Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands E-Book

J.G. Campbell

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 352

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Witchcraft introduces us to a class of popular superstitions entirely different from those connected with Fairies. Fairies, water-horses, and kindred supernatural beings were distinct from the Evil Spirits that gave to witches their unhallowed powers. They could not be compelled or conjured by mortals to appear when wanted, or enter into contracts of service. The Powers of Darkness, on the other hand, were always at the service of their votaries, and, by means of charms and incantations known to the initiated, were made to lend their aid in any scheme of malevolence. A belief in magic widely, almost universally, prevails among the tribes of mankind, and the witchcraft of the Christian era, while it undoubtedly gained strength and character from mistaken interpretations of Scripture, owes many characteristics to the delusions of Pagan times. The Highland witches have of course many points in common with their sisters of the south, but comparatively there is little repulsive or horrible in their character. Tales regarding them make no mention of incubus and succubus, midnight meetings and dances with the devil, dead men's fingers, and more of the horrible and awful, the ravings of poor women driven crazy by persecution and torture. Neither is there mention of their riding through the air on broomsticks, nor, like the witch of Endor, raising the dead. Their art was forbidden, and their powers came from the devil; but it does not appear under what paction, or that there was any paction, under which this power was to be got. It was in the name of the devil, and against the name of the Trinity, they set about their cantrips, but a knowledge of the necessary charms, and the courage to use them, seem to have been all that was requisite.

Leseprobe

Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands

Witchcraft and Second Sight in the HighlandsCHAPTER I.BLACK WITCHCRAFT.CHAPTER II.WHITE WITCHCRAFT.CHAPTER III.DEATH WARNINGS.CHAPTER IV.SECOND SIGHT (an da shealladh).CHAPTER V.HOBGOBLINS.CHAPTER VI.THE CELTIC YEAR.FOOTNOTESCopyright

Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands

J.G.Campbell

CHAPTER I.BLACK WITCHCRAFT.

Witchcraft introduces us to a class of popular superstitions entirely different from those connected with Fairies. Fairies, water-horses, and kindred supernatural beings were distinct from the Evil Spirits that gave to witches their unhallowed powers. They could not be compelled or conjured by mortals to appear when wanted, or enter into contracts of service. The Powers of Darkness, on the other hand, were always at the service of their votaries, and, by means of charms and incantations known to the initiated, were made to lend their aid in any scheme of malevolence.

A belief in magic widely, almost universally, prevails among the tribes of mankind, and the witchcraft of the Christian era, while it undoubtedly gained strength and character from mistaken interpretations of Scripture, owes many characteristics to the delusions of Pagan times.

The Highland witches have of course many points in common with their sisters of the south, but comparatively there is little repulsive or horrible in their character. Tales regarding them make no mention of incubus and succubus, midnight meetings and dances with the devil, dead men’s fingers, and more of the horrible and awful, the ravings of poor women driven crazy by persecution and torture. Neither is there mention of their riding through the air on broomsticks, nor, like the witch of Endor, raising the dead. Their art was forbidden, and their powers came from the devil; but it does not appear under what paction, or that there was any paction, under which this power was to be got. It was in the name of the devil, and against the name of the Trinity, they set about their cantrips, but a knowledge of the necessary charms, and the courage to use them, seem to have been all that was requisite. Those having the reputation of being witches were (and are, for a few still survive) usually old women, destitute of friends and means of support, and naturally ready to eke out a miserable livelihood by working on the fears or the simplicity of their more prosperous neighbours.

There are instances in which a farmer has bribed a witch by yearly presents not to do harm to his cattle; and we must remember that in days of scarcity and famine, poverty with icy hand and slow-consuming age will make people resort to shifts of which they would never dream when food was abundant. In most cases, the reputed witch was merely a superstitious and perhaps ill-favoured old woman, possessing a knowledge of rhymes and charms for the healing of disease in man and beast, and taking pains tosainher own cattle, if she had any, from harm. Sometimes she was also dishonest, desirous of being looked upon with awe, and taking advantage of nightfall to steal milk from her neighbours’ byres and corn from their stackyards. Her powers of witchcraft satisfactorily accounted to the popular mind for her butter and cheese—even if she had no cows—being abundant when the stores of others failed. In dark uncultured times a claim to influence over the unseen powers of nature, and to intercourse with spirits, had only to be made to be allowed, and the mere pretension too readily invests the claimant with awe to make it safe for any one to denounce the imposture. Many believed in the efficacy of the arts they practised, and in their own possession of the power with which the credulity of mankind was willing to accredit them. Unusual natural events and phenomena can easily be turned into proofs of a witch’s claim; imposture readily leads to delusion, and hence among the poor and uneducated it is no wonder to find witchcraft practised and believed in.

