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ANCIENT Eastern nations, we
have seen, used a system of lustration; they dedicated fountains to the sun.
By the ancient Persians water was worshipped; it is so now among the Hindus.
The river Indus was a god, and the Ganges remains an object of veneration.
The savage tribes of America worship the spirit of the waters, and,
according; to Gildas, the Britons rendered homage to streams and springs.
Worship of the water was
performed less by bodily prostrations or the use of verbal forms than by
propitiatory offerings. Seneca relates that on solemn festivals the priests
threw brass money into the springs of the Nile, while on these occasions
persons of opulence deposited in the waters portions of gold. Describing the
sacred spring of the Clitumnus, Pliny remarks that it was so pellucid that
one might count the pieces of money thrown into it which rested at the
bottom.
Small coins have been found
in the consecrated fountains both of Wales and Scotland. When in 1870 St
Querdon's Well, in the parish of Troqueer, Kirkcudbrightshire, was cleaned
and put in order, several hundred copper coins were found at the bottom. Of
these the oldest were of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but owing to the
extreme thinness of the earlier coins, it was evident that those deposited
at all earlier date must have rusted away. Some of the later coins belonged
to the reign of George III. But votive offerings at wells have more
generally consisted of objects of personal ornament or portions of wearing
apparel. Hall way, in his "Travels," describes the practice of rag-offering
at wells as common in Persia; while Mungo Park relates that he had found it
existing among some African tribes. Alike in the East and West, when
portions of garments were used, these were deposited by the margins of the
fountains, or attached to the boughs of small trees or plants which grew in
their vicinity. And so recently as the year 1860, Dr Arthur Mitchell, when
travelling in northern Scotland, found at the Well of Craiguck, in
Ross-shire, a bush hanging over the fountain of which the branches were hung
with bits of clothing, deposited by those who had made visits to the spring.
St Anthony's Well, near Edinburgh, is still resorted to by aged persons, in
the belief that by its use their complaints may be alleviated. Faith in the
supernatural power of Healing ascribed to ancient wells partially arose from
the virtues of mineral springs. These virtues were recognised by the
physicians of ancient Greece, who recommended mineral waters to those
suffering from cutaneous and other diseases. By the Romans the efficacy of
mineral springs was well understood. There exists evidence that among a
portion of our own countrymen the qualities of medicinal springs were
intelligently estimated. Owing to severe, exposure in adverse times, King
Robert the Bruce was seized with a scorbutic disorder, which was described
as "leprosy." While encamped in the vicinity of Ayr, he there had recourse
to a mineral spring, by the use of which he was Healed. In token of
gratitude, when as a sovereign lie attained the full exercise of his
authority, he reared at the spot an hospital, which he also endowed for the
support of eight "lepers," or persons suffering from eczema or skin disease,
who might resort to the place to seek benefit from the waters. St
Catherine's, or the Balm Well of Liberton, was held efficacious in some
cutaneous ailments; it was by command of James VI., who visited it in 1617,
enclosed with an ornamental building. This has recently been restored.
By the Britons certain wells
were held to have been slug by demons for the destruction of mankind.
Adamnan mentions a well in Pictland which was under the control of a
malignant deity, whoever touched its waters being seized with leprosy or
some other disorder. Through the influence of St Columba, who invoked a
blessing upon it, the fountain became remedial and Health-imparting. Hence
on the part of some arose the notion that by a votive offering the demon of
the fountain was propitiated.
In a paper on "Holy Wells" in
Scotland, contributed to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries? in 1883, Mr J.
Russel Walker has enumerated about six hundred dedicated to saints, and
furnished drawings of such as in modern times have been enclosed by masonry.
Not improbably one or more of these holy pools existed in every parish. Dr
Joseph Anderson has enumerated the following:—
St Adamnan's, at Dull and
Forglen; St Aidan's, at Menmuir, St Aidan's, at Fearn, St Baldred's Pool, at
Prestonkirk; St Bride's Wells, at Dunsyre and Beith; St Colb's Well, at
Menmuir; St Colmans, at Kiltearn; St Caran's, at Drumlithie; St Columba's,
in Eilan na Naoinih and in Eigg; St Fechin's or St Vigeans, at Grange of
Conon, in Forfarshire; St Devenick's, at Methlick; St Donnan's in Eigg; St
Ethan's in Burghead; St Fergus's, at Glanimis; St Fillan's Wells, at Struan,
St Fillans, Largs, etc.; St Mair's Well, at Beith; St Irnie's, at Kilrenny;
St Mungo's (Ketutigern's) Wells, at Penicuik and Peebles; St Maelrublia's
Well, on Innis Maree; St Marnock's at Aberchirder; St Mirren's at Kilsyth;
St Medin's, at Airlie; St Modan's, at Ardchattan; St Mulnags at Mortlach; St
Muriel's, at Rathmuriell in the Garioch; St Nathalan's at Old Meldrum; St
Ninian's Wells, at Lamington, Arbroath, Stirling, etc.; St Patrick's Well,
at Muthil; St Ronan's Well, at the Butt of Lewis; St Serfs', at Monzievaird;
and St Wallach's, in the parish of Glass, Aberdeenshire. ["Scotland in the
Early Christian Times," by Joseph Anderson. First Series. Edin., 1881. 8vo.
Pp. 193-4.]
Holy Wells were held to
operate variously. Some were believed to produce an instant cure, others to
be remedial by a process slow and nearly imperceptible. Certain springs were
regarded as efficacious in cases of insanity; of these the most renowned was
the Well of St Fillan. Patients were dipped in this well, and were
afterwards laid bound with cords in a chapel of the Saint, which stood near.
In the chapel they were compelled to remain during the night, and in the
morning their heads were touched with a handbell dedicated to St Fillan,
when the cure was completed. For the cure of insanity the Well of Maelrubha
on Innis Maree was in considerable repute. The patient was brought into the
sacred island, and after kneeling before the altar was conducted to the
well, and made to sip of the holy water. Next he was thrice dipped in the
lake, and the process was repeated for a course of weeks. Thereafter, as a
conclusive act, the patient was by his attendants attached to a boat and
rowed round the island. to the well at Struthill, near Muthil, were borne
lunatic patients. It was also frequented for the cure of hooping-cough. The
spring of Tobar-na-demhurnich was held to denote whether a sick person would
overcome his complaint. From this well water was drawn before sunrise, and
the patient was immersed in it. The water was then examined. If it remained
clear, the patient was likely to recover; when its purity was sullied, death
was regarded as near. The spring of Balmanno, in Kincardineshire, was
believed to supernaturally restore impaired eyesight, and to render delicate
infants strong and healthy. A well in the isle of Gigha, in Argyllshire,
known as Tobar-rath-bhuathaig, the lucky Well of Bethag, and situated
at the base of a hill near the Isthmus of Tarbat, was believed to govern the
wind. Six feet above the spot from which the water flowed there was a heap
of stones, which formed a cover to the fount. When a visitor desired to
procure a fair wind he opened the entrance by removing the stones, and
cleared out the water with a shell or wooden dish. The water was then thrown
in the direction from which the wind was desired to blow, the action being
accompanied by a certain form of words. On the close of the ceremony the
well was carefully closed, for if it was left open, it was held that a storm
would ensue which might overwhelm the island.
To south-running water
extraordinary virtues were attributed. When a sick person was unable to
drink of it freely his night-dress was cast into it, and then thrown about
his person. Water drawn under a bridge "over which the living walked and the
dead were carried" was regarded as especially remedial; it was conveyed at
dawn or twilight to the house of the invalid, who was expected to drink of
it before the bearer addressed him. It was essential for the success of the
charm, that the bearer had been silent on his way to and from the stream,
and that he had not permitted the water-vessel to rest upon or even touch
the ground. If the sick person was unable or unwilling to use this charm, it
was supposed to operate when the water was thrown upon his dwelling.
