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 FOLK LORE 
 
 m 
 LOWLAND SCOTLAND
 
 V 
 
 AH rights reserved
 
 FOLK LORE 
 
 IN 
 
 LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 EVE BLANTYRE SIMPSON 
 
 LONDON 
 J. M. DENT & COMPANY 
 29 BEDFORD STREET 
 
 MCMVIII
 
 -''/ 
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Beltane and the Vanished Races . . . i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 The Romans and Wells of Water • . • 33 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Scandinavians ...... 59 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Fairies ......... 82 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Fishermen's Superstitions . . . . .118 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Flowers and Birds ...... 145 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Witches and Wizards . . . . . .171 
 
 V 
 
 724R'7fi
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fairs, Festivals, and Funerals . . . .196 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Adages and Omens . ... 221
 
 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND 
 SCOTLAND 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 
 
 " On the wind-swept moors and tranquil valleys I have felt, 
 by some secret intuition, some overwhelming tremor of 
 the spirit, that here some desperate strife has been 
 waged, some primeval conflict enacted; an uncontrol- 
 lable throb of insight, that here some desperate stand 
 was made, some barbarous Thermopylae lost or won." 
 — House of Quiet. 
 
 The study of the folk lore of Lowland Scotland 
 reveals to us in scanty uncertain glimmers some 
 shadowy conception of the aboriginal inhabitants 
 of what was in sober truth a stern and wild Cale- 
 donia. Ancient haunts of men have numberless 
 tongues for those who know how to hear them 
 speak. But it is not the uncouth monoliths like 
 giant mile-stones, looming forth on heights and 
 dark moorlands, but the place names our delu- 
 vian ancestors bequeathed to us, which guide us
 
 2 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 to the knowledge from whence they had wandered 
 to the north. Those that run may not read, but 
 those who pause, and with careful patience clear 
 away the dust of bygone ages, can decipher, 
 despite the obstructions of centuries of progress, 
 traces which, like a blazed trail, lead us beyond 
 the even track of written history into the forest 
 primeval of Scotland's story. Amid all our 
 vaunted complicated civilisation is it not some- 
 what startling to find we, who consider ourselves 
 so advanced in religious knowledge, adhere to 
 usages descended to us from the sanguinary 
 creed of our blue-woaded ancestors? 
 
 One chief and most abiding indication of their, 
 and consequently of our. Oriental origin, are the 
 relics left by these extinct races of their worship 
 of the great lights of heaven. Fire has had a 
 fascination for the human species from time im- 
 memorial. Naturally, those who were forced to 
 dwell in the north craved the most for warmth, 
 but whether the blaze is lit by a hearth-stone, or 
 in the open under the roof of heaven, man, 
 civilised or savage, is allured by and gathers 
 round a fire. The glowing flames for the time 
 being become the home centre. In far past ages 
 the inhabitants of Scotland wielded weapons of
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 3 
 
 stone, but later, when the hidden metals had 
 been tracked to their lair, the natives learned to 
 forge bronze swords, the sun, moon, and stars 
 above them were all important mystic factors in 
 their Hves — gods to be propitiated. They had to 
 live preying, and being preyed upon by the four- 
 footed people who shared the woods with them. 
 Their roof was a tree, and in winter they sought, 
 hke the foxes, shelter in Mother Earth. For all 
 their weather-hardened skins, or robes of deer 
 hide fastened with horn pins, they were a-cold. 
 They looked on the forces of nature as the smiles 
 or frowns of a beneficent or an angered Being. 
 They sought to curry favour with the Power 
 above that gave to them light and heat. From 
 the East they had brought along with them their 
 language, as well as their reverence for Baal. 
 Fire was his earthly symbol, and from his name 
 Baal, Lord, and the Celtic tein, fire, comes Bel- 
 tane — a word which lingers as a beacon light 
 in Scottish place names. Beltane is also linked 
 with our traditional customs, legends, and poetry. 
 To be nearer to their God on the mountain- 
 tops, they built up fires to do him honour. As 
 Solomon says, " It is a blessed thing for the eyes 
 to behold the sun." When the drear-nighted
 
 4 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 winter was over, the heat of the great orb's rays 
 were doubly welcome. We read in the Old 
 Testament of this worship of Baal, and the 
 manner in which sacrifices of men and beasts 
 were offered to appease or pleasure him. The 
 rites were the same in North Britain as in Tophet, 
 the Valley of Slaughter, when the Lord com- 
 plained they broke His law. The Druids, those 
 all-powerful priests who swayed the people of this 
 coimtry, appointed certain seasons in which to 
 pay their chief most deity homage. These days 
 have remained our national festivals, ist May, 
 Midsummer, the eve of November, and Yuletide. 
 Besides the white bulls slain in honour of Baal, 
 the Men of the Oaks decreed that a huge wicker 
 cage in the form of a colossal mortal should be 
 woven, and in it were cast a holocaust of human 
 victims. These were not only prisoners, but the 
 worshippers' hearts'-blood, for parents gave their 
 best beloved. Rude music made by striking 
 tightly-stretched hides deadened their dolorous 
 cries. When they had thus paid sanguinary 
 homage to their god, when the lurid flames, lit 
 in his honour, had devoured the giant cageful of 
 their choicest and fairest, the assembled com- 
 pany held high revel, danced and caroused, par-
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 5 
 
 taking of peculiarly-prepared food and drink. 
 The foregoing is a brief outline of how the ritual 
 of the sun-worship of the Druids was conducted 
 on the high-placed rude altars on the moorlands, 
 and by others who lived in the old time before 
 them. 
 
 We have to surmise much regarding the ways 
 of our ancient ancestors, but the first authentic 
 history of a nation is the history of its tongue. 
 Mountains and rivers still murmur the voices of a 
 people long denationalised or extirpated, so it 
 happens the prehistoric race, who Uved in what 
 is now epic Scotland, have left in place names, and 
 also in surviving observances, hints which enable 
 us to grope our way back to embryo eras in our 
 country's chronicle. 
 
 The coming of the Romans wrought many 
 changes. They uprooted Druidism, for these 
 conquerors did exactly as was done in the East 
 in King Josiah's time. " They broke in pieces 
 the images, and cut down the groves, and forbade 
 that any man might make his son or daughter 
 pass through the fire to Moloch." 
 
 But the old beliefs Ungered, though the priests 
 were scattered. Superstition is enduring, especi-
 
 6 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 ally when mingled with a religious creed. Dr. 
 Jameson mentions that an old Highlander, so 
 lately as the end of the eighteenth century, was 
 in the habit of addressing the Deity under the 
 title of " The Arch Druid." These specified 
 seasons for sacrifices and foul orgies of heathen 
 darkness held by our pagan predecessors are 
 still holidays in this Christian land of ours. 
 When the thorn was white with blossom Merrie 
 England frolicked round the bedecked maypole. 
 In Lowland Scotland, however, the mode and 
 manner of welcoming the spring-time followed 
 more closely customs instituted by those who 
 placed " the grey recumbent tombs of the dead 
 in the desert places; standing stones on the 
 vacant wine-red moor." 
 
 Even from ballad history we glean how much 
 in vogue was the keeping of Beltane. The royal 
 poet, James I., pictures for us how, from far and 
 near, the people thronged to the May-day fair at 
 Peebles. This carnival to hail spring was a land- 
 mark of time for the lowland Scot even until our 
 own day. The origin of our saying, " Peebles for 
 Pleasure," comes from this spring gathering. 
 James I., in The King's Quhair, tells how
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 7 
 
 " At Beltane when ilke bodie bownis * 
 To Peblis to the play. 
 To heir the singing and the soundis 
 The solace suth to say." 
 
 Now in this twentieth century, except for those 
 who rise to wash their faces in the dew on May- 
 day, Beltane has been welhiigh forgotten, even 
 among the shepherds, who kept up this feast and 
 its customs, for only in the latter end of the 
 Victorian era has it fallen into abeyance. Still 
 many scale Arthur's Seat on May-morning, for 
 tradition had so imbued the citizens of Edin- 
 burgh with the custom that they yet adhere to it. 
 Even amid the rush of our present-day life, we 
 have to pause, however briefly, to recruit when 
 winter is past and the time of the singing of birds 
 has come. We feel the need of a chance to enjoy 
 the returning strength of the sun, although the 
 old way of keeping Beltane, even among the 
 conservative rustics, has gone, and the religious 
 rest time, " the Preachings," have disappeared. 
 These holydays have been superseded by the 
 more prosaic and scrimp Spring Holiday, a day 
 on which the populace can go forth and see the 
 advent of summer. Mr. Guthrie in his Old 
 Scottish Customs, published in 1885, tells how he 
 
 * bounds.
 
 8 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 remembers the manner in which Beltane used to 
 be kept. " The shepherds met ere the dawn of 
 May on some neighbouring heights and round a 
 trench which they cut in a huge ring. They 
 went through certain ceremonies, the formulary 
 of which had been handed down from Baal's 
 votaries. They made a fire of wood, on which 
 they dressed a caudle of eggs, butter, oatmeal, 
 and milk. Each of the company brought, 
 besides the ingredients for making the caudle, 
 plenty of beer and whisky. The rites began by 
 spilling some of the caudle on the ground by way 
 of libation. That done, every one took a cake of 
 oatmeal, upon which were raised knobs, each 
 dedicated to some particular being, the supposed 
 preservers of their flocks and herds, or to some 
 animal, tjie real destroyer of them. Each person 
 then turned his face to the fire, broke oft a knob, 
 and throwing it over his left shoulder, said: 
 ' This I give to thee, preserve thou my horses ; 
 this to thee, preserve thou my sheep,' and so on. 
 After this they used the same rites to the noxious 
 animals. ' This I give to thee, O fox; this to 
 thee, O hooded crow; this to thee, O eagle.' 
 When the ceremony was over they dined on the 
 caudle, and after the feast was finished what was
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 9 
 
 left was carefully hidden away by two persons 
 deputed for that purpose, but on the following 
 Sunday the herdsmen reassembled and finished 
 the remains of the former feast." Having gone 
 through many peculiar forms of frolic and mum- 
 mery, the keepers of Beltane fed and made merry. 
 Then lots were cast by breaking up the oaten 
 cakes and blacking one knob. The drawer of 
 the charcoaled piece from the hat was bound to 
 leap through the blaze three times. Those who, 
 amid the laughter of the onlookers, sprang over 
 the flaring embers with as little scaith as possible 
 would not in times past have escaped with a 
 bound above the burning heat, but have been 
 devoured by the red-tongued flames to propitiate 
 the God of Light. It was also customary at 
 these gatherings for fathers to pass over the fire 
 with their children in their arms to ensure their 
 offspring immunity from ill. Milton touches on 
 the origin of this custom in Paradise Lost : — 
 
 " Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud 
 Their children's cries unheard, that passed through the 
 
 fire 
 To his grim idol." 
 
 There is a Gaelic proverb which speaks of being 
 in " the jeopardy of Baal." This arose from the
 
 10 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 practice of lighting two contingent fires and 
 driving those to be sacrificed between them to be 
 consecrated before death. To be between Baal's 
 fire came in local parlance to much the same thing 
 as being between the deep sea and the devil, 
 without hope of escape. The idea of thus purify- 
 ing the flocks by cleansing fires still dwells with 
 us. In parts of Perthshire in 1810 " the in- 
 habitants collected and kindled a fire by friction, 
 and through the fire thus kindled they drove 
 their cattle in order to protect them against 
 disease." In other parts of Scotland the horses 
 are herded between the two bonfires, thus still 
 unconsciously dedicating them to the sun. 
 Penant, in his Tour in Scotland, mentions seeing 
 the hiU-tops aglow in honour of Beltane, and Mr. 
 Napier in his book on folk lore, published in 
 1879, says, " Many think the superstitions of last 
 century died with the century, but this is not so; 
 and as these notions are curious and in many 
 cases important historical factors, I have thought 
 it worth while to jot down what of this folk lore 
 has come under my observation during these 
 last sixty years." He mentions isolated districts 
 where the rural people still held to the observ- 
 ances of Beltane, and talked with those who re-
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES ii 
 
 collected it when it was more of a national feast 
 day. All fires in Druidical times were quenched 
 on the last night of April. The priests on a 
 neighbouring hill dedicated to the solar worship, 
 from the pyres they lit to welcome May, gave to 
 the people kindling from their sacred beacon 
 wherewith to relight the social watchfires on 
 their own hearths. 
 
 Midsummer was the season next set aside to 
 propitiate Baal, but it fell sooner into oblivion 
 than the other specially-appointed feast days. 
 The light was long in June, the sun strong; the 
 flocks fattened on the new luscious grass, for heat 
 and consequently food were plentiful. There 
 was no need to fawn and curry favour with a 
 bountiful patron, so then as now, when all things 
 were going easily and smoothly, man took the 
 benefit as his due and paid small court to the 
 Powers above. A well-known proverb shows 
 the frailty of human beings and the strategy of 
 Satan : — 
 
 " When the devil was ill, the devil a saint would be, 
 When the devil was well, devil a saint was he." 
 