The power of witches was always at the disposal of those who were willing to pay for it, and the fact that the rewards of witchcraft did not sometimes exceed a pound of tobacco, alone shows how much the urgencies of want had to do with the pretence to supernatural powers. Unless payment was given the witch could do nothing; her spells were then of no avail. To explain the anomaly that witches possessed such tremendous powers and yet remained always in indigent circumstances, it was said the poor wretches could not benefit themselves; their power, as might be expected, considering the source from which it was derived, was only one of mischief and doing harm to others. Much of the superstition is at variance with this popular explanation, as, for instance, the taking of milk from the neighbours’ cows and the substance from their butter and cheese, but contradictions and absurdities never stand in the way of credulity and superstitious fears.

The Gaelic name ‘Buidseach’ is identical in meaning with the English ‘witch,’ a word it also somewhat resembles in form. The term ‘Bao’ is sometimes translated wizard, but is properly only a careless conversational form ofBaobh, a wild furious woman, a wicked mischievous female, who scolds and storms and curses, caring neither what she says nor what she does, praying the houses may be razed (làrach lom) and the property destroyed (sgrios an codach) of those who have offended her. This is a word used in proverbs. “A raging woman obtains her imprecation, but her soul obtains no mercy.”[1]Baoth, weak, foolish, is often confounded with it. M’Intosh[2]makes the expression ‘maca bao,’ ‘a wizard’s son’ instead ofmacan baoth, a weak or little child. “Pity of her who is the mother of a helpless child, when May-day falls on a Thursday,”i.e.[3]owing to the infant mortality of the season.

A common answer to the question, What could witches do? is What could they not do? The classes of actions, however, ascribed to them are not numerous. They could take the milk from their neighbours’ cattle, bring fish to their own coasts, make fishermen successful, go to sea for fish themselves and bring home creelfuls, raise storms, sink ships, drown those who offended them; give strings to sailors with knots on them, the unloosening of which raised the wind; they could go to wine-cellars in London or Ireland, and drink wine till morning; fly through the air with magic quickness, and cross the seas in the most unlikely vessels, sieves, eggshells, or dry cowsherds; produce a wasting disease in an enemy, waylay and endanger the belated traveller, and by their cursed tricks keep a child in its mother’s womb past its proper time; suck cows, and assume various shapes. They could benefit, or at least ward away evil from a favourite, but their power of doing so seems to have been much feebler than their powers of mischief.

In carrying out their unhallowed cantrips, witches assumed various shapes. They became gulls, cormorants, ravens, rats, mice, black sheep, swelling waves, whales, and very frequently cats and hares. The shape was not always well chosen for the object to be attained, a hare, for instance, being but ill-formed for sucking cows, or a cat for drinking wine; neither was a sieve or an eggshell a likely vessel to go to sea in, nor a piece of tangle for carrying milk in, nor the chimney crook a probable substitute for the cow’s udder. This, however, is of no consequence. It is only part of the witch’s diabolical mode of going to work. The truth is, that these harmless animals whose shapes witches were said to assume, being seen in unusual places at unusual times, or conducting themselves in an unusual manner, were converted by the terrified imagination into witches pursuing their unlawful practices. Many tales seem to have their origin in vain attempts to stagger credulity, and in that delight which people of lively imaginations sometimes take in ‘cramming’ their more stupid fellows.

In addition to change of shape, witches had a machinery of charms, incantations, red, black, and blue threads, magic caps, and particularly a magic staff, called ‘an luirgean’ ‘an lorg ohn.’

There were certain nights of the year on which they were unusually busy. These were particularly the last night of every quarter. On Beltane night they were awake all night. Their object seems to have been tosain,i.e.keep evil away from, their own cattle or those of the farmers who employed them for the purpose. Others were no doubt taking advantage of any neglect in this respect to secure to themselves the butter and cheese for the next three months. No one, however, knows what they were after, as a woman who believed in their being awake on Beltane night piously said, “God and themselves know what they are doing.”[4]

Many tales relating to witchcraft, as has been already remarked, must have had their origin in attempts to ridicule people out of their belief and in an unbridled exercise of imagination. They only furnished a proof that men will believe the incredible.

WITCHES AND MILK.

To the poor a cow is invaluable, and its ailments are naturally a source of anxiety. Hence the poor man has been most frequently the victim of imposture, and his cow has the most frequently lost its milk through the machinations of witches. The folds of the affluent were seldom attacked, or those byres in which regard was paid to cleanliness and tidiness.

The stories of witches assuming the shape of hares and sucking cows are numberless. A boy who saw one described the hare as sitting on its hind legs, with its fore paws resting on the cow’s udder. Some people profess to have come upon the witch through the night while thus engaged, and caught her. The hare then became a woman.