One of the caves at Wemyss,
in Fifeshire, which contains a. well of water, was early in the present
century visited on the first Monday of January, old style, by young persons
of the neighbourhood, who in their hands bore burning torches. From an
"Account of the Presbytery of Penpont" in Macfarlane's MSS. the following
was transcribed by Sir Walter Scott:--
"In the bounds of the Iands
of Eccles, belonging to a Iyneage of the name of Maitland, there is a loch,
called the Dowloch, of old resorted to with much superstition, as medicinal
both for men and beasts, and that with such ceremonies, as are shrewdly
suspected to have been begun with witchcraft, and increased afterward by
magical directions. Forthbringing of a cloth, or somewhat that did relate to
the bodies of men and women, and a shackle or teather, belonging to cow or
horse; and these being east into the loch, if they did float, it was a great
omen of recovery, and a part of the water carried to the patient, though to
remote places, without saluting or speaking to any they met by the way; but
if they did, the recovery of the party was hopeless. This custom was of late
much curbed and restrained; but since the discovery of many medicinal
fountains near the place, the vulgar, holding that it may be as medicinal,
as these are, at this time began to re-assume their former practice."
At the Reformation the civil
and ecclesiastical authorities sought to check superstitious pilgrimages to
wells. A public statute was passed in 1579 prohibiting such pilgrimages, and
in 1624 the Privy Council appointed certain commissioners to wait at
Christ's Well in Menteith on the first of May, and to seize and imprison in
the Castle of Doune those who there superstitiously assembled. By the church
the custom of superstitiously frequenting wells was emphatically denounced,
transgressors being subjected to a rigorous discipline.
Distempers in cattle were
believed to be cured when the ailing animals drank water in which the
leugan or weird stones had been dipped. Of these stones the most
celebrated is the Lee Penny, a triangular piece of crystal, measuring half
an inch on each side, and set in a silver coin. It is associated with the
following legend:—Sir Simon Lockhart, of Lee, accompanied Sir James Douglas
in 1329 when he was bearing to Palestine the heart of King Robert the Bruce.
In course of the journey Sir Simon took prisoner a Saracen chief, whose wife
tendered a large slim as his ransom. In counting the money, she dropped a
bens, and showed such alacrity in picking it up that the knight's curiosity
was aroused. Informed of its virtues, he refused to release the chief unless
the gem was added to the ransom money. The lady reluctantly complied, and
hence the talisman became the property of the Lee family.
During the seventeenth
century, the superstitious use of the Lee Penny became common, and in
consequence the Presbytery of Lanark sought advice from the Provincial
Synod. In the following minute of Synod the result is detailed:—
"Apud Glasgow, the 25th
October, Session 2d. Quhilk daye amongst the referies of the brethren of the
ministrie of Lanark, it was proposit to the Synode, that Gawen HaminiItoune
of Raploch, had preferit ane complaint before them against Sir Thomas
Loch-hart of Lee, anent the superstitious using of ane stone set in silver
for the curing of diseased cattle, quhilk the said Gawen affirmed could not
be lawfullie used; and that they had deferit to give any desissane therein
till the advise of the Assemblie might be heard concerning the saute. The
Assemblie having inquirit of the matter of using thereof, and particularlie
understood the examinatione of the said Laird of Lee, and otherwise, that
the custom is oldie to cast the stone in some water, and give the discasit
cattel thereof to drink, and that the same is done without using onie words,
such as charmers use in their unlawful practices; and considering that in
nature there are monie thinges sein to work strange effect, quhairof no
humane skill can give ane reason, it having pleasit God to give unto stones
and herpes a special virtue for the healing of mony infirmities in elan and
beast--advise the brethren to surcease their process, as quhairin they can
perceive no ground of offence; and admonishes the said Laird of Lee in the
using of the said stone, to tak heid it be usit heir-after with the least
seandall that possible may be."
The Lee Penny was supposed to
be remedial in cases of hydrophobia. About the middle of last century Lady
Baird of Saughton Hall was bit by a mad dog. Her ladyship's relatives at
once despatched a messenger to Lee Castle for a loan of the charmed crystal,
which was granted. Of the water into which the amulet had been dipped, Lady
Baird drank copiously, and as the malady remained undeveloped, she was held
as cured. The Lee Penny has ceased to be an object of superstition.
A charmed stone is preserved
by the family of Stewart of Ardvoirlich. In size and shape it resembles a
large egg, and is similar to the jewel in the national sceptre. According to
tradition the arch-druid wore the gem as his badge of office. Highland
graziers make long journeys to procure for their distempered cattle water in
which it had been dipped. In Galloway, several round flat stones, about five
inches in diameter and artificially perforated, were used, within the
recollection of persons now living, for the cure of distemper in horses. One
of the stones was placed in a tub of water, and the ailing animal was
sprinkled with the liquor. Pennant found that crystal stones were, by the
inhabitants of the Hebrides, used in charming water and imparting to it a
healing efficacy.
A crystal, believed to
possess rare virtues, is possessed by the Campbells of Glenlyon. Highlanders
attribute Bruce's success at Bannockburn to the influence of a crystal
charm. In his Life of St Columba, Adamnan relates that Broichan, one of the
Scottish magi whom the saint had visited with a deadly sickness on account
of his having enslaved a Christian female, was cured by drinking water in
which was placed a white pebble from the Ness.
By other superstitious modes
water was held to become health-restoring. Water taken from the tops of
three waves was in Shetland believed to cure toothache, and in the Isle of
Tiree water taken from the tops of nine waves, and in which nine pebbles
from the shore have been boiled, is held to be remedial in jaundice; it is
applied externally, the clothes of the patient being dipped in the bath and
put on undried. In a chapel dedicated to St Columba, in Flodda Chuan, one of
the Western Isles, a blue round stone rested upon the altar, and when
fishermen were detained in the isle by contrary winds, they washed the stone
with water, thereby hoping to propitiate the genius of the storm.
Seamen and fishermen are
especially prone to superstition. The seamen of Shetland, in tempestuous
weather, throw a piece of money into the window of a ruinous chapel
dedicated to St Ronald, in the belief that the saint will allay the
vehemence of the storm. At Cockenzie, a fishing village in Haddingtonshire,
no fisherman ventures out to sea when in his progress towards the beach a
lame person or a pig crosses his path. And when going out, or coming into
port, any of their number uses an oath, the first who hears it calls out
"auld airn," while each makes an effort to touch any portion of iron in the
boat, so as to counteract ill-luck that might otherwise ensue. Shetland
fishermen profess to foretell, from knots in the bottom boards of a boat,
whether or not she would be fortunate at the fishing, be upset under sail,
or be cast away. On their way to the boats the fishermen of Orkney are
careful to avoid meeting anyone supposed to be unlucky, especially the
clergyman. If a northern sailor trod on the tongs, or was asked where he was
going on his way to his boat, it was held useless for him that day to
proceed with his avocation. When afloat the Shetland mariner was careful not
to turn the boat withershins, that is, against the course of the sun. When
setting their lilies, Shetland sailors avoid mentioning certain objects
except by some special words and phrases. Thus, a knife is called skunie
or tullie, a church buanhoos or banchoos; a minister
upstanda, haydeen, or prestingolva; the devil, da Auld
Chield, da sorrow, da ill-healt (health), or da black
tief, a cat, kirser, fitting, vengla, or foodin.
When on hauling in their
lines Shetland sailors found that a stone was brought up, it was carefully
carried to the shore, since it was deemed unlucky to throw it back into the
sea. Among them it was held wrong to name a cat to any fisherman when he was
baiting his lines, and if any mischievous person called to a seaman when on
his way to his boat, "'There's a cat in your bundle," his fishing for the
day was spoiled. When a sailor returned with an inferior supply of fish, his
wife would kick the bundle round the room, and administer to him a severe
rating, in the belief that this course would induce improved luck.
By seamen poultry are held as
bad shipmates, being likely to raise a storm. The appearance of a shark is
dreaded; in the wake of a ship it is held to indicate the death of someone
on board. Petrels are regarded as messengers of death. In Orkney and the
Hebrides seamen formerly believed that drowned persons were changed into
seals. The existence of mermaids is credited by Shetland seamen; and by
those of the Western Isles, mermaids are supposed to kidnap children.
Macphee, the chief of Colonsay, remarked a beautiful damsel washing her
locks on an isolated rock at some distance from the shore. Launching a swift
boat, and fetching a compass, he surprised the angel of the deep by coming
suddenly behind her. A sealskin was lying on the rock, which he immediately
seized. Perceiving that her robe was gone, the ocean nymph was much
confused, but Macphee gallantly covered her with his plaid; he then placed
her in his boat and rowed to shore. Taking her to his castle, she became his
wife.
