Note 11 — Chapter I · THE FAIRIES.1

The use of some kind of mill, generally a hand mill, is as universal as the growth of grain, and the necessity for reducing the solid grain into the more palatable form of meal no doubt led to its early invention. The Gaelic meil (or beil), to grind, the English mill, the Latin mola, and the Greek μυλη, show that it was known to the Aryan tribes at a period long anterior to history. The handmill mentioned in Scripture, worked by two women, seems the same with that still to be found in obscure corners in the West Highlands.

An instrument so useful to man in the less advanced stages of his civilization could not fail to be looked upon with much respect and good feeling. In the Hebrides it was rubbed every Saturday evening with a wisp of straw ‘for payment’ of its benevolent labours (sop ga shuathadh ris a bhrà ga pàigheadh). Meal ground in it is coarser than ordinary meal, and is known as gairbhein.