 The coming harvest caused some anxiety, 
 but Midsummer Day and its never dark night 
 and clear skies did not lend itself to Baal
 
 12 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 worship. When the summer was over and 
 winter had to be faced, man bethought himself 
 again of courting favour. The exit of October 
 became, and still from custom and tradition's 
 sake remains, a marked day. The Celtic name for 
 this Hallowmass was Sham-in, the fire of Baal. 
 The Irish called it Sain-fuin — sain, summer, 
 and fuin, end — i.e., the end of summer. It was 
 at this season that the Druids usually met in the 
 most central places of their surrounding country 
 and administered justice and adjusted disputes. 
 Those who did not make their peace were not 
 given the brand from the consecrated fire and 
 had a sentence of excommunication passed on 
 them. " Dr. Arthur Mitchell," says an anti- 
 quarian, writing in 1867, " informs me that a few 
 years ago he counted within sight of a railway 
 station in Perthshire a dozen of these Samhain 
 fires burning in different directions on a Hallow- 
 e'en night. On the eve of the first day of 
 November there were such fires kindled as on 
 May-day, accompanied as they continually were 
 by sacrifices and feastings." The name Hallow- 
 e'en for this late autumnal feast in Christian times 
 superseded Samhain. The Romans had a festival 
 called Fernalia in February, when they visited
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 13 
 
 the graves of their friends and offered up obla- 
 tions. The spirits of the dead were then believed 
 to be free to roam in their whilom earthly haunts, 
 and if not propitiated would, during the ensuing 
 year, haunt their neglectful relatives. Eventually 
 to cloak pagan Samhain with a semblance of 
 Christianit}^ the Church mingled the two feasts 
 into Hallowmass. On the eve of November it 
 was believed the veil was lifted and a peep into 
 futurity given. Gradually All-Hallow observ- 
 ances were not held on hill-tops, but centred 
 round the people's own fireside, and there nuts 
 were burnt and apples ducked for. Apples have 
 taken root in the superstitions of the people may 
 be from the day of their forbiddenness. A tree 
 of them is said to be lucky near a house, and 
 apples are credited with holding a special sway 
 over the affairs of the affections. One common 
 Hallowe'en custom is for a girl to pare an apple 
 and fling the skin over her shoulder to read from 
 its twists the initial letter of her lover's name. 
 This divination of the future by contortions and 
 signs rose from out of the blood-bestained smoke 
 of Baal's fire. The oak-wreathed Druids learned 
 to draw conclusions as to the future by watching 
 the writhings of their victims, whether bull or
 
 14 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 man, under their knife, and the way they fell in 
 their dying agony. A less blood-thirsty age 
 reads what is to come in apple skins. From 
 Hallowe'en hankerings for future insight any 
 bold lover had but to be alert, or have a friend to 
 give him a hint when to appear, to score a success. 
 Most of the charms had to be worked out alone, 
 some had to be tested in a solitude of two, which 
 gave a quick-witted youth every opportunity of 
 advancing his suit. There was the pulling of 
 green kail stocks from out of a spinster's or 
 bachelor's garden, when a couple went with shut 
 eyes, hand in hand, among the cabbages. If the 
 runts were of goodly growth, stout of stem, all 
 was well for the pullers. Their mates would be 
 well favoured in person and purse. If the roots 
 were unclogged with earth, they would be lacking 
 in comeliness and poverty-stricken. If the kernel 
 of the stock was sweet or sour to taste, so would 
 be the temper of the future consort. The stocks 
 were hung about the doors, and the next person 
 crossing the threshold was held to bear the name 
 of the future wife or husband. It was thus made 
 easy for a lover to come in at an opportune 
 moment, or to persuade the lady of his choice not 
 to fly in the face of fate, when such opportunities
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 15 
 
 as walking in the dark, with eyes shut, hand in 
 hand, were strewn by tradition in their path. 
 For instance, on this night when the future was 
 seen face to face, maidens ofttimes, while combing 
 their locks, ate an apple alone at midnight, threw 
 one piece over their left shoulder, and while 
 munching the rest, they looked through their veil 
 of hair and saw the reflection of their ordained 
 spouse in the mirror. There is also the old 
 custom of the sowing of hemp. It was also done 
 at midnight by a lass scattering the seed saying, 
 " Hemp seed I sow thee, hemp seed I sow thee; 
 and he that is my true love come behind and 
 harrow thee." A youth who was too faint- 
 hearted to take advantage of such a chance was 
 not worthy to win a fair lady. The winnowing of 
 com at mirk midnight offered yet another oppor- 
 tunity, also the measuring of the beanstalk. The 
 order in regard to the latter spell was to go three 
 times round a beanstalk with outstretched arms, 
 as if measuring it, and the third time the votary 
 will clasp in her arms the shade of her future 
 partner. It is easy to see how the shadow with a 
 little tact might become substance. 
 
 Throwing the clue was another forecast 
 practised. The ^receipt for this augury was:
 
 i6 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 " Steal forth alone at night to the nearest lime 
 kiln, and throw in a clue of blue yam, winding off 
 in a fresh clue, as you come near the edge, grasp 
 hold of the thread lying in the kiln. You then 
 ask who holds, and the name of your future 
 partner will be uttered from beneath." Mr. 
 Guthrie, in his Old Scottish Customs, tells us of a 
 girl called Mary Shirley, who had two admirers, 
 Robert Laurie and William Fleming. Laurie 
 was the favoured one. Fleming consulted a 
 friend of Mary's, and found from her that Mary 
 Shirley intended on the coming Hallowe'en to 
 throw the blue clue into the kiln nearest her 
 father's house. Fleming obeyed the hint thus 
 kindly given. On the night in question he hid 
 himself in the lime kiln and seized hold of the 
 clue which the inquiring lass threw in. In 
 answering to her faltering "Who holds?" he 
 gave his own name. Hastily dropping the 
 thread, the terrified girl fled homewards. Ere 
 many hours had elapsed Fleming proposed and 
 was accepted by the pretty Mary, to the no small 
 surprise and anger of his rival. When congratu- 
 lated on the wisdom of her choice, she replied 
 somewhat sadly: " It was na me who made the 
 choice; I myself was a' for Robert, but fate had
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 17 
 
 it I was tae get the ither, and wha can gang agin 
 fate? " The marriage thus strangely brought 
 about proved a very happy one for both parties. 
 Fleming, however, wisely preserved silence as to 
 the Hallowe'en trick which won him his bride." 
 There were many other observances, all with 
 much the same object, tried with merriment on 
 the eve of November, when people believed the 
 borderland between the visible and invisible 
 world was for a brief space free to dead and 
 living. There was the pricking of an egg, the 
 eating of a herring, the dipping of a shirt-sleeve, 
 etc., each giving golden opportunities to help the 
 prophecy to be reahsed. 
 
 At Rutherglen there long lingered peculiar 
 ceremonies as to the baking of sour cakes on St. 
 Luke's Day. This unique baking was supposed 
 to have originated in pagan times, — the mean- 
 ing thereof is swallowed up in the darkness of 
 ages. The baking was executed by women who 
 began their work at sunset. They sat within a 
 chalked line, whose bounds were never over- 
 stepped by the audience as it was looked upon as 
 consecrated ground. One dame was the toaster 
 or queen, the helpers were her maidens. The 
 dough was prepared beforehand and rolled up
 
 i8 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 into balls mixed with sugar and aniseed. The 
 women's hands never touched the dough; she 
 who sat next the fire towards the east was called 
 the Toddler, her companion on the other side was 
 called the Hoddler, who took a ball, formed it 
 into a small cake and then cast it on the bake- 
 board of the Hoddler, who beat it out a little 
 thinner. This being done, she in her turn threw 
 it on the board of her neighbour, and thus it went 
 round from east to west, in the direction of the 
 sun's course. When it came to the toaster it was 
 as thin as a piece of paper. Sometimes the cake 
 was so emaciated as to be carried by the air up 
 the chimney. The bread thus baked was never 
 originally intended for human food. In later 
 days it was always given to strangers. The 
 origin of this custom is said to be very ancient, 
 and it is thought by some to have belonged to 
 the worship of the moon, for cakes were kneaded 
 by women for the Queen of Heaven. This 
 baking has fallen into abeyance, but for long at 
 Rutherglen sour cakes and salt roasts were pre- 
 pared for provisions at the time of St. Luke's 
 Fair. Those who are inquisitive as to what had 
 been, can only guess that near to the time of 
 Hallowe'en in pagan times the moon came in for
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 19 
 
 her share of homage. As the spouse of the sun 
 she was held sacred, and Venus was the page 
 to these leading luminaries. The rainbow and 
 the lightning were the sun's servants. Astoreth 
 or Astarte was the name of the moon god, the 
 sun's fair silvery consort, and to this day from 
 ingrained superstition we look for the Lady Moon 
 when she appears but a silver bow in the heavens. 
 For luck's sake we turn our money in our pockets, 
 kiss our hands, or bow to her three times. Job 
 (xxxi. 26) speaks of the worship of this goddess 
 as of some ill religion, the observance of which 
 has descended to us, " If I beheld the sun when 
 it shined or the moon walking in brightness and 
 my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my 
 mouth hath kissed my hand, this also were an 
 iniquity to be punished by the judge for I should 
 have denied the God that is above." 
 
 " O Lady Moon — whose horns point to the east, 
 Grow be increased. 
 O Lady Moon — whose horns point to the west, 
 Wane be at rest! " 
 
 says an olden rhyme. Thus everlastingly fair 
 Lady Moon has been saluted when her silvery 
 horns are first seen. She has waned and gone 
 to rest for untold ages, for milHons of moons, and
 
 20 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND ' 
 
 still, till lately, here among us cakes were baked 
 by her woman votaries, still she entices us by 
 her monthly newborn beauty to make obeisance 
 to her. As for the eve of All Souls, the ancient 
 Samhain, when graves give up their dead, and 
 for a space the spirits of good and evil have 
 special licence to return to this world, it will 
 never be forgotten as long as Burns is read, for 
 his imagery of the revel of the witches by Allo- 
 way Kirk has made it immortal. 
 
 When the days had begun to lengthen the 
 Druids instituted the festival of Yuletide, to 
 hail the slowly-increasing light. The northern 
 nations, like the Hebrews, to use an Irishism, 
 began their day in the evening. They counted 
 time by nights. That was an all-important 
 period, for their sacred fires (which they looked 
 upon as the earthly symbol of the sun) loomed 
 the better against the mirk of the dark hours. 
 The conviviality on the threshold of a new year 
 we still adhere to. In one of our ballads we read 
 of the hallowed days of Yule, for the time of 
 feasting lasted longer than one scrimp day. 
 When people had gathered together from afar, 
 they enjoyed a week or more of social intercourse, 
 as when in James the First's time they " bounded "
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 21 
 
 to " Peebles to the play." Yule and New Year 
 came to be merged as one festival. In Christian 
 times in England, the feast of the Nativity re- 
 mained the principal holiday, but in Lowland 
 Scotland Hogmanay and the first week of January 
 were the " hallowed days of Yule." Also no 
 doubt owing to the persevering efforts made by 
 the Presbyterian clergy after the Reformation 
 to extinguish all Catholic holydays, Christmas 
 was not regarded north of the Tweed. The last 
 of December, Hogmanay as it was called in Scot- 
 land, was looked upon by the children as a period 
 when beggary was justifiable. The foreseeing 
 housewife prepared for the besieging of her door 
 by demanding bairns, and baked Hogmanay 
 cakes. She good-naturedly obeyed the injunc- 
 tions sung before her house : — 
 
 " Get up, good wife, and shake your feathers, 
 Dinna think that we are beggars; 
 For we are bairns come out to play, 
 Get up and gie's our hogmanay." 
 
 In England the people in Christian times 
 learned to sing Christmas carols, but in Scotland, 
 the boys who were guisards sang, or rather hastily, 
 with sing-song voices, gabbled, rhymes, whose 
 meaning is lost in conjecture.
 
 22 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 "... Hogmanay, 
 Give us of your white bread, and none of your grey." 
 
 was one favourite jingle cried by the guisars. 
 To the middle of last century, in outlying primi- 
 tive districts, at the close of the year, children 
 dressed themselves in sheets, which they folded 
 so as to form an ample pocket like a fishwife's 
 petticoat, to hold their dole. Then they went 
 from door to door, laughing and singing their 
 Yuletide rhymes: — 
 
 " My feet's cauld, my shoon's done, 
 Gie's my cakes, and let's rin." 
 
 the sheeted blackmailers cried, when they had got 
 their pockets full. Mr. Chambers in his Popular 
 Rhymes of Scotland, published in 1841, says: " It 
 is no unpleasing scene (I am sorry to say I speak 
 of sixty years since) to see the children going 
 laden home, each with his large apron bellying 
 out before him, filled full of cakes, perhaps 
 scarcely able to waddle beneath the load. Such 
 a mass of oaten alms is no inconsiderable addition 
 to the comfort of the poor man's household, and 
 tends to make the season still more worthy of its 
 jocund title." 
 
