FAIRY WOMEN AND DEER.
On the lands of Scalasdal in Mull, a deer was killed, which turned out afterwards to be a woman.
It is perhaps this belief in the metamorphosis of Fairy women and deer that was the origin of the tradition that Oisian’s mother was a deer. In Skye it is said that after the poet’s birth his mother could touch him but once with her tongue on the temple. On that corner (air an Oisinn sin) a tuft of fur like that of a deer grew, hence the poet’s name. An informant in the centre of Argyllshire said he did not hear Oisian’s mother was a deer, but he had heard the poet was nurtured by a deer. In the Northern Hebrides, a song is sometimes heard which Oisian is said to have composed to the deer.43