J.F.Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands describes a Bauchan who was a kind of tutelary spirit of the Macdonalds of Morar, but who was extremely hostile to anyone else in the neighbourhood.

He hovered about Morar House, which is on the mainland just opposite the point of Sleat on Skye, but at night he commonly haunted 'the Smooth Mile', a path which ran from the river of Morar to Morar House, and made it a very perilous track for any solitary man to tread at night-time. The mutilated body of any man who ventured there was likely to be found in the morning. The Bauchan never did any harm to women or children and never appeared to any going in company, so that it was useless to send out a party against him. This went on for a long time, until at length Coluinn gun Cheann killed a friend and distant cousin of the Macleods of Raasay, a very dear friend of 'Big John, the son of Macleod of Raasay', a man of remarkable strength and prowess. He told his stepmother of his friend's death and sought her counsel, as he always did, and she advised him to attempt the destruction of the monster. He met the Coluinn just after sunset and they fought all night long. Before dawning Big John got the victory, and he was anxious to see the thing he had been fighting, so he tucked it under his arm to carry it to the light. The Coluinn had never been heard to speak, but it spoke now, and said,

'Let me go'.

'I will not let you go', said Big John.

It was getting towards daybreak, and like all ghosts and bogles the Coluinn could not abide the break of day.

It said again,

'Let me go, and I shall never be seen here any more'.

Big John had pity on him and said,

'If thou swear that on the book, on the candle and on the black stocking, you may be gone'.

And he made the Bauchan swear it on his knees, then he released it and it flew away lamenting:

Far from me is the hill of Ben Hederin,

Far from me is the pass of murmuring...

He sang it over and over until his voice faded into the distance, and women and children at Morar still sing the lament. Campbell identifies this Bauchan with that which served Callum Mor Mackintosh in the story of the Bauchan, but he does not give the reasons for this identification.

[Motifs: E422.1.1; E461]