 Auguries as to the future were drawn from 
 Yuletide bakings. The farmers' wives in Forfar-
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 23 
 
 shire kneaded bannocks at this season. If they 
 fell asunder after being put to the fire, it was 
 an omen that they would not bake again on the 
 eve of Yule. Hansel-Monday followed the New 
 Year, for Scotland has two special holidays of her 
 own — Hogmanay and Hansel- Monday — which she 
 does not share with her southern sister, England. 
 She leaves to the latter Christmas and Boxing 
 Day. Hansel-Monday is the first Monday of 
 the week after New Year, when presents were 
 given in tokens as a symbol of peace and good- 
 will, and Hansel-Monday, as every householder 
 knows, is still a day when those who serve us 
 during the year expect a largesse. In olden 
 times, not only to children and servants were 
 hansels given, but to all the stalled beasts. The 
 farmer went round and laid in each manger an 
 extra feed. Burns alludes to the kindly custom 
 when the master pats his steady steed and says : — 
 
 " A gude New Year I wish thee, Maggie, 
 Hae, there's a nip to thy auld 
 
 Every house was set in order and work ceased 
 on Hogmanay. Yam was hanked and wheel and 
 reel put by. Yule, when the days were brief, was 
 a convenient season to gather round the hearth 
 and bum the Yule log, which was usually of ash.
 
 24 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 The holiday was lengthened out in the company 
 of bewitching mead and heather ale, and all the 
 Scandinavians kept the Yuletide by their own 
 hearths. Hogmanay, though seemingly Scotch, 
 is said to be of French derivation from au gui 
 menez, " to the mistletoe go," which mummers 
 formerly cried in France at Christmas. Another 
 suggested explanation is au geux menez, that is, 
 " bring to the beggars." There are others who 
 hold that Hogmanay comes from a word mean- 
 ing " the night of slaughter." That derivation 
 of the word recalls the olden days when the cattle 
 were killed in preparation for the feast of Baal. 
 The mistletoe has grown into the flower symbolic 
 of Yuletide. It is a true evergreen, for it reminds 
 us still of the days when the Druids held sway 
 over our pagan land. Whatever be the deriva- 
 tion of Hogmanay, it holds its own in Scotland. 
 Dark men are popular on the dawn of the first of 
 January. The first person to enter a house on 
 the New Year should be black-haired, not a red 
 or fair man, and a woman is unwelcome. Many 
 devices are resorted to to secure a lucky first- 
 foot, so that the house may prosper. The wine 
 of the country is in much requisition on Hog- 
 manay. It is given and taken by the first-foots.
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 25 
 
 Still in the stubborn Scotch mind, despite cen- 
 turies of advancement, there remains fixed the 
 idea that the days of Yule should be holiday 
 times. They extend, as in prehistoric years, for 
 wellnigh a week, and there is a pardon given for 
 the noisy carousing on the occasion. Even in 
 this bustling age people find it takes a few days 
 to wish a good New Year to all their friends. 
 The Druids' practice to keep a watch on the 
 night that the old year dies remains with us. 
 Crowds eagerly hearken for the church bells to 
 ring out the old, to ring in the new, and there is 
 not much time given for that " solemn pause " 
 thinking over the year " that's awa'," of which 
 Sir Walter Scott speaks in his journal. 
 
 To sum up some of the customs which folk lore 
 from ages past has bequeathed to us, and which, 
 though in a modified form, we unconsciously 
 adhere to, the Druids instilled into their devotees 
 a patriotism which made them strive to die 
 
 "... facing fearful odds. 
 For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his Gods." 
 
 This habit of self-sacrifice, our recent wars can 
 testify, is not yet extinct. The Druid priests 
 were astrologers of no mean repute; waiting by 
 their altar fires they studied the starry finnament.
 
 * 26 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 From them, as we have mentioned, we learned 
 to calculate time by senights and fortnights 
 instead of by the days of the month. They too 
 left us the mistletoe as a plant sacred to Yule. 
 They had gone forth to cut it with the silver 
 knife in their oak groves to lay upon their altar. 
 It is now entwined with holly leaves and is en- 
 shrined in our hearths and homes, as a sign that 
 Christmas is near. Their manner of homage 
 reeked with blood, but they gave to their deity 
 their best and most precious lives without stint. 
 " Thine ancient sacrifice a humble and a contrite 
 heart " we have been taught is sufficient offer- 
 ing, but simple sacrifice though it be, we ofttimes 
 let the seasons roll by without tendering it. 
 Standing by some lichen-covered pagan altar we 
 think of the victims, biped and quadruped, who 
 were once slaughtered there to appease the 
 heathen gods, and see that the grass grows green 
 around the spot once saturated with hot life's 
 blood. Yet though Christianity had shone in 
 the land for hundreds of years, the belief that a 
 life given would mollify the powers that be still 
 glimmered among us. Not twenty miles west 
 from the capital of Scotland, my father. Sir James 
 Y. Simpson, to whose genius and benevolence
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 27 
 
 the world owes the blessings derived from the 
 use of chloroform, mentions in one of his archaeo- 
 logical essays, " In old pagan times we know 
 that the sacrifice of the ox was common. I have 
 myself often listened to the account given by one 
 near and dear to me who was in early life per- 
 sonally engaged in the offering up and burying of 
 a poor live cow as a sacrifice to the spirit of 
 Murrain." The one " near and dear " was the 
 future doctor's father. The cow was immured 
 at his grandfather's farm, and Sir James's father 
 used to graphically describe to his eager son how 
 he and his brothers propelled the poor victim 
 into its grave, and " I remember," he added, with 
 grisly graphicness, " seeing the earth heaving 
 after the soil was pushed in." This was some 
 time in one of the latter decades of the eighteenth 
 century, and the owner of the cow, Alexander 
 Simpson, of Slackend, farmer and farrier, was a 
 man full of practical common sense. He was so 
 shrewd and pawky it is likely the wretched 
 animal thus buried to allay the plague was on its 
 last legs before it was thus cruelly immured alive ; 
 for he also laid aside a corner of a field as an offer- 
 ing to the Evil One — a corner called the Gude- 
 man's croft — and this bit was a stony, useless
 
 28 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 knowe. The plough left it unbroken, and it was 
 supposed to be appreciated by the so - called 
 Gudeman. Throughout Scotland these " crofts " 
 may be seen. 
 
 When a ship is named and launched we speed 
 it on its way, breaking a bottle of red wine over 
 it. This is a relic of that heathen time when 
 great events were baptised with blood. The 
 new vessel on her passage into the sea would have 
 had her way paved with the bodies of prisoners 
 and slaves which she would have juggemauted 
 amid the acclamations of the delighted crowd. 
 
 We learned to rear monuments from those far- 
 off ancestors of ours. Those unwieldy stones 
 they raised on bare heights had been placed there 
 with what almost seems superhuman effort, un- 
 aided by any mechanical device. They had no 
 roads to drag their memorials along, no tackle to 
 upheave them into their places — these great 
 slabs of rock, which never knew the smoothing 
 influence of a mason's tools. But the people 
 carved upon them incomprehensible circular 
 hieroglyphics which we cannot read. They en- 
 graved these pillars of rock with patient labour, 
 for their implements like their monuments were 
 of stone. Our more practical humane age, in-
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 29 
 
 stead of placing monoliths on high to bear some 
 great name in remembrance, builds with its gold 
 hospitals and schools for the sick and needy. 
 These rugged, be-lichened obelisks with their 
 strange markings were installed in their places 
 amid the sacrifices and shouts of the worshipping 
 heathen. They have withstood the storms of 
 untold centuries, and standing there in their 
 natural, unhewn, rugged grandeur, tell us how we 
 learned to commemorate outstanding deeds and 
 deaths, for from them we were taught to thus 
 WTite in stone. The names of some of our 
 Scottish hill-tops show to us where our fore- 
 fathers worshipped, and we read in them our 
 country's story. They are to us rays of light on 
 sun-worship; for instance, Tullie Beltane is the 
 knoll of Baal's fire, and in the statistical account 
 of Scotland, 1848, it is stated that a thick stratum 
 of charcoal was discovered beneath a structure of 
 fine loam on the summit of the hill. When the 
 country people saw it, they expressed no surprise, 
 as the tradition was familiar to them that it was 
 here where the former inhabitants of the country 
 had been in the habit of lighting their Beltane 
 lires. There is a peak in the Cheviots, Yalverton 
 Bell, and these names (for the word Bal or Bell is
 
 30 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 given to many a knoll), tell where of old the fires 
 were lit, and where the pagans worshipped, and 
 these names telegraph back to us over mighty- 
 distances of time significant specimens of the 
 tongue spoken by the first inhabitants of the 
 districts. In the Celtic other names alluding to 
 fire are beacon lights to the archaeologist, such as 
 Ard-Andein, the light of the fire; Craig-an-tein, 
 the rock of the fire; Auch-an-tein, the field of 
 the fire. There are besides Stonehenge other 
 remains of pagan temples left in this land; they, 
 too, like the great menhirs of Salisbury Plains, 
 were almanacs in stone. The priests knew by 
 the slant of the sun on its rising or setting what 
 time of the year it was. At Craig-Maddi there 
 are slabs of rock which form a rude altar, one 
 laid table- wise resting on the other two. The 
 name of the Cromlech itself speaks, Craig-Maddi, 
 the rock of God. There, on the solitary moor- 
 land, unmistakable history is written, for no one 
 can look at this huge memorial without recognis- 
 ing at once an altar of the hoary past. Greenach 
 in Perthshire, where there is a large stone circle, 
 means field of the sun; Greanchnox means the 
 knoll of the sun. The latter place is now our 
 great seaport on the Clyde, Greenock. There is
 
 BELTANE AND THE VANISHED RACES 31 
 
 also Greenan, a river in Perthshire — river of the 
 sun ; and there is a Balgreen, meaning the town 
 of the sun. Near to Edinburgh is its harbour, 
 Granton, and in its name is written the fact that 
 ages before Edwin built a burgh on the great 
 rock which had been a Roman fort, and founded 
 high Dunedin, our city of the winds, the Druids 
 had worshipped on this hillock by the sea. The 
 knoll which caught the gleam of the rising or the 
 setting sun is now a villa-laden steep, but here 
 the priests of Baal had stood and watched, and 
 worshipped and walked amid the Stones of Fire 
 centuries before Edinburgh began to emerge 
 from a fortress into a be-castled romance of stone 
 and lime. 
 
 Fire was the alarm signal in troubled times, for 
 it sped the news of coming war. The empty 
 braziers on the peel towers of the Borders were 
 once kept charged to be aye ready to be lighted 
 and let their neighbours know that the English 
 had crossed the Tweed. Fire carried the news of 
 the coming of the Armada from south to north 
 with wonderful despatch. The alarm at Ply- 
 mouth lit the first link in the chain of fire which 
 blazed from hill to hill till " the glare on Skid- 
 daw roused the burghers of Carhsle." Braziers
 
 32 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 made an effectual line of telegraph in our land. 
 They were in use till last century, for they were 
 used when it was thought Napoleon was likely to 
 invade our isle. The false alarm lit one day 
 made the bold borders make ready with zeal and 
 promptitude. The very bonfires which we light 
 in times of rejoicing are a link with the eras when 
 the sun-worshippers liked to look down from 
 their blazing heights and call, as did the priest 
 whom Elijah challenged on Carmel, " O Baal, 
 hear us." Their love of flames is not extin- 
 guished yet in us, their descendants. The gory 
 trace of the sun-cult's fires, like the bloodstains 
 on woodwork, is indelible. We worship a known 
 God, but when we wish to return thanks for bless- 
 ings received, we toilsomely ascend, laden with 
 burdens of fuel, to conspicuous heights, and there 
 build bonfires and frolic around the flames, 
 pleased that our light should so shine before men ; 
 as when every peak from Land's End to John o' 
 Groat's was aglow with our fires of homage to a 
 great Queen, who, victorious and glorious, had 
 ruled over us for sixty years. We rejoiced and 
 made merry, forgetful that, despite the lapse of 
 ages, we adhered to the practice learned by our 
 ancestors from the priests of Baal.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 
 
 " Regions Caesar never knew 
 
 Thy posterity shall sway. 
 
 Where his eagles never flew, 
 
 None invincible as they." 
 
 COWPER. 
 
 " The waters murmur of their name, 
 The woods are peopled with their fame, 
 The silent pillar lone and gray." 
 
 Byron. 
 