When a witch assumes this shape it is dangerous to fire at her without putting silver, a sixpence or a button of that metal, in the gun. If the hare fired at was, as indeed it often was, a witch in disguise, the gun burst, and the shot came back and killed the party firing, or some mischance followed. Old women used, therefore, to recommend that a sixpence be put in the gun when firing at a hare.

Parties who entered the house of a reputed witch in Cornaig, Tiree, found two churns full of water on the floor and a shallow milk-dish (measair) full of butter on the table.

In olden times the master of a ship, dining with the Laird of Coll, was asked if the butter on the table was not very fine. He said it was for pig’s butter. The dairymaid was called up and questioned. She confessed that seeing a whale (muc-mhara, lit. sea-pig) passing, and hearing its bellow (geumraich), she had taken the substance (toradh) of its milk from it. If the laird believed her, he was an honest, unsuspicious man, who never dreamt of any collusion between her and his guest.

A Tiree witch once took all their milk from the Laird of Coll’s cows, and was on her way home with it in aduitheaman, a black seaweed not unlike a tangle, wrapped round her body. A man met her, cut the black tangle with his knife, and all the milk flowed out on the ground. Witches also carried away milk in needles, dung-forks, etc., and have been detected taking it in a stream from the chimney crook. A sailor, whose ship was on her way through the Kyles of Bute (na caoil Bhòdach), hearing a bull roaring on the Cowal coast, took the milk from the herd of which it was lord by cutting the cable with an axe. The milk came streaming from the cable.

It is related of ‘Mr. Lachlan,’ a former minister of Kintail, that going one day to the house of a reputed witch, without telling who he was, he induced her, as a specimen of her power, to milk the chimney crook.[5]The cow from which the milk was to be taken was the minister’s own. The witch went to work, till all the milk was extracted, and then asked the minister if he was satisfied. He told her to go on, and she milked the iron till blood came. When the minister went home he found his cow dead.

A witch in Lochaber had a little pet sheep, by milking which she gathered to herself the milk from the flocks of all the neighbouring farmers.

Hairy Donald (Dò’ull Molach), a Morven celebrity of last century, professing great skill in healing or hurting cattle by means of magic charms, was laughed at for his pretensions by the parish minister, and his powers were made game of. Donald, at his own request, was shut up in a room, and a particular cow was named by the minister for him to exercise his talents upon. Before he finished his incantations the cow fell over the rocks.

A man bought at a market from a stranger a mart or winter cow. When killing it, the blows of the axe made no impression. An old man who came the way, when told of this, examined the cow’s tail, and found ared stringtied round it. On this being taken away, the cow fell at the first blow.

COUNTER-CHARMS.

Of course the spells of witches could be counteracted. It would not be right that such dangerous powers should be unchecked. Some of the counter-charms were good disinfectants, but in general the efficacy of the remedy was as imaginary as the enemy whose machinations were to be defeated. It was to prevent the taking of milk from cows that nearly all the counter-charms were used. Anything in which people believed would be sufficient, but the antidotes in ordinary use were these.

Juniper(Iubhar-beinne,aiteal), pulled in a particular manner, was burned before the cattle and put in cows’ tails.

A ball of hair (gaoisid), called aRonag, was put in the milk-pail on Lammas-day or on the Thursday after, to keep its substance in the milk during the rest of the year. MacSymon (Mac-Shiomoun, a sept of MacArthurs), a native of Balemartin, Tiree, was much resorted to in former times for these constitution balls. On Lammas-day (Lùnasdal) he gave to all who came to him a little bag of plants, sewn up, to be placed in the cream jug (croggan uachdair) for the ensuing year, that the cattle and the milk might retain their virtue or substance (toradh).

Stale urine (maistir) should be sprinkled on the door-posts and about the byre. It keeps away the evil eye. There was an old woman in Coll who was taken notice of by her neighbours for sprinkling cows and door-posts every night. Her intention no doubt was to make assurance doubly sure.

The mountain ash (Caorrunn) was the most powerful charm of any.

“ A Rowan-tree and a red thread

Gars a’ the witches dance to dead.”