Shetland fishermen disenchant
their boats in this fashion:—The cavity or tap-hole is filled with water
supplied by the mistress of the craft. Next the boat is rowed out to sea
before sunrise, and a waxen figure burnt in it just as daylight begins to
appear, the plaster of the vessel exclaiming "Go hence, Satan." Shetland
seamen still purchase favourable winds from elderly women, who pretend to
rule or to modify the storms. There are now in Lerwick several old women who
in this fashion earn a subsistence. Many of the survivors of the great storm
of the 20th July 1881, so fatal on northern coasts, assert that their
preservation was due to warnings which they received through a supernatural
agency.
Till the present century it
was, among the seamen of Orkney and Shetland, deemed unlucky to rescue
persons from drowning, since it was held as a matter of religious faith,
that the sea is entitled to certain victims, and if deprived would avenge
itself on those who interfered.
With the concerns of domestic
life superstitious omens were largely associated. If coom hung from the bars
of the grate, a stranger's arrival was foretokened. Should the coom drop off
by the clapping of the hands, the stranger was simply to call and then to
pursue his journey. There is a superstition among domestic servants that it
is unlucky to leave off making a bed before completing it—the least evil to
be apprehended being that the person for whom the bed is made will during
the following night be deprived of rest.
Respecting the superstitions
of Selkirkshire, the Ettrick Shepherd presents these details:—"When persons
sneeze in first stepping out of bed in the morning, they are thence
certified that strangers will be there in the course of the day, in numbers
corresponding to the times they sneeze; and if a feather, or straw, or any
such thing be observed hanging at a dog's nose or beard, they call this a
guest, and are sure that a stranger is approaching. If at the dog's nose it
hangs long the visitor is to remain for a long time, but if it fails
instantly away, the visitor is hastily to depart. From the length of this
guest they determine what will be the size of the real one, and from its
shape whether it will be a man or a woman; and they watch carefully on what
part of the floor it drops, since it is on that very spot the stranger will
sit. And there is scarcely a shepherd in the whole country who, if he
chances to find one of his flock dead on a Sabbath, is not thence assured
that he will have two or three more in the course of the week. During the
season the ewes are milked, the bught door is always carefully shut at even,
and the reason assigned for this is, that when it is negligently left open,
the witches and fairies never miss the opportunity of dancing in it all
night. With the domestic animals were associated peculiar notions. In
leaving the house on business, if a cat crossed the path there was to be
lack of speed. The first person on whom a cat leaped after crossing a dead
body was doomed to blindness. With the howling of a dog during the night was
associated mischance. The isles of Eynhallow and Damisay in the Orkneys, and
the isles of Havera, Hascosea, and Uyea in Shetland, are supposed in the
soil to possess some magical charm, which prevents their being infested with
mice. For the removal of vermin soil is borne from these islands to distant
localities.
Birds are included in the
rites of superstition. To the peasantry the owl is an object of aversion.
The bones of certain birds sewed into the clothes are believed to preserve
the health, and the feathers of a wild fowl placed in the pillow of a dying
person are supposed to prolong his life. In the north-western highlands,
when the life of a sick person was despaired of, a cock was sacrificed, and
buried at the foot of the patient's bed. For the cure of epilepsy, a live
cock was buried with a lock of the invalid's hair and the parings of his
nails — a barbarous usage which has not wholly ceased. [For the cure of
epilepsy and madness the Moors and Negroes of Algeria drown a cock in a
sacred well. The cock was in Egypt sacrificed to Osiris, the Apollo of the
Greeks. The superstitions associated with the cock in Pagan worship were
tolerated by the early Christians.] The numbers of magpies seen at a time is
an augury of various fortunes as expressed in the rhyme:-
"One's sorrow—two's mirth;
Three's a wedding—four's death;
Five a blessing—six hell;
Seven the deil's ain:sel'"
There is a prejudice against
the yellow-hammer, expressed in the following rhyme:—
"Hauf a puddock, hauf a taed,
Hauf a yellow-yeldrin',
Gets a drag of the devil's bluid
Ilka May morning."
The prejudice against the
yellow-hammer is believed to have originated owing to the birds having by
their cries discovered to the troopers the retreats of hiding Covenanters.
The curlew is obnoxious probably from the same cause.
There are superstitious
observances connected with insects and the ordinary animals. The lady-bird,
or
"Lady Lanners," was among the lowland peasantry used to discover future
partners. When a schoolboy found the insect he placed it on his palm, and
repeated these lines till it flew off:-
Lady, Lady Lanners,
Lady, Lady Lanners,
Tak' up your cloak about your head,
An' flee awe, to Flanners;
Flee ower frith, and flee ower fell,
Flee ower pule and rinnin' well,
Flee ower muir, and flee ower mead,
Flee ower livin, flee ower dead,
Flee ower corn, and flee ower lea,
Flee ower river, flee ower sea
Flee ye east, or flee ye west,
Flee till him that loe's me best."
In Shetland it was held that
a plague of moths will infest the house into which a woman newly risen from
childbed enters without being invited to eat and —drink. In the same region,
a drink of water in which a stone found in the stomach of a cod has been
boiled is held to be a preventive of sea-sickness, while the scum that rises
from slugs kept in a bottle is described as a cure for rickets. The foot of
a mole kept in his purse secured the lowlander against want of money. With
the bones of animals the peasant inhabitants of Morayshire practised
divination. Having picked the flesh from a shoulder of mutton, they turned
towards the east, and looking steadfastly on the bone, conceived themselves
able to anticipate the future. The head of a fox nailed to the stable door
protected horses from the influence of an evil power. In Shetland, the
counting of cattle or sheep or horses belonging to an individual was
supposed to bring bad luck to him. Consequent on a superstitious dislike to
enumeration of any kind, the census returns are obnoxious to the islanders.
In securing "luck" and
averting "skaith" amulets were used. Of these, the more generally reputed
was the whorl of the primitive spinner, known as an "adder-stone;" and the
colt and arrow-head of the stone are described as "thunderbolts" and
"elf-darts." A pear, supposed to have been enchanted by Hugh Gifford, Lord
of Yester, a notable magician in the reign of Alexander III., is preserved
in the family of Broun of Colston, as heirs of Giflord's estate. So long as
the pear is preserved, the family, it is held, will continue to prosper. It
is alleged that the Earl of Gowrie, celebrated as chief in the Gowrie
conspiracy, wore on his person as a charm the word tetragrummaton,
written upon parchment.
In northern districts it was
believed that pregnant women were by a toadstone preserved from the power of
demons. For the cure of epilepsy the people of Caithness, also of the
Western Isles, made the patient drink from a cup formed of a suicide's
skull. Only a few years ago an epileptic youth, in the vicinity of Kirkwall,
was treated in this manner. A skull was exhumed from a graveyard, and a
portion of it being ground to powder, was mixed with water and given to the
patient. For the restoration of one suffering from fever the nails of his
fingers and toes were pared, and the parings placed in a rag cut from his
clothes; the rag was then waved round his head, when a cure was believed to
ensue. In the northwestern Highlands erysipelas was cured by cutting off a
portion of a cat's ear, and dropping the animal's blood on the part
affected. In Shetland, a stitch in the side was cured by applying to the
part mould dug from a grave, and heated in a saucepan. Mould to be so used
it was held essential should be taken from and returned to the brave after
sunset. In northern counties a sprain was supposed to be relieved when
around the affected joint was fastened a thread bearing nine knots. Madness
was cured by the use of the Barbreck bone, a small portion of ivory,
formerly in the possession of Campbell of Barbreck, and now deposited in the
museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. In north-western districts, fatuous
persons, who are supposed to suffer from "an evil eye" having fallen upon
them in childhood, are sprinkled with water in which a silver or gold coin
has been dipped. By a superstitious process the inhabitants of Orkney
transfer diseases from one party to another. A patient is washed, and the
water used in the act of ablution is thrown down at a gateway, on which the
disease is believed to seize the first person who passes through, to the
relief of the original sufferer. In Shetland it is held that when a sick
person describes his ailment, the listener is apt to have the distemper
conveyed to himself except he spits covertly. In northern counties a belief
prevails that scrofulous complaints yield to the touch of a seventh son,
accompanied by an invocation of the Trinity. At perforated monoliths the
natives of the Hebrides formerly sought help in rheumatic ailments. They
held that rain could be produced by touching the Runic Cross at Brora. A
cave in a steep rock in front of Kinnoull Hill in Perthshire, known as the
Dragon-hole, was believed to contain a stone which would render invisible
the person holding it. Green pebbles picked up at Iona were supposed to
derive an influence from St Columba, and to be valuable as amulets. Barren
women passed their hands through the holes of the Bore Stone at Gask in
order to obtain children, and with the same hope used to make pilgrimages to
the Monastery of St Adrian, in the Isle of May. By joining hands through the
perforated stone of Odin at Loch Stennis, lovers became pledged to fidelity,
and the sacredness of the vow was recognised by the church courts.
