soldiers took him then, and conveyed him to Inverness, where he was thrown into prison to await his trial.  While he was in prison he had a dream; he saw himself sitting and drinking with Alastair MacCholla, and Donald MacRonald Vor.  The latter was the man of whom it was said that he had two hearts; he was taken prisoner at Falkirk and executed at Carlisle.  Donald was more fortunate than his friend, and was finally set free.

It was after this that the bocan began to trouble him; and although Donald never revealed to any man the secret of who the bocan was (if indeed he knew it himself), yet there were some who professed to know that it was a “gillie” of Donald’s who was killed at Culloden.  Their reason for believing this was that on one occasion the man in question had given away more to a poor neighbour than Donald was pleased to spare.  Donald found fault with him, and in the quarrel that followed the man said, “I will be avenged for this, alive or dead”.

It was on the hill that Donald first met with the bocan, but he soon came to closer quarters, and haunted the house in a most annoying fashion.  He injured the members of the household, and destroyed all the food, being especially given to dirtying the butter (a thing quite superfluous, according to Captain Burt’s description of Highland butter).  On one occasion a certain Ronald of Aberardair was a guest in Donald’s house, and Donald’s wife said, “Though I put butter on the table for you tonight, it will just be dirtied”.  “I will go with you to the butter-keg,” said Ronald, “with my dirk in my hand, and hold my bonnet over the keg, and he will not dirty it this night.”  So the two went together to fetch the butter, but it was dirtied just as usual.

Things were worse during the night and they could get no sleep for the stones and clods that came flying about the house.  “The bocan was throwing things out of the walls, and they would hear them rattling at the head of Donald’s bed.”  The minister came (Mr. John Mor MacDougall was his name) and slept a night or two in the house, but the bocan kept away so long as he was there.  Another visitor, Angus MacAlister Ban, whose grandson told the tale, had more experience of the bocan’s reality.  “Something seized his two big toes, and he could not get free any more than if he had been caught by the smith’s tongs.  It was the bocan, but he did nothing more to him.”  Some of the clergy, too, as well as laymen of every rank, were witnesses to the pranks which the spirit carried on, but not even Donald himself ever saw him in any shape whatever.  So famous did the affair become that Donald was nearly ruined by entertaining all the curious strangers who came to see the facts for themselves.

In the end Donald resolved to change his abode, to see whether he could in that way escape from the visitations.  He took all his possessions with him except a harrow, which was left beside the wall of the house, but before the party had gone far on the road the harrow was seen coming after them.  “Stop, stop,” said Donald; “if the harrow is coming after us, we may just as well go back again.”  The mystery of the harrow is not explained, but Donald did return to his home, and made no further attempt to escape from his troubles in this way.