Hardback book `Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland` by John Gregorson Campbell. The following extract is a transcription from the book.

Fairy dogs (‘Cu sith’)

The fairies often kept hounds as watchdogs, which sometimes accompanied fairy women on their expeditions or roamed about alone, making their lairs in the clefts of rocks.

Rev. John Gregorson Campbell described these dogs as being ‘as large as a two-year-old stirk’ with, in some cases, ‘a long tail rolled up in a coil on its back…Its immense footmarks [were] as large as the spread of a human hand…’ Some said its motion was silent; others that it made a noise like a galloping horse.

‘There is a considerable interval between each bark, and at the third (it only barks thrice) the terror-struck hearer is overtaken and destroyed, unless he has by that time reached a place of safety.’