FAIRY DRESSES.
The Fairies, both Celtic and Teutonic, are dressed in green. In Skye, however, though Fairy women, as elsewhere, are always dressed in that colour, the men wear clothes of any colour like their human neighbours. They are frequently called daoine beaga ruadh, “little red men,” from their clothes having the appearance of being dyed with the lichen called crotal, a common colour of men’s clothes, in the North Hebrides. The coats of Fairy women are shaggy, or ruffled (caiteineach), and their caps curiously fitted or wrinkled. The men are said, but not commonly, to have blue bonnets, and in the song to the murdered Elfin lover, the Elf is said to have a hat bearing “a smell of honied apples.” This is perhaps the only Highland instance of a hat, which is a prominent object in the Teutonic superstition, being ascribed to the Fairies.