Its efficacy was known in England as well as in the Highlands. The peg of the cow-shackle (Cnag chaorruinn sa bhuaraich) should be made of it, as well as the handle and cross (crois na loinid) of the churn[6]staff. In Islay, not twenty years ago, a man had a rowan-tree collar for securing his cow at night, and every time the animal visited the bull he passed this collar thrice through the chimney crook. On Beltane-day annually he dressed all the houses with rowan. It was said of the man in Craignish who gathered potent herbs on St. Swithin’s day and studied magic with one foot in the chimney crook:

“ A tuft of rowan twigs

From the face of Ailsa Craig,

Put a red thread and a knot on it,

And place it on the end of the sprinkler,

And though the Witch of Endor came,

Allan could manage her.”[7]

Ahorse-shoewas of great power for the protection of cattle against witchcraft. As in England, it must be found by accident. It was put above the byre door, and a nail from it driven into the lowest hoop (cearcal) of the milk-dish (mias) kept its substance in the milk. It preserved horses when put above the stable door, and ships when nailed to the mast. An entire horse could not be touched by evil spirits, and its rider was safe from the attacks of witchcraft. A person in the neighbourhood of Luing, Argyllshire, returning from a funeral, found himself unable to make any progress on his road home, though he did his utmost all night to get on. He was retarded by some unseen influence. He rode an entire horse, and found himself safe at daybreak. His safety lay in the horse he rode. The famedRed Book of Appin, according to one version of the tale, was got by one who rode an entire horse to a meeting of witches, and, having got hold of the book, made off with it in despite of the devil and all his servants. In a West Highland tale (ii., 87), the owner of theRed Bookadvises the shoe of an entire horse to be nailed on the byre door, to counteract the witches, who were taking the milk from the cows. The shoes of entire horses probably are the proper kind to use, though others came into use from being found equally efficacious.

Tar, put on the door, kept witches away, and put on the cow’s ear, was believed to preventceathramh gorm, or quarter ill.

If, notwithstanding all these safeguards, or through neglect of them, a cow lost its milk, or the milk ceased to yield butter or cream, there were several methods by which the witchcraft, which was undoubtedly the cause, might be counteracted. Some of these remedies appear more like the inventions of practical jokers than ceremonies from which any rational meaning can be taken.

When a cow ceases unaccountably to give milk, and witchcraft is suspected, its owner is to take some of the animal’s urine (maistir), put it in a bottle, and cork it well. The witch who has taken the milk cannot make a drop of water till the milk is allowed to come back. It is a common story that the owner of bewitched cows, under the advice of ‘wise’ people of his neighbourhood, put a potful of the cows’ dung on the fire, and boiled it. He then put in half an ounce of pins and stirred the compost, till at last the witch appeared at the hole which formed the window, and entreated him to stop tormenting her, and all would be well. He stopped, and next morning his cows had milk as usual. It was also said that by putting pins in the cow’s milk, and boiling till the dish is dry, the witch is made to appear and confess. A woman once did this in Tiree, and found her own brother was the guilty party. Old people in the east side of Skye remember the bull being put on the top of a suspected witch’s house to bring back their milk to a farmer’s cows. The more brutal method ofscoring, or drawing blood from, the witch above her breath—the object of which could only be to make clowns strike poor old women on the face with their fists—was unknown in the Highlands. The plantmōthan, pearlwort, put in the milk-pail, was a more gentle but quite as sure a method of restoring its virtue to the milk. If a piece of it was in the bull’s hoof at the time of pairing no witch could touch the offspring’s milk.

In Tiree a person lost several stirks by the stakes falling and strangling them in the byre. A ‘wise’ woman, reputed a witch, advised, though her advice was not taken, that theright hand part of a fore horse-shoe, with three nails in it, should be put below the threshold (stairsneach) of the byre, along with a silver coin, and that the hind quarter of one of the beasts should be takenwestand buried beyond the limits of the farm. This was to prevent a similar calamity in future.

GOING TO SEA.

The Lewis witches were accounted the best for raising wind. A large number of them were at one time destroyed in the following manner. A tailor, working in a farmer’s house, where there happened at the time to be a scarcity of seasoning for dinner (gann-do-dh’annlan), was told by the farmer’s wife, this would not be the case to-morrow, if he could get breakfast past without the goodman saying grace. The tailor managed this, and his curiosity being roused, remained awake the following night, to see what the wife would do. He saw a number of women, among whom he recognised his own wife, assembling in the farm-house and accompanied by the farmer’s wife, disappearing up the chimney, each in a wicker creel. In the morning the farmer’s wife came back with her creel full of fresh herring. The tailor, when he went home, strongly represented to his wife the propriety of allowing him to accompany the witches in their future fishing expeditions. Two shares of the fish would then fall to them instead of one. The proposal was laid before a meeting of the witches, and in the circumstances they consented. To the number of eighteen the witches went to sea on a line of worsted thread, the tailor’s wife being left ashore to hold the ball, or end of the line, in her hand. The tailor persuaded her to go with the rest, and leave him in charge of the line. She went and the tailor paid out more line, till he thought the witches far enough out at sea. He then cut the thread and allowed the whole lot to drown.