[Principal Gordon, of the Scots College of Paris, who visited Orkney in
1781, relates that about twenty years previously the elders of the
Kirksession of Sandwick were particularly severe on a young man brought
before them for seduction on account of his having broken "the promise of
Odin."—"Wilson's Prehistoric Annals," Edinburgh, 1851, 8vo, pp. 100, 101; Dr
Arthur Mitchell's "Past in the Present," p. 153.]
Under certain conditions salt
was an effective charm. Thrown over the left shoulder it averted strife. At
removals the salt-box was borne first to the new dwelling. When in the
autumn of 1789 Robert Burns was about to take possession of the farmhouse at
Ellisland, which had been reared for his accommodation, a family procession
to the place was conducted along the banks of the Nith from his lodging at
the Isle, half a mile distant. In this procession was borne a bowl of salt
resting upon the family Bible. When the character of an ailment was unknown,
salt was placed on an old sixpence borrowed from a neighbour; it was then
melted in a tablespoonful of water. The coin was put into the solution, and
the soles of the patient's feet and the palms of his hands moistened three
times with the liquid. The patient was made to taste the mixture thrice, and
his brow was stroked with it. Then the solution which remained in the spoon
was thrown over the fire, as were reverently uttered the words, "Lord
preserve us fra a' skaith." The cure was now held to be complete.
Distempered cattle were
formerly held to be benefited by "kindling needfire"--that is, producing
fire by the friction of two sticks rubbed against each other. Juniper burned
near a herd of cattle was supposed to propitiate the evil powers and avert
distemper. When any of the cattle suffered from a complaint, the precise
character of which could not be discovered, the owner of the herd repeated
the following spell :—
I charge thee for
arrowschot,
For doorschot, for windowschot,
For eyeschot, for tunbschot,
For liverschot, for lungschot,
For hertschot, all the waist,
In the name of the Father, the Sone, and the HaIy Gaist,
To wend out the flesche and bane
Into stock and stane,
In the name of the Father, the Sone, and the Haly Gaist.
In Orkney, when the milk of a
cow has lost its original qualities, it is held to be affected by "an evil
eye," and a cure is believed to follow when the, animal is made to drink
water from a well used by the delinquent. Women in the island of St Kilda
are in the habit of putting a small flower into the pail when they go to
milk their cows and ewes to keep the milk from being bewitched by an "evil
eye." The colour of red
was sacred to Thor, the god of lightning. Red-eyed persons were suspected of
witchcraft. Before turning out their cattle to the grass in spring, Highland
women tied a piece of red thread round their cows' tails to protect them
from skaith. And in Aberdeenshire portions of rowan-trees and red woodbine
were put over the doors of cow-houses to prevent witches from taking away
the cows' milk. In northern districts a branch of the rowan-tree was placed
over the door of the farmer's dwelling, after it had been waved while the
words, "Avaunt, Satan," were pronounced reverently.
Gipsies entertain peculiar superstitions. They
attach weirds to the forms of clouds, the flight of wild birds, and the
sough of the wind. Should they meet persons of unlucky aspects, they turn
back from their journeys, and in their summer peregrinations wait some
propitious omen of their fortunate return. They burn the clothes of their
dead, under a belief that the wearing of them would shorten the days of the
living. They believe that "the deil tinkles" at the lykewake of those who in
the death-throes had experienced the anguish of remorse.
In connection with births and baptisms certain
superstitious rites have already been adverted to. In Orkney the mother and
her new-born child were sainted —that is, rescued from peril by the
following process. The bed being drawn into the centre of the floor, the
nurse thereafter waved round the bed an open Bible three times for each
person of the Holy Trinity. When in the child's petticoat was stuck a silver
brooch, Satanic influence was also repelled. In Badenoch, when an infant
yawns, an evil influence is supposed to be at work, which may be
counteracted by the act of spitting in the child's face. In Shetland, when
an infant is teething, it is held that live peats for kindling should not be
given to a, neighbour, otherwise the child's teeth will stop growing. A
child which was passed through the perforated stone of Odin at Loch Stennis,
in Orkney, was believed to be through life preserved from paralysis. In
northern counties it is held that when a child is baptized, the drops of
water are not to be wiped from the brow, and it is regarded as a bad omen if
the child does not answer to its name by screaming when the water is
sprinkled. Certain
social customs which obtained at bridals have been already alluded to. In
Orkney it is held that a bridegroom should not venture upon the ocean. At
the ceremonial of the bridegroom's feet-washing a ring was thrown, which was
scrambled for by those present, the finder being supposed the first to be
married. Iii northern parts it was deemed unlucky for a bridal party to meet
a funeral procession. After marriage it was unlucky to enter at one door and
(o out at the other. The spouse who slept first on the marriage night was
field to be the first to die.
The practice of forbearing to marry in May
obtains in various countries, and is of ancient origin. Remotely associated
with the rites of Baal, the month in popular superstition was regarded as
that in which the fairies obtained a special ascendancy.
When a marriage was solemnised on Saturday, it
was held that one of the spouses would die within the year, or that the
marriage would be unfruitful. In northern counties, on the morning of the
marriage, It silver coin was placed in the heel of the bridegroom's
stocking, and at the church door the shoe-tie of his right foot was
unloosed, and a cross drawn in the door-post. Among the Highland peasantry
every knot in the apparel of the bride and bridegroom is untied prior to the
nuptial ceremony, and when the bride reaches the threshold of her future
home she is lifted over it.
In the West Highlands and in the Hebrides there
is a prevailing belief that ringworm can be cured by rubbing it over and
around with a woman's marriage ring. In allusion to this superstition, Dr
Alexander Stewart writes thus:-
"Riding home one evening, we
observed two little girls and a sturdy long-leaved hafin lad sitting
patiently in front of a cottage, the door of which was shut and locked. The
youngsters, rather better dressed than usual, had come from a considerable
distance, and we wondered what they could be doing there. On mentioning the
matter next day, we had the story in full:—The three were suffering from
ringworm. The owner of the cottage has a marriage ring of wonderful efficacy
in curing this epidermic distemper. They had come from one of the inland
glens to he operated upon; but the possessor of the ring was away in
Glasgow, and only returned home by steamer late that evening. When she did
arrive the young people were duly manipulated and ring-rubbed secunduni
arter; and in four-and-twenty hours thereafter we were gravely assured they
were quite healed. Any gold ring is usually employed, but the particular
ring referred to in this case is much sought after on such occasions,
because, as our informant said, it is of "guinea gold," by which we suppose
very pure gold, with the least possible alloy, is meant, and because it is
the property of a widow who was married to one husband more than fifty
years." In our chapter
on practices connected with death and burial, we have referred to certain
superstitious usages associated with these events. Prognostications of death
varied in different districts. When a northern highlander experienced an
itching of the nose, he became satisfied that he would lose a neighbour by
death; the death of a male was indicated when the sensation was felt in the
left nostril. In southern districts a tinkling in the ear was held as a sign
that the death of a relative was near. The cock crowing at an untimely hour
was believed to foretoken the death of some one in the locality. When a
strange dog howled round a house, the lowlander accepted the occurrence as
an omen that the angel of death was approaching. "A Bede candle," or
supernatural light, was in the western isles believed to be seen moving to
the churchyard from the dwelling of one about to die. In Orkney when, in
washing her husband's clothes in a stream, a woman sees his trousers fill
with water, she regards the occurrence as a portent of his approaching
death. In some parts of the highlands it is believed that the struggle
between life and death is prolonged by shutting the door of the patient's
room; yet it is not to be kept quite open, but left slightly ajar. Space is
thus left for the imprisoned spirit to escape, and yet an obstacle offered
to the entrance of any frightful form which might otherwise intrude.