 Before the Druids inflamed the people with 
 patriotic zeal to strive against their Roman 
 assailants, traders to our shores had brought 
 Britain into touch with the culture and wisdom 
 of the East, for the adventurous Phoenicians had 
 found in the westmost corner of England there 
 existed a wealth of much coveted metal. Britain 
 was then an all but undiscovered Ultima Thule 
 to the civilised world. Herodotus chronicles 500 
 years B.C. that there was a land beyond the seas 
 called Cassiterides (tin islands). Aristotle ex- 
 panded this brief note and wrote later: " Beyond 
 the Pillars of Hercules are two islands which are
 
 34 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 very large — Albion and lerne called the Britannic, 
 which lie beyond the Celtae." " Here," says 
 Collier, " for the first time in history, we have the 
 number and the names of the islands which form 
 the nucleus of our mighty empire." The Phoeni- 
 cians concealed the source from whence they 
 drew their supply of tin. Surrounded by her 
 mist-mantled sea, Albion lay screened, so, watch- 
 ful though the Romans were, for long they failed 
 to find from whence the ships of Tyre and Car- 
 thage sailed home laden with their valued cargoes. 
 Spurred by their love of conquest, determined to 
 find and annex the country that was rich in this 
 mineral, the Romans never rested till Julius 
 Caesar eventually came, saw, and conquered. The 
 persistent, dogged Roman army, which brooked 
 no opposition, forged their iron way with resolute 
 courage past the thin line of civilisation which 
 girded the southern seaboard of Albion, and came, 
 after many years, to the savage, untamed north. 
 They christened the tribes they found there 
 " The people of the woods," and on their maps 
 Scotland became Caledonia. The derivation of 
 the name shows that the country was well 
 timbered, and the invaders repeatedly raised 
 altars to Sylvanus, the god of the woods, for these
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 35 
 
 fanes we still find. There was one where the 
 Leader and the Tweed meet near the village of 
 Newstead, which had been erected by Carrius 
 Domitianus, the prefect of the valiant and vic- 
 torious twentieth legion. Further down the 
 Tweed there has been revealed a similar votive 
 offering, which forms another instance how much 
 the wild and silvan character of the country dis- 
 posed the feelings of the Romans to acknowledge 
 the presence of the rural deities. The junction 
 of rivers seemed to be a felicitous spot for such 
 memorials. Where the Teviot mingles with the 
 Tweed there was again an altar to the woodland 
 god. The modern ducal mansion of Floors, look- 
 ing down on the spot where the second James 
 Stuart came to an untimely end, is close by the 
 site chosen for the shrine erected to propitiate 
 the satyrs and fauns the Romans believed in and 
 with which they peopled the bosky banks and 
 tangled copses of this now romantic district. 
 These altars to the sprites of the greenwood stand 
 near to where, in after time, the great Border 
 abbeys — Melrose, Dr^^burgh, and Kelso — arose. 
 The fabled flood of Tweed flows for ever and 
 ever through the Merse, seeing as it rolls through 
 the centuries new religions arise, fade, and be
 
 36 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 succeeded by others. Roman fane and Christian 
 church ahke were built, reverenced, and crumbled 
 into dust. Wizards were reared and prophesied 
 by the wide Tweed side, and the greatest of them, 
 Scott, rests by its banks. " Around are the graves 
 of abbots and monks who lived all through 
 Scottish story, heard the tidings of Bannockburn, 
 Flodden, Ancrum, and Pinkie, their matins and 
 their vespers now sunk in one silence of the dead 
 — and only he in the moving creations of William 
 of Deloraine, and Lucy Ashton, and Jeanie Deans 
 has an immortality of memory." 
 
 The triple heads of the Eildon Hills, like the 
 unrivalled Tweed at their feet, have witnessed 
 many changes in our land. A modern writer 
 pictures how generations ago our ancestors had 
 climbed to the eastmost peak of the Eildons and 
 there, in the track of the winds, they had built for 
 themselves a village, and raised earthen ramparts 
 around to protect themselves from their foes, 
 human and wolfish. Within the fosse were the 
 wives and children, and the men kept watch over 
 the untamed Merse of Tweed. " One evening 
 the sentinel on the outer rampart looked over an 
 abyss of darkness at his feet, the steep earthwork 
 almost fell perpendicularly to the almost per-
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 37 
 
 pendicular hill-side, and in the lull of the wind he 
 heard the hoarse roar of the Tweed, as it swept in 
 flood through the valley a thousand feet below. 
 No light anywhere save the will o' the wisp 
 speaking to his savage heart of bog demons and 
 forest demons, which lured men to untimely 
 graves, or the fires of possibly hostile village forts 
 on the other side of the valley; and behind him 
 lay all he knew of home — the tribe and the chief, 
 his wife and children, his bed of skins and his 
 smoky hut, his favourite dog, and his quiver of 
 flinted shafts. No wonder it was dear and sweet 
 to him, and no doubt he would have gladly spent 
 his last and best blood to save it from demon, 
 beasts, or man, as the Roman who saw on Pala- 
 tinus the white porch of his home. But one day 
 from the south, somewhere in the vast stretch of 
 forest or fen that lay between them and the 
 Cheviots, their eyes were dazzled by the gleam of 
 sun on bronze armour, and their scouts told them 
 of swarms of swarthy men, of strange speech and 
 grim visage, bearing strange arms and great 
 engines of war through the deep wood, felling 
 the trees, throwing them into marshes, pihng 
 stones over them, and moving in a course as 
 straight as a beam of light towards their moun-
 
 38 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 tain fastness. What happened to the village fort 
 we can safely guess — a sudden, swift night attack, 
 after a long stealthy cHmb, and then the short 
 stabbing sword did its work." Though that was 
 an oft-repeated tale on the Roman line of march, 
 the surviving vanquished natives, with hearts 
 anguished for the home and kindred torn from 
 them, fled for shelter beyond the Forth and Tay. 
 These trained legions from the Eternal City thus 
 ousted from their strongholds the denizens of 
 Caledonia's forests. They turned each well- 
 positioned burgh into a fortified camp, every one 
 of which was a rivet in the links of their chain of 
 conquest, another step forward in the path of 
 empire. Empire and road-making went hand in 
 hand, though the tamers of a savage land may 
 have left their handiwork for others to tread on. 
 In this century, many a farm cart lumbering 
 along to some outlying field travels by the 
 Romans' now disused road. Beneath its grass- 
 grown way the stone ground-work tells us it was 
 engineered by those who, over 1500 years ago, were 
 our conquerors. Coaches laden with our kings 
 and queens have driven along their thoroughfares, 
 the very milestones tell how we learned from 
 them to mark distance. It was by the paved
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 39 
 
 streets, which the legions from Italy engineered 
 from Thames to Forth and Clyde, that there 
 travelled to Scotland the message that a new- 
 order of things had come into being, which revolu- 
 tionised the country, and left more mark upon it 
 than all the roads these Romans made, or the 
 fundamental laws they left us. On their eagles' 
 wings to our barbarous, benighted fatherland, 
 there was wafted north the first whisper of the 
 glad tidings of great joy, news that a star of hope 
 and peace had arisen in the East, and its beams 
 would shine and penetrate everlastingly over the 
 world. It was but a vague report at first, that 
 an insignificant few of the Roman soldiery 
 brought with them from the south. The main 
 bulk continued to consult their oracles and rear 
 altars to praise and conciliate the satyrs and 
 fauns whom they believed dwelt in the dark fir 
 forests of Caledonia. Besides discovering this to 
 be so timbered a country that Sylvanus had to 
 be honoured all along Tweed side, the Romans 
 found it bubbling with mineral waters good both 
 to drink and to bathe in. We have to thank our 
 invaders for teaching our ancestors to become 
 votaries of hydropathy, for the conquered people 
 in course of time followed the lead of the master-
 
 40 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 ful men of Italy. Before the Romans came, the 
 original inhabitants of Britain stood in oriental 
 awe of water. From their Eastern ancestors, 
 who had journeyed from sun-smitten plains, there 
 naturally arose an admiring adoration for wells 
 of water, especially for springs bubbhng up pure 
 and undefiled from out of the brown earth. 
 Whether the genii of the fountains and rivers 
 were good or evil spirits, our progenitors were un- 
 certain. The water ways of Scotland, now rivers 
 of romance, seemed to them occasionally to be 
 possessed by demons who were hungry for men 
 and beasts. The Borderers realised the perfidi- 
 ousness of apparently placidly-flowing streams. 
 The honest Tweed, swollen by snow and rain, 
 came thundering through the Merse, sweeping 
 corn and cattle, and aU that came within its 
 grasp into its flood. Its neighbour, the brim- 
 ming Till, meandering with sinuous twists among 
 green pastures, with stealthy patience under- 
 mined its banks, and many a man lost his life in 
 its false-flowing waters. In a Border rhyme this 
 sleek, treacherous river was noted for its cannibal 
 propensities : — 
 
 " Says till to Tweed, though you go with speed, and I go slaw. 
 For every man you drown I drown twa."
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 41 
 
 Three lines tell a similar tale of a river further 
 north : — 
 
 " The dowie Dean 
 It runs its lean, 
 An' every seven years it gets ean." 
 
 Rhymes like these, says Alexander Smith in his 
 Summer in Skye, " are the truest antiques, the 
 most precious articles of virtu — an authentic bit 
 of terror that agitated human hearts long ago." 
 
 It was averred the kelpie (the water sprite) was 
 heard to wail a dirge before it claims a life. Its 
 slogan is one of these sad plaints which the wind 
 pipes, and the waters sing, for nature's voice is 
 often raised as an earnest of woe. Neith was the 
 goddess of inland waters, and she also, our 
 ancestors held, took toll in lives for neglect of 
 propitiatory homage. But the Romans, though 
 believing in water and woodland fetiches, were 
 also learned in medicines. From Africa's 
 northern shores, where in Algeria famed baths 
 exist, to the springs gushing out among the moors 
 and mosses in Caledonia, these keen-eyed Romans 
 discovered and reverenced healing waters. They 
 founded health resorts which are unsuperseded 
 to-day, and round which originally villages, then 
 towns have grown. First the simple spring, up-
 
 42 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 breaking through the earth, was fenced with 
 stone and mortar, though many a one, which the 
 aboriginal Britons and the soldiers of the south 
 drank from, were forgotten and left neglected. 
 They gurgle on unconfined and unnoticed in 
 solitary contentment, not aggrieved that an 
 unobserving, though civilised people knows them 
 not. The springs whose sanitive qualities were 
 venerated were credited with being under good 
 guidance. In course of time when Christianity 
 spread, pious anchorites, looking for some 
 hermit's cell, settled always beside drinkable 
 water, and so spread around them a saintly 
 peacefulness. Water washed away the dirt of 
 disease, and water, like fire, licking up the fatal 
 microbe which sowed the seeds of death, became 
 a friend to mankind. Fire burnt the plague out 
 of London, and washing in the wells on prescribed 
 days and seasons, without doubt, cured many 
 who in faith had come there to be healed. Fire 
 and water were the joint agents in quelling 
 disease, and worshippers of yore mingled their 
 rights. There were also wishing-wells where 
 people, still induced by grey-bearded supersti- 
 tion, visit. There, resting on some mossy stone 
 near to the eternally flowing spring, they wish a
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 43 
 
 wish and believe the spirit of the water will hear 
 and fulfil it. To obtain benefit from the well, to 
 make a peace-offering to the kelpie who lived 
 near by, the devotees who came to drink steered 
 their course towards the spring, not " wither- 
 shins " about. 
 
 This word (variously spelt, pronounced widder- 
 shins) indicates the inbred dislike of our people of 
 going contrary- to the greatest of the heavenly 
 lights. Trees in unprotected positions, which in 
 their youngling days have been twisted west to 
 east by the prevailing winds, are said to grow 
 withershins. They are held to be ill-conditioned, 
 or to be possessed of certain uncanny, occult 
 powers. In the Meeting of the Sun the author 
 says: "The Llama monk whirls his praying 
 cylinder in the way of the sun, and fears lest a 
 stranger should get at it and turn it contrary, 
 which would take from it all the virtue it had 
 acquired. They also build piles of stone and 
 always pass them on one side and return on the 
 other, so as to make a circuit with the sun. 
 Mahommedans make the circuit of the Caaba in 
 the same way. The ancient dagohas of India 
 and Ceylon were also traversed round in the same 
 way, and the old Irish and Scotch custom is to
 
 44 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 make all movements deisual or sunwise round 
 houses and graves, and to turn their bodies in 
 this way at the beginning and end of a journey 
 for luck, as well as at weddings and other cere- 
 monies." 
 
 In an old song the lady bewails that the Low- 
 lands of Holland have " twined her love " from 
 her. She knew some ill fate would befall her 
 sweetheart when he sailed over " the saut sea," 
 for his ship " went withershins about " on start- 
 ing. In another ballad the heroine desires her 
 Tommy to bring from the Howe a stick of — 
 
 " Widdershins grow of good rawtree for to carrj' my tow, 
 And a spindle of the same for the twining o't." 
 
