Isle of Skye

I heard some folklore today, unprompted, and I hope the person who told it won’t mind me retelling it here. He said that when his father was young (this might be about 60 or more years ago) he lived on Skye for a while, and he’d gone on a long walk over the Cuilleans, accompanying a local man. It took them five hours to get across the mountains and his father then assumed they’d walk the flat way back, along the road. But he was very surprised when his guide said ‘well goodbye then’ and made to set off the way they’d come. It transpired that the short route home went past a green mound (where, my narrator said, there were, as we would say, fairies, but it was a bronze age burial mound) – and the guide was under no circumstances about to walk past it now that the dusk was falling. He would rather take the five hours back over the mountains in the dark. Which, according to the tale, he did.