In connection with funerals there were various
superstitions. The spiritual safety of the deceased was well assured when on
the day of his funeral fell gentle showers. The following rhyme widely
obtained:- "'West wind
to the bairn when gaun for its name;
Gentle rain to the corpse carried to its lang hame
A bonny blue sky to welcome the bride
As she gangs to the kirk wi' the sun on her side."
If on leaving the dwelling of the deceased, a
funeral party walked in a scattered and straggling manner, it was taken for
an omen that ere long another death would occur under the same roof. In
Shetland when a funeral procession is passing, the bystanders throw three
clods one by one after the corpse. When a coffin is brought to a house it is
placed on chairs, which after the funeral procession has moved are carefully
upset, since otherwise another death in the house is held to be imminent.
The instant a funeral procession has started, the straw on which the corpse
was laid is burnt, and the ashes narrowly examined to see if footsteps may
be traced. When footsteps are discovered they are held to be those of
another member of the family who is about to die.
In the Hebrides when at a funeral one of the
company accidently fell, a token was accepted that lie would next be carried
forth to burial. In Shetland when the wind blows against a funeral party, it
is held to be an omen that another death will occur shortly. And when a
grave is dug, a spade is laid across it, so as to prevent crows and other
fowls from entering it, there being a common belief that nothing evil can
pass iron or steel. The soul of a murdered person was formerly believed to
linger about his body till the detection of the slayer, and that at whatever
distance of time, the body, or even the skeleton of the murdered person,
would emit blood on the murderer's touch. In Romish times the ordeal was
usually applied amidst "pomp and circumstance," for the slaughtered corpse
was stretched on a bier in front of the altar, -while the suspected assassin
was led up to it following a procession of priests singing an anthem. In his
"Damonologic" James VI. writes—"In a secret murther, if the dead cairkasse
be any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of blood,
as if the blood were crying to heaven for revenge of the murtherer." The
ordeal continued to be applied both by the civil and ecclesiastical
authorities till the commencement of the eighteenth century. A commission
which sat at Dalkeith, on the 14th June 1641, held Christian Wilson guilty
of the murder of Alexander Wilson, her brother, because on touching the body
of the deceased " the blood rushed out of it, to the great admiration of all
the beholders, who tooke it for discoverie of the murder." In 1680, a woman
was before the Kirk-session of Colinton, charged with the murder of her
illegitimate child, and in the minute of the Court are entered these
words:—"There is one thing very observable . .. that, when the mother laid
her hand upon the child's nose, there came a little blood from it, which was
seen by many persons. In December 1687 Sir James Stanfield of Newmills was
found strangled in a stream near Haddington. According to James iltuirhead,
the surgeon, and another, when Philip Stanfield, his son, was assisting to
place the body in the coffin, blood darted from the left side of the neck
upon his touch, on which he exclaimed, "Lord, have mercy upon me!" On this
testimony Philip Stanfield was convicted of parricide and publicly executed.
In a letter which, in 1712, was addressed by a
minister in Caithness to the historian Wodrow, the writer remarks, "Some
murthers in this country have been discovered by causing suspected persons
touch the deid corps, which, upon their touching, have immediately bled,
whereupon some have confessed built and have been executed."
With particular seasons superstitious notions
were associated. In Orkney it was formerly deemed unlucky to cat or drink
till after Divine service. In cases of fever the symptoms were expected to
be more severe on Sunday, and if the patient began to feel better on that
day, a relapse was to be anticipated. On Monday the Shetlander will dive
nothing out of his dwelling. Members of the family of Sinclair, in
Caithness, decline on Monday to cross the river bed, since it was on that
clay that a body of the Sept left their native shores to join the standard
of James IV. on the field of Flodden, where the whole were cut off. Oil
Saturday it is generally deemed unlucky to flit, as is indicated in the
rhyme, "Saturday's flit,
short while sit." In
the Highlands peasants formerly took off their bonnets to the rising sun. To
the new moon northern women made a reverence. In northern counties no
important business is transacted during the moon's wane. In the acts of the
Baron Court of Breadalbane, in 1621, there is a provision against cutting of
briars save "in the waning of the moon." And not improbably to show his
defiance of superstition, or to enable others to watch the influence of a
particular fact, a father, at Kirkintilloch, in the year 1811, caused the
session-clerk to make entry in the parochial register that his child was
born "in the last clay of the last quarter of the moon."
Superstitious usages in connection with saints'
days and other anniversaries have been described.' Others may be added. It
was deemed unlucky to retain in the house a dead body till the morning of
New Year's Day; hence, if a death occurred at this period the funeral was
hastened. The entrance of a well-favoured person into a dwelling on the
morning of New Year's Day was a good omen, but if one feeble and decrepit
entered first, evil ere the year had closed was to be anticipated.
On Candlemas, the 2nd of February, families in
the Hebrides observed the following custom:—The mistress and servants of
each family took a sheaf of oats, and dressing it in women's apparel, placed
it in a large basket, along with a wooden club; this was called "Brud's
bed." The mistress and servants now exclaimed three times, "Brud is come!
Brud is welcome" This they did just before severally retiring to rest, and
when they rose in the morning they looked among the ashes, expecting to see
the impression of Brud's club, which if they did, they reckoned the
appearance as a presage of a favourable spring and a prosperous autumn. The
contrary was a bad omen. During the increase of the March moon the peasantry
of Morayshire cut down withes of woodbine. These were twisted into wreaths
and preserved till the following March. Children sick of fever and
consumptive patients were now made to pass through the wreaths three several
times, when a cure was supposed to be effected.
Superstitious observances common to the first of
May, or Beltane, have already been described. On May-day the Romans, by the
hands of the priests of Vulcan, offered sacrifices to Maia, the good mother
of the Greeks. And the Divine female energy, styled Maya, has in the figure
of the mirror her special emblem on our sculptured stones. During the
eighteenth century the inhabitants of Barvas, one of the Western Isles, sent
early on May-day morning a man to cross the Barvas river, lest any woman
should on that day cross first. For when by any misadventure a woman chanced
to cross first, it was held that salmon would not come up the river during
the remainder of the season. Dr Alexander Stewart writes, "It was an article
of belief in the hygiene code of the old highlanders, that the invalid
suffering under any form of internal ailment, upon whom the sun of May once
fairly shed its light, was pretty sure of a renewed lease of life, until at
least the next autumnal equinox."
A practice, evidently derived from time ancient
rites of May-day, has by historians been unnoticed heretofore. At Stirling,
on one of the early days of May, boys of ton and twelve years divest
themselves of clothing, and in a state of nudity run round certain natural
or artificial circles. Formerly the rounded summit of Demyat, an eminence in
the Ochil range, was a favourite scene of this strange pastime, but for many
years it has been performed at the King's Knot in Stirling, an octagonal
mound in the royal gardens. The performances are not infrequently repeated
at Midsummer and Lammas.
On the 3rd of May a Highlander begins no
undertaking of consequence; it is known as La sheachanna na bleanagh, or the
dismal day. On St
John's Eve, the 23rd of June, it was formerly held that if an unmarried
woman laid upon her parlour table a clean cloth, with bread, cheese, and
ale, and then sat down as about to eat, the door of her house being left
open, the person whom she was afterwards to marry would come into the room
and make obeisance to her. On the Eve of St John, Masonic lodges hold a
grand anniversary. At Melrose they display burning torches. Entering the
ruins of the venerable abbey, the torch-bearers pass through the mouldering
aisles and round the massive pillars, thereafter round the structure three
several times, and as a concluding ceremony form a semi-circle in the
chancel, where martial music is discoursed, followed by an exhibition of
fireworks. On St John's Day, in the Chapel Royal of Holyrood, in 1633,
Charles I. touched one hundred persons for "the cruellis," or King's Evil.
The weather which prevailed on St Martin of
Bullion's Day—the 4th of July—was held to possess a prophetic character.
There was a proverb that if on that day the deer rose up and lay down dry
there would be a "good gose-harvest"—that is, an early harvest. Pain upon
the 4th July was held to betoken wet weather for twenty days thereafter.
On the 25th of August the people of Applecross
sacrificed a bull to St 1llourie. This saint, otherwise St Maree, was patron
of the coast from Applecross to Lochbroom; the name being a corruption of
that of Maelrubha, a hermit who came from Ireland to Scotland in 673, and
who died at Applecross in 722. The sacrifice was usually offered at Eilean
Maree or Innis Maree, a small island in Loch Maree, where the saint had a
cell, and where, before his arrival in Scotland, there was a pagan temple.