 Bedevillery was connected with reading sacred 
 words backwards and going the reverse of the 
 sun. Dr. Walter Smith in an early poem speaks 
 of this idea: — 
 
 " Hech! sirs, but we had grand fun, 
 Wi' the meickle black deil in the chair, 
 And the muckle Bible upside doon 
 A'ganging withershins roun and roun, 
 And backwards saying the prayer 
 About the warlock's grave, 
 Withershins ganging roun ; 
 And kimmer and carline had for licht 
 The fat o' a bairn they buried that nicht, 
 Unchristen'd beneath the moon."
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 45 
 
 So those who went to worship at wells took care 
 not to go against the sun, when they brought 
 their sick to drink or wash in the healing stream. 
 At the summit of the Touch Hills, a little to the 
 west of Stirhng, there may be seen by the curious 
 a crystal well which in ancient times was believed 
 to possess the peculiar quality of insuring for a 
 twelvemonth the lives of all who drank from its 
 waters before sunrise on the first Sunday of May. 
 In 1840 there were old men and women then 
 alive who in their younger days had been of the 
 number of those who made an annual pilgrimage 
 to St. Corbet's Well on the morning in question. 
 Husbands and wives, lovers with their sweet- 
 hearts, young and old, grave and gay, crowded 
 the hill-tops in the vicinity of the well, long 
 before dawn, and each party on their arrival took 
 copious draughts of the singularly blessed waters. 
 Another spring in St. Medan's Cave in Wigton- 
 shire had special properties if drunk when the sun 
 rose on the first Sunday of May. It seemed then 
 to be a cure for all disease ; and again in Galloway 
 in the parish of Bootle there is a fountain called 
 the Rumbling Well. The sick sat beside it 
 during Saturday night, and drank of it on dawn 
 of Sabbath morning. The water from this well
 
 46 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 was also taken home in casks, and the behevers 
 washed their cows with it, or gave them to drink 
 of these curative waters. The afflicted, who, as 
 the sun-worshippers of old had done, sat waiting 
 for day before they drank of the crystal stream, 
 left humble offerings in return for the good they 
 obtained. The water sprites were not greedy, a 
 little sufficed as a thanks-offering. Ribbons and 
 shreds of garments taken from the pilgrims 
 fluttered on the branches of the bushes and trees 
 that grew near by the spring. Needles and pins 
 were also thrown in, and money sometimes too 
 was left. A coin of the first James Stuart's 
 period was lately discovered beside a fountain in 
 Perthshire. To show how inherent in our nature 
 is the rendering of tribute to the water god. Sir 
 Archibald Geekie, in his Scottish Reminiscences, 
 mentions that in a well in Kirkcudbright the lord 
 of the soil told him, in clearing the pool of debris, 
 coins from the days of the early kings of Scotland 
 and those bearing our well-known queen's head 
 of the Victorian era were found. Also he says, 
 seeing a tree gay with colour, for " from a distance 
 it seemed to be decked with blossoms or leaves of 
 black, white, and red," he describes how on nearer 
 inspection they proved to be bits of rag hung up
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 47 
 
 by the pilgrims who had come to drink of the 
 saint's well that gushed forth from the shadow of 
 a tree. When cattle benefited by the water, 
 their shackles and bands were left as a tribute. 
 Madness was cured at St. Fillan's and at some 
 other wells throughout the country. On a pillar 
 at the church of St. Fillan's, supposed to be older 
 than the building in which it stood, the insane 
 were bound and left over-night. If they broke 
 their bonds, it was asserted they were restored to 
 sound mind. Robert Bruce washed in a spring 
 near Ayr, but despite the report that this had 
 cured him, it is feared that he died of leprosy. 
 Water drawn from under a bridge over which the 
 dead were carried, as well as water flowing south, 
 were reputed to possess special powers. In the 
 North of Scotland there is a loch in Strathnaver 
 to which people journeyed to be freed from all 
 manner of diseases. To bring about this happy 
 result they had to walk backward into the water, 
 dip themselves therein, and leave a small coin 
 as an offering. Without looking round, they 
 had to wade in a direct hne back to land, and go 
 right away from the loch. St. Andrew's W^ell in 
 the Island of Lewis was frequently consulted as 
 an oracle when any one was dangerously ill. A
 
 48 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 wooden tub full of this water was brought to the 
 sick person's room, and a small dish was set float- 
 ing in it. If it turned sunwise, it was supposed 
 the patient would recover, otherwise he must die. 
 Special fountains proved efficacious when the 
 eyesight was affected, and a draught from a 
 certain loch in the north cured deafness. There 
 is nothing new under the sun. These pilgrims of 
 old, thirsting to partake of purifying waters, were 
 by their trustfulness made whole, like the faith 
 healers of to-day. 
 
 Perthshire was peculiarly productive in these 
 Siloams, but all over Scotland wells still called 
 holy exist. Close by Scotland's capital there are 
 many springs whose virtues have been tried. 
 There is St. Bernard's Mineral Well in the valley 
 of the Water of Leith, but it is affirmed on good 
 authority that it was not the abode of a saint of 
 old, but that its medical value was discovered by 
 some of the Heriot School boys in the eighteenth 
 century. Overlooking Edinburgh from the ridge 
 of Liberton Hill is St. Catherine's Balm Well. A 
 thick, oily substance continually floats on its sur- 
 face. James VI. visited it, and ordered it to be 
 cleared of refuse, properly closed in, and provided 
 with a door and staircase, but thirty years later
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 49 
 
 the wall was destroyed and it was filled up \vith 
 stones by Cromwell's soldiers. In succeeding 
 reigns it was again restored, and despite the town 
 overspreading to the hill around it, the face of its 
 waters are still sleek with the oily balm which is 
 supposed to be good for those who are afflicted 
 with cutaneous complaints. Another well 
 within ken of Edinburgh is that of Loretto at 
 Musselburgh. The chapel to Our Lady of Loretto 
 was beyond the east gate of the old borough. 
 Pilgrimages from all parts of Scotland were taken 
 to this shrine. Towards the end of the sixteenth 
 century a hermit took up his abode at Loretto 
 who was famed for his miracles. James V. paid 
 a visit to this most noted shrine of Scotland 
 before he sailed to France to woo his bride. The 
 stones from the old chapel were accused of being 
 the first after the Reformation to be devoted to 
 any secular purpose. The people quarried from 
 the chapel to build a jail. For this piece of 
 sacrilege the inhabitants of Musselburgh were 
 annually excommunicated at Rome, till the end 
 of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Within nearer range of Edinburgh, under the 
 shadow of Samson's Ribs, there are the Wells 
 of Wearie. Their romantic, alliterative title has 
 
 D
 
 50 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 caught the ear of poets. In an old ballad one 
 sings : — 
 
 " And ye maun gang wi' me, my winsome Mary Grieve, 
 There is naught in the world to fear ye; 
 For I have asked your minnie and she has gi'en ye leave 
 To gang to the Wells o' Wearie. 
 
 O! the sun winna blink in your bonnie blue e'en. 
 
 Nor tinge your white brow, my dearie; 
 For I will shade a bower wi' rashes long and green 
 
 By the lanesome Wells o' Wearie." 
 
 Another, who was recently well named the 
 Benjamin of Edinburgh's gifted literary sons, in 
 his Songs of Travel says : — 
 
 " She rested by the broken brook, 
 She drank of Wearie Well, 
 She moved beyond my lingering look 
 Ah, whither none can tell." 
 
 How these springs at the feet of the great, green, 
 lion-shaped hill, which keeps everlasting watch 
 and ward over Edinburgh, came by its name, we 
 know not. It may have been a rest-and-be- 
 thankful nook where the tired wayfarer would 
 pause and wash away travel-stains before enter- 
 ing the be-castled grey town. 
 
 Throughout the length and breadth of Scot- 
 land there are preserved wells still visited and 
 cared for, because they are credited with healing
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 51 
 
 powers, for custom has become part of our in- 
 heritance, and they, since the days of the far-off 
 past, have been held sacred. There is a well of as 
 clear water as ever sparkled, by the trout-famed 
 river Whitadder, where it ripples past Abbey 
 St. Bathan's in Berwickshire. It was a shrine 
 for pilgrims, for a road leading to it, still named 
 the Pilgrim's Path, is kept swept and garnished. 
 It runs parallel to the Bishop's Walk in the 
 same precincts. The votaries who hied to St. 
 Bathan's Well quaffed honest water. The many 
 anchorites who in course of time became saints, 
 seeking secluded spots wherein to lead their 
 solitary, religious life, always settled by some 
 fountain. The monks from the neighbouring 
 monasteries, to glorify the example of their 
 lonely brethren, made pilgrimages to these 
 hermitages, and spread over the springs near the 
 recluses' cells an odour of sanctity. The people, 
 doubtless from more heathen ages, had paid 
 court to water and readily followed the footsteps 
 of the holy men. Their idolatry must have 
 savoured of heathenism, for as early as 1182 
 Anselm banned well-worship, and in 1638 the 
 General Assembly of Scotland waged a determined 
 warfare against it and other relics of barbarian
 
 52 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 observances however cloaked by religion. "If 
 persons were found superstitiously," states the 
 law, " to have passed in pilgrimage to Christ's 
 Well, near Doune, Perthshire, on the first Sunday 
 of May, to seek their health, they shall repent in 
 sacco (sackcloth) and linen three several sabbaths, 
 and pay twenty pounds Scots for ilk fault." 
 This shows how superstition and religious beliefs 
 are mingled; they are wellnigh impossible to 
 eradicate, especially from the Celtic mind, which 
 is particularly retentive of tradition. Pope 
 Gregory (he who sent missionaries first to this 
 pagan land, for legend reports that he, seeing in 
 the slave -market of Rome some golden-haired 
 Northumbrian children, would not have them 
 named Angles but angels) ordered his mission- 
 aries not to thwart the people altogether in their 
 long-implanted heathen habits. Augustine, one 
 of his messengers to this country in the sixth 
 century, was instructed to bear in mind that the 
 pagan temples were not to be destroyed, but 
 turned into Christian churches, that the oxen 
 slaughtered for sacrifice should still be killed with 
 rejoicings, but their bodies given to the poor, and 
 that the refreshment-booths round the heathen 
 temples should be allowed to remain as places of
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 53 
 
 jollity and amusement for the people on Christian 
 festivals. He reahsed, with diplomatic tact, 
 that it is impossible to cut abruptly from hard 
 and rough minds all old habits and customs, for 
 he who wishes to reach the highest place must 
 rise by steps and not by jumps. These wily 
 measures taken to gather the pagans about their 
 Christianised fanes were, however, two hundred 
 years after the Romans had returned to Italy. A 
 modem writer says of these southern subjugators 
 of ours, " a few military roads and doubtful sights 
 of camps and towns, a few traces of public works, 
 all indicating a despotic military occupation of 
 the country and none of a civilised condition of 
 the mass of the inhabitants, alone remains to tell 
 the world that here the Roman power flourished 
 for four hundred years." But we must re- 
 member we also owe them a debt of gratitude 
 that some among their legions carried to these 
 then far-off islands the rudimentary report of the 
 gospel of Christianity, as well as their initial 
 lessons in laws and in medicines which they 
 taught us. Modern science, with its manifold 
 discoveries of material that can be yoked to work 
 for man's welfare, was, after all, not so far ahead 
 of these far-seeing Romans. Radium is found by
 
 54 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 their mineral wells. Our invaders in days of old, 
 of course, knew not of it, but in this then wild, 
 untutored country they found among the forests 
 and fens these health-giving springs whose waters 
 possessed strange healing powers. Round them 
 they built their villas, and settled as much as 
 ever they settled in this their northernmost 
 province, the last they annexed, the first they 
 abandoned. They came here but on an errand. 
 They fulfilled their task, then returned, for their 
 hearts were in Italy. They certainly made the 
 best they could of this mist-shrouded isle when 
 duty stationed them here, and from them our 
 ancestors learned the rudiments of hygienics. 
 They buried without the walls of their towns, 
 laying their dead oftentimes round some pagan 
 fane, but they took care that the temple was 
 beyond their city's gates. When in course of 
 time churches were scattered throughout the 
 land, people wished to place the mortal remains 
 of those who had gone hence under the shadow of 
 the church, so Roman hygienics were forgotten, 
 and it might have been well for the health of the 
 living community if in this rule they had adhered 
 to Roman law. The first authorised medical 
 officers in our isles came with the Roman legions.
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 55 
 
 They brought with them doctors to attend their 
 troops. The marshes and woods of Caledonia 
 were far more destructive to the Roman invaders 
 than were the spears, long swords, and scythed 
 chariots of its painted and almost naked warriors. 
 The following was an order of the Emperor 
 Aurelian, 270 a.d. " Let each soldier aid and 
 help his fellow, let them be cured gratuitously by 
 the physicians, let them give nothing to sooth- 
 sayers, let them conduct themselves in their 
 hospitia, and he who would raise strife, let him 
 be lashed." There are Roman monuments raised 
 in Britain to physicians who died in service. One 
 lived but twenty-five years, and the stone and its 
 inscription found in Northumberland is pre- 
 served at Newcastle Museum. 
 
 The Romans left their indent on our folk lore, 
 and taught us to hold springs sacred. Science 
 has trained us how to benefit from the mineral 
 wells. Endless centuries of approaching them 
 not withershins about has become as a second 
 nature to us, for we deal cards and pass the bottle 
 round deisual or sunwise. In parts of our 
 native land, when the dead are laid in their graves, 
 their resting-place is approached by going round 
 in the same manner. The bride is conducted to
 
 56 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 her future husband in the presence of the minister 
 round the company east to west on the south 
 side. 
 
 Among the endless magical and medical proper- 
 ties that were formerly supposed to be possessed 
 by human saliva, one is almost universally 
 credited by the Scottish schoolboy up to the 
 present hour, for few of them ever assume the 
 temporary character of pugilists without duly- 
 spitting into their hands ere they close their fists ; 
 as if they retained a full reliance on the magical 
 power of the saliva to increase the strength of 
 the impending blow, if not to avert any feehng of 
 malice produced by it — as was enunciated eigh- 
 teen centuries ago, b}^ one of the most laborious 
 and esteemed writers of that age. 
 
 Pliny thus alluded to, in his Natural History, 
 xxviii. 7, says, " Some persons also before making 
 an effort spit into the hand in the manner above 
 stated in order to make the blow more heavy." 
 
 Many Roman marriage customs remain 
 amongst us — such as carrying the bride over the 
 threshold of her new home and the objection to 
 marriages in May, for that month was dedicated 
 by the Romans to propitiate the spirits of their 
 dead. During that moon their temples were
 
 THE ROMANS AND WELLS OF WATER 57 
 
 shut, and further, " for any couple to contract 
 marriage during this season was held to be a 
 daring of the Fates which few were hardy enough 
 to venture." Ovid speaks of the ill luck of light- 
 ing Hymen's torch in May. 
 
