The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #159967   Message #3792413
Posted By: Richie
27-May-16 - 08:25 AM
Thread Name: DTStudy: Molly Bawn (Polly Vaughn)
Subject: RE: DTStudy: Molly Bawn (Polly Vaughn)
Hi Julia

Gilchrist commented:

Ossian was the son of an enchanted doe, and his mysterious counsel to his mother:

Mas tu mo mhathair's gur fiadh thu
Sirich mu'n oirich a' ghrian ort.
(Mother mine, if deer thou be,
Arise ere sun arise on thee)

She added later: Dr. G. Henderson in his Survivals in Belief among Ike Celts says (p. 70) that "Ossian's advice to his mother, in her animal-form, that she should get up before sunrise, implies that otherwise she was liable to be shot by hunters; to be up ere sunrise was a sort of taboo comparable to some of the restrictions of the Early Irish kings in the Book of Rights."

Beside the Fallow Doe in the Three Ravens there's also this stanza in Leesome Brand:

"Ye'll take your arrow and your bow,
And ye will hunt the deer and roe;
Be sure ye touch not the white hynde,
For she is o' the woman kind."

See also The White Hind by Sir James Fergusson about the search for the White Hind in Argyll in 1621.

Richie