Similarly, somewhere in the north (all marvels of this kind are said in the south Highlands to have occurred in the north) a tailor was working in the house of an old woman, who knew the forbidden arts, but at the time was short ofkitchenfor dinner. She took a creel, sat in it, and having muttered some mystic words, disappeared through a hole in the roof that formed the chimney. In a while she came back with the creel full of herring. The tailor kept the spell in remembrance, and the first day he got the old woman out of the way, sat in the creel, and repeated it. He does not seem, however, to have learned the words quite correctly, for the creel, instead of making for the hole in the roof, rose straight up and hit his head violently against the rafters. It then floated along against the roof, as if in search of an outlet. It bumped his head a second time against the rafters and he roared out, “Where, in the curse of God, are you going now?” Instantly at the name of the Deity, the creel fell down, and the tailor dislocated his hips (chaidh e as a ghobhal). He never again dabbled in the dark science.

In Skye, one of a party of women, assembled at an old woman’s house to full cloth, went by accident into the barn, and found it full of fish suspended from the roof. “There are many herrings here,” she said; and there being no way by which the old woman could have got them but by witchcraft, she taxed her with unholy practices. The old woman got very angry at the exposure.

A Barra and a Uist witch one year tried each other’s powers in drawing the fish to their respective islands. The Barra witch proved the stronger, and took the fish to Castlebay (Bàgh Chìosamuill).

Another year the Uist and Tiree witches had a similar contest. The latter prevailed, and the men of a bygone generation believed that every flounder caught that year on the Tiree shores had a hole in its tail, made by the witches in the struggle.

On the shallows (oitir) between Tiree and Coll, the witches of the two islands were often seen fighting for the flounders that abound in the locality. The appearance that suggested the fancy was no doubt the same as is still to be seen on these banks in stormy weather.

A witch, who left home every night, was followed by her husband, who wondered what she could be about. She became a cat, and went in the name of the devil to sea in a sieve, with seven other cats. The husband upset the sieve by naming the Trinity, and the witches were drowned. So the Skye story runs. In the Sound of Mull the witches went on board the sieve, “against the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost”; and the husband upset the concern by putting his foot on board in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In Tiree the unfortunate women were passing Kennavara hill in eggshells on their way to Ireland, when the husband of one of them, seeing the fleet, wished them God-speed. Instantly the eggshells sank, and the women were drowned.

RAISING STORMS AND DROWNING PEOPLE.

The belief that witches can trouble the sea and raise the wind is widespread, reaching even to the native Africans. It is part of the regular traffic of Finland witches to sell wind to mariners,—as in the case of their Celtic sisters, tied in knots upon a thread. The following story is common to many places.

A boatman from one of the southern islands was long detained in Lewis by adverse winds. He was courting a witch’s daughter, and applied to her mother for a favourable wind. He gave her a pound of tobacco, and, assisted by neighbouring witches, after three days’ exertion, she produced a string with three knots upon it. The first knot was called ‘Come gently’ (Thig gu fòill), and when he loosened it, as he left the shore, a gentle breeze sprang up. The second knot was called ‘Come better’ (Teann na’ s fhèarr), and on its being untied the breeze came stiffer. As he neared the harbour, he out of curiosity loosened the last knot, the name of which was ‘Hardship’ (Cruaidh-chàs). A wind came “to blow the hillocks out of their places” (séideadh nan cnoc), and sent the thatch of the houses into the furrows of the plough-land, and the boatman was drowned. In Harris, they say the boat was drawn up on land and secured before the last knot was untied. She was capsized and smashed to pieces.

The following, known as “Big Macmhuirich’s Supplication” (Achanaich Mhic Mhuirich Mhòir), is another form of the Celtic belief.

‘ Macpherson of power’ (Mac-Mhuirich nam buadh), a noted wizard in South Uist, was on a passage by sea on a calm day. The skipper said to him, “Ask for a wind, Mac-Vuirich.” He did so, saying:

“ An east wind from the calm aether,

As the Lord of the elements has ordained,

A wind that needs not rowing nor reefing,

That will do nought deceitful to us.”

“ Weak and trifling you have asked it,” said the skipper, “when I myself am at the helm.” Mac-Vuirich answered:

“ A north wind hard as a rod,

Struggling above our gunwale,

Like a red roe sore pressed,

Descending a hillock’s narrow hard head.”

“ It does not attain to praise yet,” said the skipper, and Mac-Vuirich went on:

“ If there be a wind in cold hell,

Devil; send it after us,

In waves and surges;

And if one go ashore, let it be I,

And if two, I and my dog.”

A sea came, that rolled the boat’s stern over her bows, and all were drowned but Mac-Vuirich and his dog.

The power of this wizard over the elements was also shown on another occasion. The MacRanalds were coming to attack the MacNeills of Barra, to whom Mac-Vuirich was favourable. Their boat was seen coming along the wild and rocky coast on the west of Skye, and was sunk by the mighty wizard uttering the following words:

“ A south-west wind toward Eiste point,

Mist and rain,

Clan Ranald on a breaking board,

I reck it not;

A narrow unsteady vessel,

A lofty pointed sail,

A lading of empty barrels,

And bilge-water to the thwarts,

A weak irascible crew

Having no respect one for another.”