 June, called after the wife of Jupiter, to make 
 amends for the banning of the previous thirty- 
 one days, smiled on marriage, and her name 
 month was considered a lucky time to be espoused 
 in. Though 
 
 " Like the swell of some sweet tune, 
 May glides onward into June," 
 
 SO strongly ingrained is the Roman custom still, 
 that it has become universal in all classes not to 
 marry in May. How widespread is this belief 
 the smallness of the marriage column in the 
 Scotsman proves. Many other oddments of the 
 Romans' residence here remain distinctly visible 
 in our own time. Among others is the Corydalis 
 lutea, one of the fumitories, which is a native of 
 the Campagna. It grows on the Borderland on 
 the Roman wall. To this small " short-Uved 
 star of earth " some lines are addressed to-day 
 by Sir George Douglas, while musing there on 
 Hadrian's dyke : —
 
 58 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 " Thy bloom the scent of honey yields, 
 And thou with spring dost blow; 
 A Roman flower in English fields 
 As bright as long ago ! 
 
 Till as one dreams and idly thinks 
 
 On wars and conquests vain; 
 A simple pastoral garland links 
 
 Earth's mightiest nations twain." 
 
 Likely the ancestor of this floweret some soldier 
 of the south brought with him — a keepsake 
 from his sweetheart. Warmed and ripened on 
 his heart, when he fell it took root in the cold 
 northern land and flourished despite the un- 
 kindly climate. The little alien fumitory is 
 typical of folk lore, Roman or otherwise. It 
 refuses to be eradicated, and shines forth along 
 our twentieth -century paths, telling those who 
 care to look of the conquering race who held us 
 once in thrall.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 
 
 "... from Fife, 
 Where the Norwegian banners flout the sky." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 " When Denmark's raven soared on high 
 Triumphant through Northumbria's sky. 
 And the broad shadow of her wing 
 Blackened each cataract and spring." 
 
 Scott. 
 
 The Phoenician tin-seekers and the Roman con- 
 querors brought to Britain, as we have seen, new 
 ideas and new behefs, besides endowing us with 
 new resources by opening up the hidden treasures 
 of the mines. Each race as they came to trade 
 or subject stamped traces of their residence on 
 our folk lore, but it was undoubtedly the Scan- 
 dinavians who left most impress on our character 
 and customs. Their raven flag succeeded the 
 all-conquering Roman eagle. The ensign bearing 
 the king of birds had soared over Britain from the 
 time the nameless Roman standard-bearer of the 
 tenth legion, on their first approach to the strand, 
 
 59
 
 6o FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 had earned deathless renown by leaping into the 
 surf cr3dng, " Follow me," and the hesitating 
 warriors followed their flag. From that time 
 for some four hundred years the Romans ruled 
 us, but when our southern conquerors followed 
 their eagle back to its eerie in the Eternal City, in 
 this northernmost Ultima Thule of their sword- 
 acquired lands, the natives were gathering them- 
 selves together to grow into the world-possessing 
 power the Druid sage had foretold would be 
 Britain's destiny. 
 
 " Rome shall perish — write that word 
 In the blood that she has spilt; 
 Perish, hopeless and abhorr'd, 
 Deep in ruin as in guilt. 
 
 Then the progeny that springs 
 
 From the forests of our land, 
 Arm'd with thunder, clad with wings. 
 
 Shall a wider world command." 
 
 At that period a seemingly ill wind blew to our 
 shores pillaging bands who in the end wrought 
 this nation lasting good. As Mr. S. Laing ex- 
 plains in his Kings of Norway : " All would have 
 been Roman in Europe to-day in principle and 
 social arrangement — Europe would have been 
 like Turkey, one vast den of slaves, with a few 
 rows in its amphitheatre of kings, nobles, and
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 6i 
 
 churchmen raised above the dark mass of 
 humanity beneath them, if three boats from the 
 north of the Elbe had not landed at Ebbsfleet in 
 the Isle of Thanet fourteen hundred years ago, 
 and been followed by a succession of similar boat 
 expeditions of the same people marauding, con- 
 quering, and settling during six hundred years, 
 viz., from 449 to 1066. All that men hope for 
 of good government and future improvement in 
 their physical and moral condition — all that 
 civilised men enjoy at this day of civil, religious, 
 and political liberty, the British constitution, 
 representative literature, the trial by jury, 
 security of property, freedom of mind and person, 
 the influence of public opinion over the conduct 
 of public affairs, the Reformation, the liberty of 
 the press, the spirit of the age — all that is or has 
 been of value to man in modern times as a 
 member of society, either in Europe or in the 
 New World may be traced to the spark left burn- 
 ing on our shores by these northern barbarians. 
 The same seed was no doubt sown by the old 
 Anglo-Saxons and by the Northmen, for they 
 were originally the same people; but the seed of 
 the former had perished under Roman supersti- 
 tion and church influence during five centuries in
 
 62 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 which the mind and property in every country 
 were subjugated to the priesthood whose home 
 was at Rome; and the seed of the latter 
 flourished, because it was fresh from a land in 
 which all were proprietors with interests at 
 stake, and accustomed, although in a very rude 
 and violent way, to take a part, by Things or 
 assemblies of the people, in all the acts of their 
 government." 
 
 It was well for us that the wind of God — the 
 nor'-easter — encouraged these sea pirates to 
 come " conquering from the eastward." " Lords 
 by land and sea," they made a happy hunting- 
 ground of our coasts, and owing to their blood 
 we inherit that goodly heritage, the mastery of 
 the ocean. They imbued us with an undying 
 love for " the beauty and mystery of the ships 
 and the magic of the sea," till — 
 
 " Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, 
 But over the sand and the palm trees an English flag has 
 flown." 
 
 These strong-handed, strong-willed Norsemen 
 needed no laboriously-made road for their armed 
 men to traverse. Their highway was across a 
 field of foam, and with their sailor-trained, keen 
 eyes and shrewd wits they judged from their
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 63 
 
 galleys what manner of country they had reached 
 and where the richest spoil lay. Ofttimes the 
 poor Britons must have been terror-stricken 
 when they saw the sails of these dare-devil Ber- 
 serkers looming in the distance. They were a 
 race who loved to look on the bright face of 
 danger, to whom the scent of blood was sweet, 
 and the clang of arms in battle intoxicating 
 music. Possessed of a robust strength, and 
 capable of accomphshing incredible exploits, 
 they came and settled where they hsted. They 
 brought with them, not the culture and sins and 
 civilisation of the Romans, but that glory in 
 seafaring, that unquenchable thirst for world- 
 wandering which, united to a grim courage, a love 
 of enterprise and of freedom, has helped to weld 
 Britain into an Imperial dominion. The legends 
 and customs which are our use and wont to-day 
 they brought with them. They dwelt with that 
 wide thoroughfare, the German Ocean, for ever 
 lapping or surging at their very doors, and also as 
 if to spur them to ride thereon " with horse of 
 tree"; above their homes, their veritable roof 
 trees, there towered the Norway pines, each 
 worthy to be " the mast of some great ammiral." 
 Thus, their spirit of adventure egging them on.
 
 64 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 with timber ready to hand, they turned naturally 
 to shipbuilding. They wielded the axe and 
 hammer with a will, for their hands longed to 
 handle the oar. The necessity of foraging for 
 food also drove them afield, for as Conan Doyle 
 truly says, " Cold and poverty and storm are the 
 nurses of the qualities which make for empire." 
 The hardy Norsemen could not rest satisfied with 
 steadily and bucolicly tilling their stationary 
 comer of ground. Their instincts led them to 
 plough the waves, and their brains were the 
 brighter by reason of their wanderings. The 
 Norsemen, when winter and rough weather held 
 them captive, sat round their fires and recited 
 tales of their own or their forefathers' doughty 
 deeds. The chiefmost theme, however, were 
 legends of Odin and his strong sons. Truly 
 giants walked on the earth in their days, and the 
 stories of their prowess did not diminish in the 
 telling, indeed they grew in stature as time rolled 
 on. " Far-away fowls have fine feathers " we 
 know, and there is an equivalent Gaelic proverb 
 which avers, " There are long horns on cattle in 
 mist." These Northern heroes and the beings 
 and monsters who figure in their myths grew 
 bigger and bigger as the dark of ages enshrouded
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 65 
 
 them. Their human prototypes had doubtless 
 been splendid fellows. They came of a race 
 whose portion and lot were likened to that of the 
 younger brother of fairy story, who was com- 
 pelled by ill-usage to go forth to seek his fortune. 
 He went out into the world and worked — the 
 elder brother stayed at home in slothful ease, in 
 the slumberous air of the luxuriant East. The 
 younger brother, strengthened with his trials 
 and struggles, eventually grew into a renowned 
 man. Honest of purpose, yet observant, he 
 cleared away all difficulties which obstructed his 
 path, and by his caution and cleverness he ac- 
 quired wealth and received visible rewards. The 
 younger brother's portion was the Scandinavians' 
 and ours. His descendants carry on the tradi- 
 tion he left. From generation to generation 
 they leave home to seek or improve their fortune. 
 It is they who with a will take up the white man's 
 burden and obey the injunction: — 
 
 " In patience to abide, 
 To veil the threat of terror 
 And check the show of pride; 
 By open speech and simple, 
 An hundred times made plain, 
 To seek another's profit 
 And work another's gain." 
 
 Besides fighting the savage wars for peace, they
 
 66 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 fight with the forest, and if it by its deep-rooted 
 obdureness does not frustrate their efforts and 
 feed on their bones, they extend civilisation and 
 cultivate lands which have remained unfilled 
 since the creation. The Romans left us the ruins 
 of altars to Sylvanus, their wood god. The 
 Norsemen, with their axes and their stubborn 
 courage, taught us how to clear away the imped- 
 ing trees and turn what had once been primeval 
 wood into fertile fields. It is these intrepid- 
 spirited younger brothers of ours who to-day 
 continue to extend the empire and defend its 
 furthest outpost. They do not forget the — 
 
 " Grey old weary mother 
 Throned amid the Northern waters," 
 
 but return again to her rich in this world's gear 
 by reason of their perseverance, having used 
 their talents with energy and wisdom. It is the 
 younger brother who, when he has set his affairs 
 in order, visits his opulent but indolent elder 
 brother whose heritage is waning by reason of his 
 despotic greed. It is he who " fills full the mouth 
 of famine," and institutes law, order, freedom, 
 and education in the neglected dominion, as for 
 instance Britain, the younger brother of to-day,
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 67 
 
 has turned his attention to India, the rich, laz}', 
 effete elder. 
 
 On our folk lore as on our character, the Norse 
 left a deep indent. One, writing of the North- 
 land and its battle-loving sea-rovers, who took 
 long to adopt, or adapt themselves to, the gentle 
 tenets of Christianity, says: " It is not surprising 
 that there, rather than in any other part of 
 Europe, we should find the old world wants, and 
 hopes, and fears, dark guesses, crude imaginings, 
 child-like poetic expressions, crystalised into a 
 pretty definite system of belief and worship. 
 We can walk through the glittering ice halls of 
 the old frozen faith, and count its gems and 
 wonder at its fearful images; but the warm 
 heart reachings from which they ahke flowed, we 
 can only darkly feel at best, and narrowly pry 
 into here and there." 
 
