Hello and welcome to Fireside Folklore, your mini Stories of Scotland treat for betwixt bigger episodes. I'm Annie and I'm a fairy.

And I'm Jenny, a very well-trained dog. I like to think of fireside folklore as being the snacks between the meals. They are delightful wee morsels of wonder,

like a cheese string. This week, we're both telling stories about fairy dogs. Fairy dogs are usually seen as independent

and wild animals. While they are sometimes domestic dogs of fairies, they usually have their

own supernatural fairy powers. Fairy dogs pop up all over Scottish mythology, but we first came across the

following tales in the wonderful book Legends of the Cairngorms by Affleck Grey, who dedicated

the stories to his grandchildren, which is really sweet. We're retelling these stories in our own

voices and bringing these old tales back to life.

Our first story is a tale of the last of its kind, because it's about the final ever fairy dog,

seen in the cairngorms by human eyes about 200 years ago.

The tale begins near the old ruined barracks of Ruthven,

which, if you look upon it nowadays, you'll see a great defensive structure, but it's totally ruthless.

It sits ruined atop a hill surveying the lands.

It was built by the British army in fear of the Jacobite uprisings, but now it is simply crumbling.

However, we are going way back in time, and the lands round Ruthven are broad, undulating into the Kurngar Mountains, with wide glens and wild woodlands of the Caledonian forest.

And within this vastness, the fairy dogs were known to dwell.

These fairy dogs were the supernatural colour of green. What else could they be?

They were as green as the moss on the ground or the

leaves up high. They were neither good nor evil. They were simply another part of nature. However,

these fairy dogs had one chilling trait that meant people would avoid the areas where they were

known to roam,

or they would turn around if they saw the giant paw prints of the fairy dogs in the earth.

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