As might be expected, such a boat did not go far before sinking.

The usual way witches took to shipwreck a vessel was to put a small round dish (cuach) floating in a milk-pan (measair) placed on the floor full of water. They then began their incantations, and when the dish upset, the ship sank.

On one occasion three witches from Harris left home at night after placing the milk-pan thus on the floor, in charge of a servant-maid, who was straitly enjoined not to let anything come near it. The girl’s attention was, however, called away for a short time, and a duck came in and took to squattering about in the water on the floor. The witches on their return in the morning, asked if anything had come near the milk-pan. The girl said no, and one of them said, “What a heavy sea we had last night coming round Càbag head!”

A few years ago a boat was lost coming from Raasa to Skye. The witches, who caused the calamity, were seen at work in the Braes of Portree, beside a stream. Three of them were engaged in the evil task, and a man was present along with them. Jobs of the kind require the presence of a man. A cockle-shell (slige coilleig) was placed floating in a pool, and a number of black stones were ranged round the edge of the pool. When the incantation was at its height, the black stones barked like dogs, and the cockle-shell disappeared.

A farmer in Mull and his little daughter were walking along an eminence that overlooked the Sound, through which a number of ships were passing at the time. The little girl asked, “What will you give me, father, if I sink all these ships?” Thinking she was in fun, he asked her how she would do it. She stooped down, and looked backwards between her legs at one of the vessels. The ship whirled round and sank. In this expeditious manner all the ships in sight were sunk, but one. The man asked why this one did not sink. The girl said it was because there was rowan-tree wood on board, and she could not touch it. He then asked who had taught her all this? She said it was her mother. The man, who was a good man, and before ignorant of his wife’s dabbling in witchcraft, gathered his neighbours and burned herself and daughter.

A witch was engaged to destroy a boat coming to Tiree. Another witch, however, wished its safety. The former came in shape of a gull, that hovered about the boat, and kept it back (a head wind?). The other came as a cormorant (sgarbh), followed in the wake of the boat (an uisge na stiùirceach, lit. the waters of the rudder), and saved it. (Favourable tide?)

A former Lord Macdonald (Mà-Cònuill) was on his way by boat to Uist, and experienced very unfavourable weather. When near his destination, a towering wave, or, as it is called in Gaelic, ‘a drowning sea’ (muir bhàite), nearly overwhelmed the boat, and two birds, a skua (croma-ritheachar) and an ordinary gull, were observed fighting in the air. The one was Yellow Claws, daughter of Donald, son of Cormac (spòga Buidhe ni’ a Dò’uill ’ic Cormaig), the other Hump-backed Blue-eye from Cràcaig (Gorm-shùil chrotach a Cràcaig), both celebrated witches. The former was for sinking the boat, the latter for saving it. Sometime after Blue-eye met Lord Macdonald in Edinburgh, and reminded him of the incident, and her own services on the occasion. He just remarked, “There was indeed such a circumstance.”

A ship, sailing from Greenock, was to be destroyed by the Captain’s wife and two other witches. An apprentice overheard them planning this, and saying that they would come upon the ship on a certain day as three rolling waves, and the ship would be sunk, unless the waves were cut with a sword. At the time said the apprentice was allowed the command of the vessel, and standing in the bow with a drawn sword, cleft the waves, and defeated the witches.

A boat from Hianish, Tiree, went out fishing on the day before the New Year. The morning was calm, but when the boat was returning the wind rose and the sea became very heavy. The best steersman in the boat took the helm. Another, sitting on the hindmost thwart (tota shílidh), after looking for a while towards the stern, asked the helm from him, and being again and again refused, at last took it by force. When he got the rudder below his arm, he said, “Now, come on!” and the boat reached shore in safety. He then explained that he had been seeing a gull, unseen by the first steersman, following the boat, and had recognised her as a woman of the neighbourhood. This woman had an illegitimate child by the first steersman, and it was thought her object in raising the storm and following so close in the wake of the boat, was to snatch her seducer with her and drown him.