During the seventeenth century the Presbytery of Dingwall sought to suppress
this superstition, also other rites such as pouring milk on the hills as an
oblation, and rendering reverence to stones which were consulted as to
future events. The practice of sacrificing to Mourie ceased before the close
of the seventeenth century.
At Rutherglen, in Lanarkshire, certain rites
were observed in connection with St Luke's Fair. About eight days prior to
the fair, which was held on Wednesday before the first Friday of November,
some oatmeal was converted into dough, and laid up to ferment. Mixed with
sugar and cinnamon, it was brought into a proper consistency and rolled up
in balls. The baking process was effected by women, who commenced after
sunset a night or two before the fair. A large space in the house was marked
out, the area included within a line being considered as consecrated, and
not to be touched by strangers. Into this hallowed spot were introduced six
or eight women, all of whom, except the toaster, seated themselves on the
ground in the form of a circle, and with their faces turned towards the
fire. Each held a baking-board on her knees. The woman who toasted was queen
or bride, and those who baked were called her maidens ; names such as "todler"
or "hodler" being given to each. The cakes were commenced by todler, who
formed the ball of dough into a small cake ; she passed it on from one to
the other in the direction of east to west, till, each kneading it in turn,
it became thin as a sheet of paper. The cake was beaten out by the hand
only, and was kept unruffled and unbroken. During the act of baking music
was discoursed. The bread was not intended for common use, but was offered
to strangers in small portions. While there is no tradition as to the origin
of the practice, it is not without significance that a similar rite which
obtained among the ancient Hittites became a snare to the chosen people.
With the feast of All-Hallow Eve, or Hallowe'en
the 31st of October—were connected many rites derived from the elder
superstition. Called in Gaelic Samhain—that is, the sleep of summer—the
occasion was associated with observances in which the chief factors were
fire and water. In north-eastern districts the ashes of the Hallowe'en
bonfires were scattered, all who took part in kindling them vying with each
other who should spread abroad the greatest quantity. It was believed that
on All-Hallow Eve the fairies gave access to their subterranean abodes to
all who nine several times encompassed their hillocks. But the adventurer
was not allowed to return to human society.
Christmas, or Yule, was largely associated with
idolatrous rites. Children born on Christmas were believed to have the power
of seeing spirits and even of commanding them. In Highland districts each
householder bore from the nearest plantation a withered stump, which, placed
on a heap of peats, was set on fire and burned, and by this act skaith and
death were averted till the return of the anniversary. Snow or wind on
Christmas was supposed to forebode a favourable season, but if the day was
mild, "a fat kirkyard " or much death during winter was to be apprehended.
On Hogmanay—the 31st December—a rite called
"burning the clavic" was formerly observed in Morayshire; it lingers at
Burghead, on the southern shore of the, Moray Firth. The clavie is a piece
of wood cleft for holding and carrying a torch. At the celebration at
Burghead a tar-barrel is elevated on a fir prop and set up against a wall.
The barrel is packed with logs or pieces of timber, tar being poured over
then. Under the pile is laid a burning peat, which, igniting the tarred
wood, produces a powerful flame. Borne on the back of a person specially
appointed to the office, the barrel is laid down at a point where two
streets meet; it is then taken up by another, and so transported from place
to place till the circuit is completed. The clavie is next carried to a
promontory north of the town, known as the Doorie, on the summit of which a
freestone pillar is built for its reception. Fresh fuel is procured, and
after burning about half an hour the barrel is thrown down the western slope
of the hill, followed by the multitude, who snatch up the blazing fragments.
During the seventeenth century the Kirksessions of the several parishes in
the district, also the Presbytery of Elgin, endeavoured to suppress the
rite, but unsuccessfully. The celebration brought blessing, it was believed,
both on land and water—that is among the cattle, and also among the
fishing-boats. Among
the supernatural beings common to Scottish superstition the most reputed was
"the Brownie." Successor of the Lar familiaris of the ancients, his
existence was immediately suggested by the svartalfer, a small dark
Finnish people who occupied the circle dwellings, and are described in
northern sagas. Deriving his name from the supposed tawny colour of his
skin, he had short hair or brown matted locks, and bore a brown mantle which
reached to his knee, with a, hood of the same colour. Brownies lived in the
hollows of trees, the recesses of ruinous castles, and in the caves and
correis of unfrequented eminences. Of a, character between man and spirit,
they made aerial progresses, and while so occupied, emitted music like the
tones of a harp, the grinding of a mill, or the crowing of a cock. Indolent
naturally, the brownie would, like Robin Goodfellow of English superstition,
perform active and useful labour. Capable of extraordinary exertions, they
executed their work at night, and sought no food or other recompense,
stipulating only that they should be permitted to discharge their duties
without interference. They abandoned work on the offer of thanks. The
character of a brownie is forcibly depicted in the popular ballad of "Aiken
Drum." In his strange aspects, coming to a farmer and his wife, he excited
alarm, till, in answer to the gudeman's question as to who he was and whence
lie came, he replied-
"I lived in a lan'
where we saw nae sky,
I dwalt in a spot where a burn rins na by;
But I'se dwall now wi' you if ye like to try-
Hae ye wark for Aiken Drum?
"I'll shiel' a' your sheep i' the mornin'
sune,
I'll bring your crop by the licht o' the mune,
And ba the bairns wi' an unkenned tune,
If ye'll keep puir Aiken Drum.
"I'll loup the linn when ye canna wade,
I'll ca' the kirn, and I'll turn the bread
An' the wildest filly that ever ran rede
I'se tame't, quoth Aiken Drum.
"I'se seek nae guids, gear, bond, nor
mark,
I use nae biddin', shoon, nor saek,
But a cogfu' o' brose 'tween the light and dark
Is the wage o' Aiken Drum."
All went well about the farm,
for the brownie toiled day and night till:
A new-made wife, fu' o' frippish freaks
* * * * *
Laid a mouldy pair o' her ain man's breeks
By the brose o' Aiken Drum."
The lift of clothing was taken as an insult, and
the brownie disappeared.
When two brownies chanced to render together an
unpaid service, they could not endure that one should be commended at the
cost of the other. Having fallen behind with his work, the, blacksmith of
Glamznis excited the compassion of two brownies, who during night powerfully
assisted him. Entering his smithy one morning before his supernatural
assistants had departed, he was so rejoiced at the progress made, that he
exclaimed exultingly:- "Weel
chappit, Red Cowl,
But better chappit, blue."
"Chap wha we like to,
We'll chap nae mair to you,"
was the immediate response of the tawny
visitors, who instantly evanished.
Every husbandman in the Hebrides who was more
industrious than his neighbours was supposed to be aided by a brownie.
To families eminent for their personal or
hereditary virtues, members of the brownie fraternity were held to be
attached, and with such they were believed to remain from one to another
generation. For three centuries a noted brownie had served the family at
Leithen Hall, Dumfriesshire. He had been remarked to moan deeply on the
death of one of the owners, and when the heir arrived from foreign parts to
take possession, brownie showed himself and proffered homage. Offended lby
the uncouth aspects of his domestic, the new laird ordered him a suit of
clean livery. The usual result followed, for the supernatural departed,
exclaiming as he went
Ca', cuttie, ca'!
A' the luck o' Leithen Ha'
Gangs wi' me to Bodsbeck Ha'."
And so in a few years Leithen became ruinous,
and the neighbouring house of Bodsbeck began to flourish.
Goranberry Tower, in the county of Roxburgh, a
stronghold of the Elliots, was haunted by a species of brownie. Familiarly
known as "the Cowie," he kept the work of the place in a forward state.
Between night and day lie drove the peats, smeared the sheep, and secured
the corn. Within the Tower he might be heard chopping or sawing wood, or
turning the quern, or in the act of spinning. When he uttered the voice of
lamentation, he thereby foretokened a death in the family. Adam Elliot of
Goranberry, the last of his family, fell from his horse in crossing at night
the adjacent stream of the Hermitage, but contrived to find his way into the
adjacent churchyard, where he perished. Prior to the laird's death, Cowie
was loud in his bewailings, and his cries on the fatal night were especially
agonising. He was heard no more.