 The barbarian Northmen formed out of their 
 myths a healthy-toned worship of their own. 
 Odin was their all-powerful ideal of a god-like 
 man whose word was law. He ruled over Asgard, 
 the stronghold he had created, throned on its 
 heights among nebulous clouds. In it were 
 Noms who spun perpetually the web which 
 formed the destinies of men. They were the
 
 68 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 Fates, giants' daughters, the avengers of wrong. 
 Odin dwelt truly under a roof tree for the great 
 ash, the Yggdrasil, spread its branches over him. 
 The editor of Mallet's Northern Antiquities says: 
 " We are inclined to regard this mythic tree as 
 the symbol of ever-enduring time, or rather of 
 universal nature ever varying in its aspects, but 
 subsisting throughout eternity. It is called 
 somewhere " Time's hoary nurse," and we see 
 the principles of destruction and renovation act- 
 ing upon it." We annually welcome two off- 
 shoots of Odin's ash among us, for the Christmas 
 tree and the gaily-bedecked Maypole are both 
 saphngs from this giant stem. From Asgard, 
 where its stalwart heroes used to take walks 
 abroad just to see if any entertaining adventure 
 would befall them, we gather many of our legends 
 and myths. The Northmen, who were so long in 
 adopting Christianity, we conjecture from folk 
 lore had, out of their romantic tales, concocted 
 a scheme which accounted for the manner in 
 which this earth's machinery moved. They also 
 formed ideas in regard to their future state which 
 had a ring of reasonable soundness in them. 
 These sea-born ancestors of ours were gifted with 
 forethought and judgment. Of course their
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 69 
 
 scientific knowledge was centuries behind the 
 times, but the practicalness and poetry in their 
 theories and ideas comes into view when we read 
 of the punishments meted out by Odin to the idle 
 dwarfs and elves, which resulted in the ultimate 
 benefit of mankind, for the ill-doing dwarfs were 
 sentenced to toil in the darksome under-world to 
 give to those above fuel and gems, and the light- 
 fingered elves were taught to assist the sunshine 
 and the showers in unfolding the secrets long 
 wrapped in the sheltering snows of winter. 
 Legend made Odin into a just, benign All Father, 
 whose bravery and nobleness was an example 
 worthy of worship. A fire-eater in these days 
 was the only august personage, and Odin was 
 great both as a warrior and as a ruler. The 
 Norseman's heaven was a place full of men who 
 had fought a good fight, taking their ease after 
 war. They had a hell, one might almost say in 
 these complacent advanced days, of the old- 
 fashioned sort. It was a burning spot in the 
 centre of the earth, and the dwarfs pressed to 
 work for the good of the community were its 
 stokers. Odin was a nobler, more practical 
 deity than the gods the civihsed Romans had 
 bowed down to. Odin's followers in their down-
 
 70 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 right, direct manner, from their mythical legends, 
 forged and hammered out for themselves a high 
 standard to attain in this life and a belief in the 
 world to come. Their gods were deified men 
 with aims and objects of human interest, master- 
 ful, noble giants, towering above other mortals by 
 reason of their strength and force of character, 
 triumphant conquerors in every fight. In those 
 days when a strong sword was the best and only 
 charter needed to claim land and honours, a 
 mighty man was the now humble smith. The 
 Norseman believing that to be slain in battle, or 
 to deal a deadly wound to an enemy was a pass- 
 port to the halls of Odin, was careful to take 
 with him when he went hence his sword and 
 spear, along with his smith's tools wherewith to 
 sharpen his treasured weapons. He fashioned 
 shield and buckler with all the skill he could, for 
 he looked on them as his eternal companions. 
 As tools of war were so all important centuries 
 after the followers of Odin had been resting in 
 Valhalla, the trade and skill of the smith was 
 held in esteem. Odin, according to legend, 
 wrought at the forge to make for himself flawless 
 weapons worthy of his prowess. His horse 
 Sleipnir, whose careering flight was likened to the
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 71 
 
 swish of the wind rushing at terrific, unimpeded 
 pace along, was shod by Odin's own hand, and 
 perhaps owing to the reverence in which his steed 
 was held, the shoe which it may have cast in its 
 unsurpassed career was treasured, so horse-shoes 
 to-day are held to bring good fortune to their 
 finder. These Scandinavians bequeathed to us 
 many a story, and named us many a name. 
 Day after day as the weeks run round, we have 
 obtruded on our notice the deities who were 
 worshipped by our sea-loving forefathers. The 
 Druids gave us the fashion of recording time by 
 nights; the Scandinavians have named for us 
 the days of the week, and so as we count the 
 fleeting hours we keep in remembrance our pagan, 
 pirate progenitors. Sunday may bulk largely as 
 the first of the seven. It is to us " the quiet 
 hollow scooped out of the windy hill of the week " 
 as George Macdonald calls it; but to the Norse- 
 men Wednesday must have been all important, 
 for it was named after Odin, commonly called 
 Wodin. The old spelling is shown in the well- 
 known ballad of Sir Patrick Spens : — 
 
 " We hoised our sails on a Moneday morn, 
 With all the speed we may; 
 And we hae landed in Norroway 
 Upon a Wednesday."
 
 72 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 Wodin's day came shortly after Sun and Moon 
 days, but between Odin's twenty-four hours and 
 those sacred to the Queen of Night came Tyr's 
 day. Odin's thunderous son, he whose strong 
 hammer sent sparks from the cloud, the powerful 
 Thor follows Wodin in our calendar, and after 
 him came Freya's day. The last twenty-four 
 hours of the week were dedicated to Ssetem. 
 Besides these names in daily use the Northmen 
 christened many a spot around our shores. 
 Places easy to them of access became their 
 headquarters. In winter when, owing to the 
 smallness of their boats, they rested from their 
 life on the ocean, they settled themselves on 
 islands as being both secure and convenient, as 
 there were many paths across the sea whereby to 
 leave if a stronger force came. The Islands of 
 the Hebrides bear trace of their residence in the 
 names they gave them, for among the Celtic 
 nomenclature there are many Scandinavian o's 
 and ay's, for instance, eight Fladdas — i.e., flat 
 isles, three Scalpas — ship's isles, some Pabays — 
 priest (father) isle, and Raasay — roe isle. 
 
 The monasteries and nunneries which were near 
 to the North Sea fared badly at the hands of 
 the Scandinavian pirates. Even the Cross did not
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 73 
 
 awe them. King Olaf Trgyvason, the " beauti- 
 fullest man ever seen," went over NonA^ay 
 " with a rough harrow of conversion " as Carlyle 
 explained; but the Northmen had travelled 
 down the ages far from Odin's creed, and 
 along with their valour and robust strength 
 they were deemed to be in no-wise unmanly, 
 despite a vein of avarice and cruelty which made 
 them steer towards the spoils of the Church, and 
 not only men but women and children suffered 
 from their blades, for such were the ethics of their 
 day. They swept Out of the Outer Isles much 
 material trace of the mission of St. Columba. 
 
 It was round their winter fire when inactive, 
 owing to the season, that the tales of stirring 
 deeds were told in these isles to keep green the 
 memory of the men " great in song craft and 
 hands that loved the oar." The fame of these 
 heroes descended by word of mouth till collected 
 about the time the Normans invaded England by 
 Saemund the Learned and others, and became 
 known as the Edda. There is the poetic or Elder 
 Edda full of the mythological tale of the birth of 
 the world and the adventures of the gods, which 
 was the golden age of the Northmen, but " the 
 golden age ceased when gold was invented."
 
 74 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 The yellow metal became as an apple of discord 
 among them, and the god-like heroes, seized with 
 a lust for the acquiring of gold, quarrelled. The 
 Skalds speak of the gold as feminine, " a worker 
 of evil magic arts she knew and practised. Ever 
 was she the joy of evil people." From one of 
 these sagas we have an idea of the kind of life 
 led by these heroes of Asgard. They for ever 
 sailed westward. " Where shall we go? " asked 
 Odin when he and his kinsmen looked for new 
 worlds to conquer and settle in. " Southward," 
 he explained, " heat lies, and northward, night. 
 From the dim east the sun begins his journey 
 westward home." " Westward home," shouted 
 they all, and westward they went. The name 
 of their great saga, the Heimskringla (the world's 
 circle) was a true one, " conquering from the 
 eastward they circled the globe." They settled 
 in small, determined bands on our shores and 
 took what they listed. They were not averse as 
 time went on to turn their swords into plough- 
 shares, though they were ever readier to handle 
 the former. The men of the woods and walds 
 held that the plough was an enemy, and so it was 
 to a hunting community. In northern lore there 
 is always a hatred to peace and its civilisation,
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 75 
 
 and the driving away of that spoil which falls 
 captive to bow and spear. The fairy arrows 
 were always directed at the ploughman to scare 
 him from his work. The Boer to-day resents the 
 farmer growing crops and cultivating the veldt. 
 
 The Norsemen and the Anglo-Saxon (both 
 sprung from the same stock) came here in the 
 days before the world was waxen old. They 
 were alike descendants of the " younger brother " 
 who went out and did. We owe much to them. 
 They inoculated us with a desire to assume the 
 sceptre of the sea — a nation " whose merchants 
 are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable 
 of the earth." They laid the foundations of our 
 Parhament. They had for their conclaves the 
 green mound with its grassy steps for the speakers 
 and hearers to stand or sit on. Tynwald Hill 
 still hears the Manxman issue laws in that little 
 kingdom in the centre of the British Isles. The 
 name of this " Thing " wald is in our place names 
 in Scotland. Like the stone of destiny the law- 
 makers have journeyed off to the banks of the 
 Thames ; there, enclosed with walls and state, no 
 longer, as in Asgard, with the " blue dome's 
 measureless content " for a roof tree, they hold 
 their conclaves.
 
 76 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 The Norsemen were no architects. " The 
 name of the main body of the Gothic church — 
 the nave, naves or ship of the building — is the 
 inside of a ship turned upside down and raised on 
 pillars," but this word nave, suggestive of vaulted 
 aisles, is all their contribution to our architecture. 
 The axe was a familiar tool in their hands, and 
 they wielded a hammer with the skill descended 
 from Thor, so they made their houses as they did 
 their ships of wood, and thatched them with 
 rushes from the lake. Wood did not withstand 
 the inroads of time. They left no sign of their 
 whilom homes as did the burrowing Picts with 
 the cunningly-narrow entrance which one man 
 could guard. The Roman villas with their 
 inlaid floors are laid bare to-day, but of the Scan- 
 dinavians' homes we have no trace, though in 
 their last resting-places we have still with us a 
 trace of their handiwork. Their " grave goods " 
 dug from the grassy barrows of the happier dead, 
 where they laid their chief slain after battle, are 
 in our museums, for they buried their dead with 
 their clothes fastened by brooches which have 
 survived. On the Fife shores of Tay was a field 
 called locally the field of the Danes' gold. 
 Digging there lately men of Victoria's era came
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 77 
 
 on golden ornaments richly wrought in the 
 precious metal. That same Fife, from its being 
 a peninsula, was a spot overrun by the piratical 
 Vikings, so it is not astonishing there was found 
 there recently a man all in shining armour clad, 
 buried in a knowe by the present roadside. 
 Local folk lore dubbed the mound Norrie's Law. 
 This armed man of old had struck terror into 
 bygone Fifers with that self-same sword, and in 
 that kingly suit of armour defied their blows. 
 When death claimed him, his followers buried 
 him in the silver mail and he — 
 
 "... whose gallant deeds 
 Haply at many a solemn festival 
 The skald hath sung," 
 
 with his prized blade rusted, his bones dust, in 
 the Victorian era was robbed of his long-preserved 
 grave goods by the folk of Fife. 
 
 Though the Scandinavians left us no cathedrals 
 to show their handiwork, the tales told by their 
 hearths survive. In the long nights of winter, 
 when anchored on land, within their wooden 
 homes by their firesides, or at the banqueting 
 board, skalds sang of their skippers' conquests in 
 the summer, and of the prowess of the heroes
 
 78 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 long gone hence. So the history descended 
 to us — 
 
 " . . . of the sea fight far away 
 How it thundered over the tide." 
 
 The Norsemen gloried to hear of the doughty 
 deeds when winter and rough weather held them 
 captive, and the time soon came when these oral 
 tales of eld were written down. " A nation's 
 literature is its breath of life, without which a 
 nation has no existence — is but a congregation of 
 individuals." The tales of the sea-kings make 
 the heart of this nation still throb. During the 
 five centuries in which the Northmen were riding 
 over the waves and conquering wheresoever they 
 landed, the literature of the people they over- 
 came was locked up in a dead language and within 
 the walls of monasteries. But the Northmen 
 had a hterature of their own, rude as it was. 
 
 Nowadays, with paper so attainable every 
 child can get a book to scribble in, we forget at 
 the time when the Normans were going to cross 
 the silver streak and invade South Britain, that 
 not only was a knowledge of writing needed to 
 transcribe the sagas, but material on which to 
 write. Parchment was rare ; fair skin, dark skin, 
 and wrinkled skin are names applied by Torfaeus
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 79 
 
 describing parchment to his correspondent at 
 Copenhagen, and to get parchment enough to 
 inscribe a chronicle thereon meant money. The 
 very derivation of the word book carries us back 
 to the time when, as Collier in the opening page 
 of his Enghsh hterature describes how, in " the 
 depth of some Asiatic forest shadowy with the 
 green fans and sword blades of the palm tribe, a 
 sinewy savage stood one day long ago etching 
 with a thorn on the thick fleshed leaf, torn from 
 the luxuriant shrub wood around him, rude 
 images of the beasts he hunted or the arrows he 
 shot — the first step was taken towards the 
 making of a book. Countless have been the 
 onward steps since then, but the old fact that 
 the tree is the parent of the book still survives in 
 many well-known words. For example, take the 
 Latin liher and the EngHsh hook and leaf. Who 
 does not know that liber means originally the 
 inner bark of a tree. Book is merely a disguised 
 form of the word heech, into which it easily 
 changes when we tone down k to ch soft. The 
 word leaf tells its own tale." Even with centuries 
 of progress it took Torfaeus time and money to 
 get his various complexioned parchments sent to 
 Iceland. It seems to us even nowadays a far-
 
 8o FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 away spot, and strange that books should have 
 emanated from there when written deeds were 
 scarce, but we must remember from bare isles all 
 that was good and cultured came. lona sent us 
 Christianity. From Lindisfarne, before its great 
 church on the sandy islet was reared in stone, the 
 monks made the most beautifully illuminated 
 Bible, which is still to be seen, though the Priory's 
 roofless aisles are crumbling. Iceland was formed 
 by a colony of strong, intelligent men who had 
 emigrated from Norway to avoid some tyrannical 
 laws of Harold Haarfager's. " New England 
 perhaps and Iceland are the only modern colonies 
 ever founded on principle and peopled at first from 
 higher motives than want or gain ; and we see at 
 this day a lingering spark in each of a higher mind 
 than in populations which have set out from a 
 lower level. The original settlers in Iceland 
 carried with them whatever there was of civilisa- 
 tion or intelligence in Norway; and for some 
 generations at least were free from the internal 
 feuds, and always were free from the external 
 wars and depredations on their coasts which kept 
 other countries in a state of barbarism." So 
 from the strange, ice-girt island with its volcanic 
 fires laying it waste, there has been given us a
 
 THE SCANDINAVIANS 8i 
 
 written chronicle of these tales told in the Sea- 
 kings' hall. We follow in black and white the 
 deeds of valour done so long ago, and learn from 
 this parchment history how these Northmen left 
 us not only the birthright of their blood, but also 
 laws and customs which are ours to-day, and 
 also bequeathed to us legends and myths telling 
 of the time when: — 
 
 " There dwelt men merry hearted 
 In hope exceeding great; 
 Meeting the good days and the evil 
 As they came in the way of fate."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FAIRIES 
 
 " Up the airy mountain 
 Down the rushy glen, 
 We daren't go a hunting 
 For fear of Uttle men, 
 Wee folk, good folk, 
 Trooping all together, 
 Green jacket, red cap 
 And white owl's feather." 
 
