Chapter XLII: The Leeching of Kayn's Leg

_Source._--MacInnes, _Folk-Tales from Argyleshire_, vii., combined with Campbell of Tiree's version.

_Parallels._--The earliest version, from an Egerton MS. of the fifteenth century, has been printed by Mr. S. H. O'Grady in his _Silva Gadelica_, No. 20, with an English version, pp. 332-42. Mr. Campbell of Tiree has given a short Gaelic version in the _Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness_, 78-100. Campbell of Islay collected the fullest version of this celebrated story, which is to be found among his manuscript remains now in Edinburgh. Mr. Nutt has given his English abstract in _Folk-lore_, i. 373-7, in its original form. The story must have contained twenty-four tales or episodes of stories, nineteen of which are preserved in J. F. Campbell's version. For parallels to the various incidents, see Mr. Nutt's notes on MacInnes, pp. 470-3. The tale is referred to in MacNicol, _Remarks on Dr. Johnson's Journey to the Hebrides_, 1779.

_Remarks._--Nothing could give a more vivid idea of what might be called the organisation of the art of story-telling among the Celts than this elaborate tale. Mr. Nutt is inclined to trace it, even in its present form, back to the twelfth or thirteenth century. It occurs in an MS. of the fifteenth century in an obviously unoriginal form which shows that the story-teller did not appreciate the significance of many features in the folk-tale he was retelling, and yet it was orally collected by the great Campbell in 1871, in a version which runs to 142 folio pages. Formally, its interest consists in large measure in the curious framework in which the subsidiary stories are imbedded. This is not of the elaborate kind introduced into Europe from the East by the Crusades, but more _naive_, resembling rather, as Mr. Nutt points out to me, the loosely-knit narratives of Charles Lever in his earlier manner.