\u00f3mas of the Thumb. His mother and his father missed him, and they went to seek him. They were going past the brindled bull, and quoth T\u00f3mas na h \u00f2rdaig,\n\"Ye are there a seeking me,\n Through smooth places, and moss places;\n And here am I a lonely one,\n Within the brindled bull.\"\nThen they killed the brindled bull, and they sought T\u00f3mas na h \u00f2rdaig amongst the paunches and entrails of the bull, but they threw away the great gut in which he was.\nThere came a carlin the way, and she took the great gut, and as she was going along she went over a bog.\nT\u00f3mas said something to her, and the old wife threw away the great gut from her in a fright.\nThere came a fox the way, and he took with him the gut, and T\u00f3mas shouted\n\"Bies taile\u00f9! the fox. Bis taile\u00f9! the fox.\"\n[paragraph continues] Then the dogs ran after the fox, and they caught him, and they ate him and though they ate the gut they did not touch T\u00f3mas na h \u00f2rdaig.\nT\u00f3mas went home, where his mother and his father were, and he it was indeed that had the queer story for them.\n_________\nThis varies from the book adventures of our old friend Tom Thumb, who is now supposed to have been the dwarf of King Arthur. The story comes from Glenfalloch, which is not far from Dumbarton, which was, according to family tradition, the birth-place of King Arthur's son. It was told to Dewar by a girl who took charge of him when a child, and it is known to one other man whom I know. I used to hear the adventures of \"Comhaoise Ordaig\" (Thumb's co-temporary), from my piper nurse myself, but I was so young at the time that I have forgotten all but the name.\nThe cry of \"bis taileu\" may still be heard in the mouths of herd laddies addressing their collies, and it maybe the same as \"tally-ho!\" for which a French derivation has been sought and found--\"tallis hors.\" I would rather imagine King Arthur, and his knights, and his dwarf, shouting an old Celtic hunting cry, and red-coated sportsmen keeping it up till now, than trace it to Norman-French; but in any case, here is something like tally-ho in the mouth of Tom Thumb, and in a glen where tally-ho has never been heard.\nGaelic omitted\n...","title":"Popular Tales of the West Highlands Vol. III: LXIX. Thoma...","type":"page"}