Nearly every family in the Orkneys had a
brownie, from whom they believed that they obtained service, and to whom
they consequently tendered offerings, such as milk or ale. As an offering,
milk was sprinkled at every corner of the house, and ale poured into a stone
with an aperture, and named brownie's stone. There were in the Orkneys
stacks of corn known as brownie's stacks, which, though not made secure in
the usual manner, would steadily resist the storm, and could not be
overturned. Noltland Castle, an ancient seat of the Balfours in the Island
of Westray, in Orkney, has, it is believed, been upwards of a century kept
by a brownie, which had formerly laboured in the service of the family, and
now in their absence celebrates in the castle the births and marriages of
the house in a sort of spectral illumination.
Fairies were common to every European country,
and not improbably had their origin among the same people by whom the
"brownie" was recognised as a supernatural. Their original appellative was
the Saxon e f which signified a spirit of the lower order. And according to
the Icelandic sagas, the northern nations believed in a race of dwarfish
spirits which inhabited the rocky mountains and were in nature akin to the
human. Among the Laplanders there are traditions of a subterranean people
gifted with supernatural qualities, and in the islands of Faroe are
entertained similar superstitions.
To the ancient elves were ascribed qualities
capricious and diabolical. But with the period of the Crusades a milder view
of those supernaturals began to be entertained, for in their intercourse
with the Saracens the crusaders were informed of those imaginary beings, the
"Peri," a designation which in Arabic is pronounced fairy. And thus in
British folklore was substituted the eastern fairy with its prepossessing
aspects for the repulsive northern elf. The fairy is named in Chaucer; also
in English writers of greater antiquity ; and this description of
supernatural also occurs in the earlier romances of France, Italy, and
Spain. By the older poets their heroes are described as marrying fairies, or
as being descended from them. Pleasing and gentle, the English fairy hovered
in the balmy clouds, floated in the colours of the rainbow, and feasted on
the odour of flowers. To Scottish fairies were ascribed qualities midway
between those of the Scandinavian elves and the fairies of English
superstition. Less homely than their southern kindred, they were more
capricious and susceptible of offence. Generally envious, they were not
indisposed to wreck human happiness, especially in connection with infant
children. With the
diminutive stature of the Saxon elf the Scottish fairy united the exquisite
proportions of the Oriental supernatural. To the female belonged features of
seraphic loveliness, with ringlets of yellow hair which descended upon her
shoulders, and were bound upon her brow with combs of gold.
Scottish fairies were believed to have bodies of
condensed cloud, thinner than air, and into which they could disappear in a
moment of time. "Their bodies," writes Mr Robert Kirk, "be so plyable
through the subtilty of the spirits that agitate them, that they can make
them appear or disappear att pleasure. Some have bodies or vehicles so
spongious, thin, and defecat that they are fed by only sucking into some
fine spirituous liquors that peirce lyke air and oyl: others feid more gross
on the foyson or substance of corne and liquors or come itself that brows on
the surface of the earth, which these fairies steal away, partly invisible,
partly preying on the grain as do crowes and mice; wherefore in this same
age, they are sometimes heard to bake bread, strike hammers, and do such
lyke services within the little hillocks they most haunt."
Like the kindred supernatural of England, the
Scottish fairy disported invisibly on the upper surface of the earth; hence
the description in the ballad of "Young Tamlane"—
We sleep in rosebuds soft and sweet,
We revel in the stream;
We wanton lightly on the wind
Or glide in a sunbeam.
As their permanent abodes they were believed to occupy Balls within round or
rocky eminences. A conical hill at Strachur in Argyleshire is called "Sien
Shuai"—that is, the fairy dwelling of a multitude. Other haunts were at
Coirshian, above Loch Con, and near the source of the Forth, and at Cassius
Dounans, certain rocky green hills in Carrick, celebrated by Burns in his
"Halloween." In a letter addressed to the author of "Pandaemonium, or the
Devil's Cloisters," published in 1684, Captain George Burton remarks that he
had ascertained that the elves of Edinburgh occupied spacious halls under
the Calton Hill, which they entered through a great pair of sates which
opened invisibly.
Scottish fairies had a king and queen and a royal court. The queen first
held the government, but having chosen Thomas the Rhymer as her consort, she
(rave him a share of the royal dignity. The fairy queen's offer to the
Rhymer is thus celebrated in ballad:-
"An' I will give to
thee luve Thamas
My han' but an' my crown,
An' thou shalt reign owre Fairylan'
In joy and gret renown;
An' I will gi'e to thee luve Thamas
To live for evermair.
Thine arm sall never feckless grow,
Nor hoary wax thy hair.
Nae clamorous grief we ever thole,
Nae wastin' pine we dree
An endless life's afore thee placed
O' constant luve an' lee."
The fairy court found
diversion in various sports, of which hunting was the most conspicuous. In
hunting they rode in three bands—the first mounted on brown horses, the
second on grey, and the third consisting of the king, queen, and chief
nobles on steeds of snowy whiteness. Upon a black charger rode Kilmaulie,
prime councillor of the fairy court. The hunt was prosecuted on the
hill-sides, at spots denoted by old thorns and boulder-stones. All rode
invisible, but their presence was revealed by the shrill ringing of their
bridles. They snatched horses from terrestrial stables; when in the morning
horses were found in their stalls panting and fatigued, it was held that
these had taken part in a fairy procession. At hunts the fairies assumed a
splendid attire. Each male wore silver sandals and green pantaloons,
buttoned with bobs of silk, while a mantle overlaid with wild flowers
covered his shoulders and reached to his middle; its colour was green or
heath-brown, produced by the dye of the lichen. From his left arm was
suspended a bow formed of a man's rib, dug up at spots where three lands met
; also a quiver of adder's skin, with arrows of the bog reed, pointed with
flint, dipped in the dew of the hemlock and tipped in flame. In processions
and other mystic celebrations the female fairy wore a mantle of green silk
inlaid with eider down, and bound round her waist with garlands of wild
flowers. Thus accoutred, the male and female fairies rode on horses of which
the manes bore silver bells, which rangy with the zephyr, and whose feet
fell so softly as not to bend the wild rose or dash time dew from the
hare-bell. They were attended with exquisite music emitted from unseen
harps. The fairies of the Calton Hill held rendezvous each Thursday evening,
when a boy from Leith acted as drummer. During this weekly demonstration the
fairy assemblage would transport themselves into France and Holland, always
returning before dawn.
Fairies danced nightly upon the meadows, imprinting in green rings their
footsteps upon the sward. The unfortunate wight who with the ploughshare
turned up a fairy-ring became the victim of a wasting sickness.
"He wha tills the fairy green
Nae luck again sall hae,
An' he wha spills the fairy-ring
Betide him want and wae
For weirdless days and weary nichts
Are his till his deein' day."
The protector of the fairy-ring was
proportionately recompensed.
"He wha gaes by the fairy green
Nae dule nor pains sall see,
An' he wha cleans the fairy ring
An easy death sall dee."
Northern fairies were of two classes—the "gude
fairies" and the "wicked wichts;" they were otherwise described as the "seelie
court" and the "unseelie court." The members of "the seelie court" were
benefactors of mankind ; they gave bread to the poor, and supplied them with
seed-corn; they cheered the afflicted and comforted the mourner. Upon those
mortals who propitiated their favour they bestowed loans and (rifts. Hence
the rhyme:- Meddle an'
moll
Wi' the fien's o' hell,
An' a weirdless wicht ye'll be.
But tak' an' len'
Wi' the gude fay men,
Ye'll thrive until ye dee."
Upon mankind the "wicked wichts" were ever ready
to inflict skaith or damage. Shaving persons with loathsome razors, they
eradicated every vestige of whiskers and beard. When in a fit of temper
anyone commended himself to Satan, "the unseelie court" took the speaker at
his word, and forthwith on a dark cloud transported him into the air, and
thereafter consumed him to charcoal. The "wicked fairies" feasted on viands
which they abstracted from. human habitations,—especially on the food and
liquor provided for those who assembled at funerals,—while by means of
hair-tethers they conveyed their stolen dainties unseen to their viewless
abodes. They were believed to seize healthy children from the cradle, and in
their stead to substitute brats, sickly and loathsome. When in the Highlands
a child had ceased to thrive, the mother assumed that she nursed a
changeling, and had recourse to the barbarous rite of burning with live coal
the toes of the little sufferer. The "wicked wichts" were also supposed to
seize youths who for misconduct were denounced by their parents. To their
dismal abodes they bore herds who fell asleep on the pastures; they also
devastated sheepfolds and destroyed cattle. Bestial suddenly seized with
cramp were believed to be elf-shot, for the "wicked fairies" were hold to
barb their shafts with flint arrow-heads, and with their to smite down
flocks and herds. Though the cattle wounds of the elf-shot were invisible,
there were persons so skilled in the art of detection as to be able to
extract the arrows by chafing the animal with the blue bonnet of a herdsman.
