Robin Oig had just given the preliminary "_Hoo-hoo!_" to urge forward
the loiterers of the drove, when there was a cry behind him.
"Stay, Robin--bide a blink. Here is Janet of Tomahourich--auld Janet,
your father's sister."
"Plague on her, for an auld Highland witch and spaewife," said a
farmer from the Carse of Stirling; "she'll cast some of her cantrips
on the cattle."
"She canna do that," said another sapient of the same
profession--"Robin Oig is no the lad to leave any of them, without
tying Saint Mungo's knot on their tails, and that will put to her
speed the best witch that ever flew over Dimayet upon a broomstick."
It may not be indifferent to the reader to know, that the Highland
cattle are peculiarly liable to be _taken_, or infected, by spells and
witchcraft, which judicious people guard against by knitting knots of
peculiar complexity on the tuft of hair which terminates the animal's
tail.
But the old woman who was the object of the farmer's suspicion, seemed
only busied about the drover, without paying any attention to the
flock. Robin, on the contrary, appeared rather impatient of her
presence.
"What auld-world fancy," he said, "has brought you so early from the
ingle-side this morning, Muhme? I am sure I bid you good even, and had
your God-speed, last night."
"And left me more siller than the useless old woman will use till you
come back again, bird of my bosom," said the sibyl.
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