Ian Garve (stout John), laird of Raasa (Iain Garbh Mac-ille-Challum Ratharsa), a man celebrated in Highland song and legend for his great personal strength, was drowned by a witch who had this mysterious power of raising storms. The event occurred on Easter Monday (Di-luain Càisge), in the great ‘storm of the Borrowing Days,’ of which a contemporary historian says “the like of this tempest was not seen in our time, nor the like of it heard in this country in any age preceding,” A.D. 1625; yet the traditions of the event are still fresh in popular memory. The witch was Ian Garve’s own foster-mother (muime), and resided on the islet of Trodda (Trodaidh), on the east of Skye. She overheard a friend of hers say he wished Ian Garve, who was known to have gone to the Lewis, was drowned, and took up seriously words spoken only in jest. Others say she was bribed by an enemy to effect the hero’s destruction. He left Loch Sealg in Lewis to proceed home on a calm day. The witch was dairymaid (banachag) in Trodda, and, seeing the boat coming, put milk in a large dish, and a small empty dish floating in it. A boy was placed standing in the doorway, where he could see both the milk-pan and Ian Garve’s boat. She herself stood with her foot in the ‘swey’ or chimney crook, and began her unholy incantations. Soon the dish in the milk-pail began to be violently agitated. The boy reported it first as going round sunwise (deiseal), then as going round against the sun and striking the sides of the basin, and finally as being capsized and floating bottom upwards (air a bial foidhpe). The storm had been all this time increasing, till at last it blew a perfect hurricane. That night the heap of shingle on East-side (Du-sear), calledMoll-stabhan, was washed ashore. Ian Garve’s boat disappeared simultaneously with the capsizing of the bowl, and all on board perished. Three ravens hovered about the boat as the storm was rising, and it became afterwards known that these three were Yellow Claws (Spòga Buidhe) from Màiligeir on East-side, Hump-backed Blue-eye (Gorm-shùil chrotach) from Cràcaig near Portree, and Doideag from Mull. When the boat was between Bare Skerries (Sgeire maola) and Trodda twenty birds flew about, and some of them assumed the shape of frogs (muileacha màg) on the deck. All the witches in Scotland were there, but were unable to sink the boat till Ian Garve said to the frogs, “What the brindled one has brought you here?”[8]After that he became distracted from the number of birds and frogs coming upon him. A raven lighted on the gunwale of the boat, and Ian Garve, striking at it with his sword, cleft the boat to the water’s edge. The first news of the drowning was heard on Minigeig Hill (Monadh mhinigeig) in Badenoch, and the particulars became known by the telling of other witches. Another account says the hero appeared that night to his wife in her dreams, and said:

“ On Monday the wind arose,

And gathered its fury and rage;

Tell the mother of my body

’ Twas the evils made the hunt.”[9]

The shade came thrice and repeated this. Next day the wife told the dream to her mother-in-law, who exclaimed, “Then my beloved is lost” (tha mo laogh-sa caillte).

By far the most celebrated tale of this class is that of the destruction of Captain Forrest’s ship by witches in the Sound of Mull.

Viola (Bheòla), daughter of the King of Spain, dreamt of a remarkably handsome man, and made a vow not to rest till she found him. She fitted out a boat, and in the course of her wanderings came to Tobermory Bay. Here she saw MacLean of Dowart, who proved to be the man she was in search of, and, though he was a married man, became too intimate with him. MacLean’s wife in her jealousy caused her servant Smollett, a south countryman, to blow up the ship with all on board. After setting fire to a fuse leading to the magazine, Smollett made his escape, and by the time the explosion took place reached Pennygown, a distance of ten or twelve miles. The cook was blown to Srongarve (sròn-garbh, rough nose), near Tobermory, where there is a cleft still bearing the name of the Cook’s Cave (Uamh Chòcaire). The Princess herself fell somewhere in the sound, and was buried atCill, the Loch Aline burying-ground in Morven.[10]Upon the news of the dreadful event reaching Spain, Captain Forrest (whose name is not very Spanish) was sent with a ship to take vengeance upon the Mull people by taking off the right breast of every Mull woman. When the ship came the Lady of Dowart sent forDoideag, the Mull witch, and by her means, with assistance procured from neighbouring witches, Captain Forrest’s ship was sunk before next morning. Doideag shut herself up in a house alone at Guirman Point (Rutha Ghuirmein), near Dowart, and there made her incantations. A rope was put through a hole in a rafter, and all night long the handmill (brà) was hoisted up to the beam, lowered, and hoisted again. A native of Tiree reported that, having come that evening to Doideag’s house, he was compelled by her to hoist and lower and hoist the mill-stone all night without rest or refreshment, while the witch herself went away to Tiree and elsewhere for help. On her return she said that when in Tiree she had been detained a little in extinguishing a fire, which had been caused by a spark falling among the fodder in the stirk-house belonging to the man who was her unwilling assistant. As the quern was raised a gale sprang up, and increased in fury as the operation went on. At the same time gulls (others say hooded-crows, others black cats) appeared on the yard-arms of the devoted ship. Captain Forrest knew the Black Art himself, and went below. As word was brought him that another gull had appeared in the rigging, he said, “I will suffice for this one yet” (Fòghnaidh mi fhìn dhi so fhathast). He could keep the ship against some say eight, others nine, witches, but “ere a’ the play was play’d” there were sixteen, some say eighteen, on the yards. Their names depend on the fancy of the narrator. All the Mull witches (na doideagun Muileach) were there, and the most powerful of the sisterhood from the surrounding districts.Nic-ill’-Domhnuichfrom Tiree is commonly mentioned.[11]All accounts agree that when Big Blue-eye from Mey (Gorm-shùil Mhòr bha sa Mheigh), the powerful Lochaber witch, came, the ship sank. Shortly before this Captain Forrest told a sailor to look up and see how many gulls were on the yards (seall suas co miad faoileann air an t-shlait). On being told eighteen, he said, “We are lost.” In the morning Doideag was told her house had been unroofed in the gale, but she was comforted by being told the dreaded ship had gone down opposite Coire-na-theanchoir Bay. “If you are without a house, Captain Forrest is without a ship” (ma tha thusa gun tigh, tha Captain Forrest gun long).