"There are still," writes Sir Walter Scott, "traces of a belief in the worst
and most malicious order of fairies among the Border wilds." He quotes in
illustration these verses from Leyden's "Court of Keeldar."
"The third blast that
young Keeldar blew
Still stood the limber fern,
And a wee man of a swarthy hue
Upstarted by a cairn.
"His russet weeds were brown as heath
That clothes the upland fell,
And the hair of his head was frizzly red
As the purple heather-bell.
"An urchin clad in prickles red
Clung cow'ring to his arm;
The hounds they howl'd and backward fled,
As struck by fairy charm.
"'Why rises high the sta,hound's cry
Where staahound ne'er should be?
Why wakes that horn the silent morn,
Without the leave of me!
"Brown dwarf, that o'er the moorland
strays,
Thy name to Keeldar tell!
The brown man of the moors, who stays
Beneath the heather-bell.
"'Tis sweet beneath the heather-bell
To live in autumn brown,
And sweet to hear the lav'rock's swell
Far, far from tower and town.
"But woe betide the shrilling horn,
The chase's surly cheer!
And ever that hunter is forlorn
Whom first at morn I hear."
The "wicked fairies" revenged
themselves upon those who had shown them disrespect by seizing their wives
and transporting them to fairyland. To members of their court the miller of
Menstrie had given offence, and they consequently deprived him of his
helpmate. The miller's distress was aggravated on hearing his wife singing
in the air:-
"Oh ! Alva woods are
bonny,
Tillicoultry hills are fair,
But when I think o' the bonny braes o' Menstrie,
It mak's my heart aye sair."
After many fruitless efforts
to procure her restoration, the miller chanced one clay, in riddling some
stuff at the mill-door, to use a posture of enchantment, when the spell was
dissolved, and the matron fell into his arms. The wife of the blacksmith of
Tullibody was by the "wicked wichts" carried up the chimney, the abductors
singing as they bore her off:-
"Deidle linkum dodie,
We've gotten drucken Davie's wife,
The smith o' Tullibody."
Those who were borne to fairyland might be
recovered within a year and a day, but the recovery spell was potent only
when the fairies made their procession on Hallow Eve. In his "Minstrelsy of
the Scottish Border" Sir Walter Scott relates the following:-
"The wife of a Lothian farmer had been snatched
by the fairies. During the year of probation she had repeatedly appeared on
Sundays in the midst of her children combing their hair. On one of these
occasions she was addressed by her husband, when she revealed to him how to
rescue her at the next Hallow Eve procession. The farmer conned his lesson
carefully, and on the appointed clay proceeded to a plot of furze to await
the arrival of the procession. It came, but the ringing of the fairy bridles
so confused him that the train passed ere he could sufficiently recover
himself to use the intended spell. The unearthly laughter of the wicked
wichts, and the passionate lamentation of his wife, informed him that she
was lost to him for ever."
A woman conveyed to fairyland was warned by one
whom she had known as a mortal to avoid for a time eating or drinking with
her new companions.Actin; upon the suggestion, she at the expiry of the
period named found herself on earth, restored to human society. A matron
carried to fairyland to nurse her newborn child, which had previously been
abducted, was not long in her enchanted dwelling when she furtively anointed
one of her eyes with the contents of a cauldron ; she now discovered that
what had seemed a gorgeous palace was but a gloomy cavern. Having discharged
her office, she returned to earth. But retaining through her medicated eye
the faculty of discovering everything that was done in her presence, she
chanced to remark amidst a crowd of people the fairy with whom she had left
her child, when, prompted by maternal affection, she enquired of her after
the child's welfare. Vexed at the recognition, the fairy demanded how she
had perceived her. Overcome by her penetrating gaze, she acknowledged what
she had done, whereupon the indignant fairy cast saliva into her eye and
extinguished it for ever.
On the tradition of the removal to fairyland of
a labourer's daughter at Traquair, and her restoration a few weeks
afterwards, James Hogg conceived his exquisite ballad of "Kilmeny." The
following is his description of fairy land:—
"Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew,
Where the rain never fell, and the wind never blew;
But it seemed as the harp of the sky had run,
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue,
When she spake of the lovely forms she had seen,
And a. land where sin had never been
A land of love and a land of light,
Withouten sun, or moon, or night
Where the river swa'd a living stream,
And the light a pure celestial beam
The land of vision it would seem
* * * * *
A still, an everlasting; beam
They lifted Kilmeny, they led her away,
And she walked in the light of a sunless day
The sky was a dome of crystal bright,
The fountain of vision and fountain of light
The emerald fields were of dazzling blow,
And the flowers of everlasting blow.
Then deep in the stream her body they laid,
That her youth and beauty never might fade;
And they smiled on heaven when they saw her lie
In the stream of life that wandered bye."
Toshach, chief of Clan Mackintosh, occupied a
small castle near the stream of the Turret. He held nocturnal interviews
with a female fairy who had accompanied him from abroad. The mode of his
reaching the place of meeting and the nature of his companion were long a
mystery. Curious as to his frequent departures, and unable to discover
whither he proceeded, his wife resorted to the scheme of attaching a piece
of worsted to his button. Thus guided, she followed him down a subterranean
passage under the bed of the river, where, after various windings, she
discovered him in conversation with a beautiful fairy. Finding that she was
discovered, the fairy hastily departed, and "the sun of Toshach set to rise
no more." Scottish
fairies, like the brownie, occasionally took up their abode in the immediate
vicinity of human dwellings. In this capacity they were known as "good
neighbours." As Sir
Godfrey Alacculloch of Galloway was riding on horseback close by his
residence, he was accosted by a small old man clothed in green, and mounted
on a white palfrey. After a respectful salutation, the stranger informed him
that he lived beneath his mansion; he then proceeded to complain of a drain
or sewer which emptied itself into his "chamber of dais" or best apartment.
Though startled by the complaint, Sir Godfrey courteously replied that the
course of the drain would be altered, and he forthwith executed his promise.
Many years afterwards Sir Godfrey chanced in a fray to kill a neighbour, and
being tried, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Just as he had
on the Castlehill of Edinburgh taken his place upon the scaffold, the old
man on his white palfrey rode up, and passing through the crowd, bore off
swift as lightning the condemned baron, who was no more seen. There exists a
tradition concerning an ancestor of the noble family of Duffus. Walking in a
field adjoining his own house, he was suddenly carried away, and was next
day found at Paris in the French king's cellar with a silver cup in his
hand. Brought into the king's presence, and questioned whence he had come,
he stated that when in the field he heard the noise as of a whirlwind, and
of voices exclaiming "Horse and Hattock"—a mode of expression used by the
fairies when they are bent on a removal. On the impulse of the moment he had
responded "Horse and Hattock," when in an instant he was borne aloft and
through the, air transported to the place where he was found, and where,
after he had drunk heartily, he fell asleep. Satisfied with his story, the
king presented him with the cup found in his hand, which became an heirloom
in his family. The
enchantments of fairydom were overcome by a series of counter charms. Fire
had a potent influence against all elfic arts. When a cow calved, a burning
coal was passed round her to avert "fairy wichts." In breweries the
influence of "the wicked wichts" was neutralized on a live coal being thrown
into the vat. The inhabitants of the Isle of Lewis made an elfic circle
around their dwellings, and with a fairy band encompassed a bride before she
was churched, and children prior to their being baptized. On the top of
Minchmoor, a hill in Peeblesshire, is a spring known as the Cheese Well,
because those who passed that way were wont to throw into it a piece of
cheese as an offering to the fairies. On a conical eminence in
Inverness-shire, there was a fairy well, to which children suffering from
any wasting malady were brought for benefit; it was also frequented by
adults expecting cure. |