WITCHES AS SHEEP.

A native of Tiree was on his way home to the west end of the island in the evening with a new gun in his hand. When above the beach called Travay, he observed a black sheep running towards him from across the plain of Reef. Alarmed by the animal’s motions, he put a silver sixpence in the gun, and on its coming near enough, took aim. The black sheep instantly became a woman, whom he recognised, with a drugget coat wrapped about her head. The same woman had often persecuted him before, particularly in shape of a cat. She asked him to keep her secret, and he promised to do so, but one day, when drunk in the village to which the woman belonged, he told his adventure and the name of the woman. In less than a fortnight after he was drowned, and the witch (for such the woman was universally reputed to be) was blamed as the cause.

Hector M’Lean, in Coll, according to his own account, was coming in the evening from Arinagour to Breacacha, a distance of four miles along what was then throughout the greater part a mountain track. When halfway, at Airidh-mhic-mharoich, a black sheep came about his feet, and several times threw him down. At last he took out a clasp-knife (sgian-lughaidh), and threatened the sheep, if it came near him again, to stick it with the knife. It, however, again and again came and threw him down. In endeavouring to stab it, the knife closed upon his own hand between the finger and thumb, and cut him severely. On coming to the large open drain or stream below Breacacha Garden, he stood afraid to jump across, in case the black sheep should come about his legs, and make him fall in the drain. He was now, however, within hail of his own house, and whistled loudly for his dog. It came, and was fiercely hounded by him at the sheep. Every time the dog made a rush and came too near, the sheep became an old woman, whom Hector recognised as one of his acquaintances, and jumped in the air. She asked him to call off his dog, and he refused. She asked him again, and promised, if he would do so, to befriend him in right and wrong (an còir’s an eucoir). At last he did call the dog, but it would not obey. He caught it by the back of the neck, and it tried to turn upon himself. He promised to keep his hold till the woman made her escape. The witch became a hare, and Hector called out to her, as she seemed to have such wonderful power, to “add another leg to her stern, to make her escape the faster.” When she was some distance away, he let go the dog, and went home. The dog did not come home till the following afternoon; it followed the hare, compelled it to take refuge on a shelf of rock (uirigh creige), and lay below on the watch, till forced by hunger to go home. The woman upbraided Hector, the first time she met him, for letting go the dog. Afterwards, when he went as servant-man to Arileod farm (aìridh-Leoìd) in the neighbourhood, the same woman was often seen by him, in the shape of a hare, sucking the cows. His dog, whenever it caught sight of her, gave chase, and compelled her to resume her proper shape. When he left the farm, she was not seen there for some days. He went in search of her, and accused her to her face of having been the party that troubled the farm. She got into a rage, and said she would punish him for raising such a story about her. He answered that the proprietor of the island had offered a reward for the discovery of the guilty person, and if all the women in Coll were gathered on one hillock his speckled dog (cu breac) would pick her out as the offender. To this she made no reply. He asked her to go to Arileod dairy that night, so that people would not have it to say it was for him the evil had arisen. She said this wasWednesdaynight, and it was out of her power to do anything, but the following night she would go, and he would hear of it. On Thursday night she loosened the cows in Arileod byre, let in the calves, and did much mischief.

WITCHES AS HARES.

In addition to the above tales, in which this transformation has been mentioned, the following may be given as further illustrations of the superstition.

A young man, in the island of Lismore, was out shooting. When near Balnagown Loch, he started a hare, and fired at it. The animal gave an unearthly scream, and it then for the first time occurred to the young man that there were no hares in Lismore. He threw away his gun in terror, and fled home. Next day he came back for the gun, and heard that a reputed witch of the neighbourhood was laid up with a broken leg. Ever after the figure of this woman encountered him and gave him severe thrashings. This preyed on his mind, and he never came to any good. He proved brooding, idle, and useless.