 Wm. Allingham. 
 
 Gipsies, to the novelist, have proved themselves 
 invaluable allies, helping them to work the 
 machinery of their plots by guiding heroes suc- 
 cessfully through woods or wastes, protecting 
 them from robbers, and extracting them from 
 seemingly impregnable prisons. To the teller of 
 tales by the fireside the fairies take the gipsies' 
 place, and become the helpers and unravellers of 
 the webs the fates have woven round the central 
 figures of their story. The fairies in the annals 
 of folk lore are a host in themselves. They have 
 remained pre-eminent in the popular creed for 
 centuries, and as Sir Walter Scott says: "They 
 
 82
 
 FAIRIES 83 
 
 are a most pleasing legacy of fancy." The 
 giants who walked the earth in days of old, as 
 centuries rolled on grew too monstrous to associ- 
 ate with human beings, but their antitheses, the 
 fairies, obtained an entrance into people's hearts 
 and homes long lingered, nay, still remain there, 
 welcome guests, for there is no doubt that the 
 fairies who won their way deep into the affections 
 of mortals, and had a seat by every hearthstone 
 when the world was young, still dwell with us. 
 They have been the companions and delight of 
 countless generations of children. Fairy lore 
 and its moral teaching has remained indelibly 
 fixed on their memories from youth to second 
 childhood. Giants live only in fable. Fairies, 
 as in the days of yore, are our intimate friends. 
 Their gifts are treasured by the descendants of 
 the receivers of these fairy favours, and there are 
 amongst us some who still believe in the exist- 
 ence of the little people. We have heard a man, 
 holding a responsible public position, telling a 
 well-known American publisher of a sweet 
 melody his aunt had heard played around her at 
 a bum side in his native county, in the North of 
 Scotland. The harmony of sound dwelt in her 
 mind, so she returned home lilting the cadence of
 
 84 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 this weirdly-beautiful music, and jotted it down 
 and rendered it to her family circle. 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me you believe in 
 fairies? " asked the American, gazing in astonish- 
 ment at the learned Scotsman. The Highlander 
 replied as gravely as if his confession of faith had 
 been challenged, " Of course I do." So it is not 
 only in the Ultima Thules of our coasts, removed 
 from the advance of civilisation, fairies still are 
 credited with existing, but men in all the stir of 
 this twentieth-century life, with its accumulated 
 wealth of scientific knowledge, still maintain that 
 we are within sight and sound of the denizens of 
 Elfinland. 
 
 Northern fable explains to us how the gay wee 
 folk and gnomes were turned into a useful path, 
 when the world was young. Odin had spied 
 from his high seat wicked dwarfs and sprites in 
 mischief. He sent Hermod, the Flying Wind, 
 to bid them speak with him. The " light elves 
 were surprised at the summons, not quite know- 
 ing whether to feel honoured or afraid. How- 
 ever, they put on their prettiest manners and 
 went clustering after Hermod like a swarm of 
 lady birds." They were very inquisitive, but 
 became awed when they saw Odin in the Judg-
 
 FAIRIES 85 
 
 ment Hall, and hung back in the doorway, peep- 
 ing over their comrades' shoulders. They had 
 to be beckoned to, two or three times, and finally 
 shoving one another, and whispering timidly, 
 they reached his footstool. " Then Odin spoke 
 to them in calm, low, serious tones about the 
 wickedness of their mischievous propensities. 
 Some of the very worst of them only laughed in a 
 forward, hardened manner, but a great many 
 looked up surprised and a little pleased at the 
 novelty of serious words, whilst the light elves 
 all wept, for they were tender-hearted little 
 things." Odin named the two dwarfs whom he 
 had seen murdering the wise man, and so pleased 
 were they at their fame they leapt up and danced 
 and boasted of their misdeeds. Then Odin 
 thundered with disapproval at them, condemned 
 the wicked dwarfs to live far underground from 
 henceforth, and throw fuel upon the earth's fire; 
 those who had only been impishly mischievous 
 were to hammer in the gold and diamond mines, 
 and only at night return to breathe the upper air. 
 Chattering with fear and rage they departed, but 
 the light elves stood with their joyous faces be- 
 dimmed with tears and begged Odin to forgive 
 them, as they had done no one any harm. Sage
 
 86 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 Odin asked if they had ever done anybody any 
 good, and they confessed, with innocent candour, 
 that they had never done anything at all. " You 
 may go then," said Odin, " to live amongst the 
 flowers and play with the wild bees and summer 
 insects, but you must find something to do or 
 you will work mischief like the dwarfs from 
 idleness." 
 
 The elves explained they were such foolish 
 little people and had no one to guide them, so 
 Frey, the genius of clouds and sunshine, was sent 
 for, and promised to teach the brainless, useless 
 elves to burst the folded buds, to set the blossoms, 
 to pour sweetness into the swelling fruit, to lead 
 the bees through the honey passages of the 
 flowers, to make the single ear a stalk of wheat, 
 to hatch the birds' eggs and teach the young to 
 sing. Delighted were the elves at the course of 
 study that Frey suggested, and away they went 
 with him to Altheim, and so the frivolous elves 
 became our tricksy, pretty fairies, who, like 
 Puck, sing merrily: — 
 
 " In the cowslip's bell I lie, 
 Where the bee lurks there lurk I." 
 
 Oberon and Titania and all their mimic train 
 dance lightsomely before us in poetry and
 
 FAIRIES 87 
 
 romance, for they have been made into familiar 
 spirits for us by pen and brush. These are the 
 inconsequent fairies of northern fable, but those 
 denizens of Elfinland who live in Scotland have 
 been described by the people preserved in folk 
 lore, and also ministers of the gospel have written 
 what they believe to be facts about these fairies. 
 The Rev. Mr. Kirk of Aberfoyle, at the beginning 
 of last century, published a book describing 
 these contrairy sylvan pigmies. He says : " They 
 are a kind of astral spirits between angels and 
 humanity, being like men and women in appear- 
 ance and similar in many of their habits. They 
 live in subterranean habitations, and in an in- 
 visible condition attend very constantly on men. 
 They are very fond of human children and pretty 
 women, both of which they will steal if not pro- 
 tected by some superior influence. When people 
 offend them they shoot flint-tipped arrows, and 
 by this means kill either the persons who have 
 offended them or their cattle. They cause these 
 arrows to strike the most vital part, but the 
 stroke does not visibly break the skin, only a 
 blae mark is the result visible on the body after 
 death. These flint arrow heads are occasionally 
 found, and the possession of one of these will
 
 88 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 protect the possessor against the power of these 
 astral beings and at the same time enable him or 
 her to cure diseases in cattle and women." 
 
 Another divine in 1670, Lucas Jacobsen Debes, 
 in his description written from Thorshaven in 
 the Faroes, complains " of the fairies disturbing 
 his congregation and sometimes carrying off his 
 hearers." The Rev. Lucas must have surely 
 delivered very spiritual discourses when he drew 
 around him those teasing elves, who could lend 
 their aid when they listed as a choir invisible. 
 Perhaps his congregation were not averse to 
 these fairy visits, or did not object to being lifted 
 from out of hearing of the good man's lengthy 
 discourse. We must bear in mind that the 
 people of previous times led less artificial lives 
 than we do. As a modem writer says: " When 
 we were children we did not say at such a dis- 
 tance from the post-office or so far from the 
 butcher's or the grocer's, but measured things 
 from the covered well in the wood, or by the 
 burrow of the fox in the hill. We belonged then 
 to God and His works and to things come down 
 from the ancient days. We would not have been 
 greatly surprised had we met the shining feet of 
 an angel among the white mushrooms upon the
 
 FAIRIES 89 
 
 mountains — for we knew in those days immense 
 despair, unfathomed love, every eternal mood — 
 but now the draw-net is about our feet." 
 
 As we have grown in civilisation we have lost 
 many instincts once granted to mortals. We 
 have undoubtedly acquired knowledge, and 
 thereby power, on many subjects, but our pro- 
 genitors, along with untamed races and animals, 
 had faculties of sight, smell, and hearing which 
 education and indoor life has blotted out from 
 our list of attainments. They lived close to 
 nature, who was a kind old nurse to the children 
 who cuddled close to her, and she gifted them 
 with a keener range of vision than we possess. 
 They therefore may, for aught we know, have 
 seen face to face their good neighbours of whom 
 so much has been said and sung. 
 
 To account for the deep-rooted belief still 
 extant that fairies appeared on this earth, the 
 theory grew that the tradition of existence arose 
 from their likeness to the dwarfish Lapps who 
 were forced by conquering tribes to seek shelter 
 in the remote fringes of our country. This 
 ancient race of swart Lapps, to judge by the 
 remnant left, had many tastes and habits in 
 common with the fairies. " Thev are alwa\'5
 
 90 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 represented as living in green mounds. They 
 pop up their heads when disturbed by people 
 treading on their houses. They steal children. 
 They seem to live on familiar terms with the 
 people about them when they treat them well. 
 A Lapp is such a man," says J. F. Campbell in 
 his Popular Tales of the West Highlands. The 
 Lapps who survive in the Far North set great 
 store on their deer for food and drink and clothes, 
 and for motive power. The merry bro^^^l fairies 
 had an aversion to the killers of deer, and they 
 milked the hinds and lived on familiar terms 
 with their cherished four-feeted people as do the 
 Lapps. 
 
 Another Mr. Campbell (J. S.) in his Supersti- 
 tions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, 
 mentions that in an account of Gaelic super- 
 stition and beUef the first and most popular place 
 is to be assigned to the fairy or elfin people, or as 
 they are called in both Irish and Scottish Gaelic, 
 the sith people, that is the people of peace — the 
 still folk, or the silently-moving people. The 
 antiquity of the belief is showTi by its being found 
 among all branches of the Celtic and Teutonic 
 families, and in countries which have not within 
 historical times had any communication with
 
 FAIRIES 91 
 
 one another. Of all beings with which fear or 
 fancy peopled the supernatural, the fairies were 
 the most intimately associated with men's daily 
 life. In the present day, when popular poetical 
 ideas are extinguished in the universal call for 
 " fads," and by cold material laws, it is hard to 
 understand how firm a hold a belief like this had 
 upon men in a more primitive state of society, 
 and how unwillingly it is surrendered. Sound is 
 a natural adjunct of the motions of men, and its 
 entire absence is unearthly, and unnatural, and 
 not human. The name sith without doubt 
 refers to the " peace " or silence of fairy motion, 
 as contrasted with the stir and noise accompany- 
 ing the movements and actions of men. The 
 German " still folk " is a name of corresponding 
 import. The fairies come and go with noiseless 
 steps, and their thefts or abductions are done 
 silently. " Sometimes, indeed, the elves make a 
 rusthng noise like that of a gust of wind, or a silk 
 gown, or a sword drawn sharply through the air, 
 and their coming and going has been indicated 
 by frightful and unearthly shrieks, a pattering 
 as of a flock of sheep, or the louder tramphng 
 of a troop of horses. Generally, however, their 
 presence is indicated at most by the cloud of
 
 92 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 dust raised by the eddy wind, or by some other 
 curious natural phenomenon, by the illumina- 
 tion of their dwellings, the sound of their musical 
 instruments, songs, or speech." Our conven- 
 tional modern idea of fairies is something very 
 brisk and active, but the little folk who moved 
 without disturbance, though they darted hither 
 and thither full of pranksome mischief, journeyed 
 so silently, the only trace of their progress heard 
 by the plodding wayfarer being the jingling of 
 their bejewelled bridles. These restless but still 
 people evidently glided, for there is a verse of a 
 Gaelic song describing the triumphant progress 
 of a ship: — 
 
 " Onward past Greenock, 
 Like the deer of the cold high hills. 
 Breasting the rugged ground 
 With the hunter in pursuit. 
 She sailed with fairy motion." 
 
 This shows how with what graceful quietness 
 the sylvan pigmies skimmed along. Their title 
 of " good neighbours " reminds us of Border 
 parlance when the key of the East of Scotland 
 was Berwick. It was well to be on good terms 
 with the powers that be. The red-roofed 
 borough by Tweedmouth changed hands fre- 
 quently, so with diplomatic blarney it was styled
 
 FAIRIES 93 
 
 " our good town of Berwick." " Never speak 
 ill of the deil " is a proverbial maxim, for mortal 
 man never knew when his Satanic majesty might 
 be within earshot. The invisible and alert 
 fairies for the same reason were always mentioned 
 with a honeyed tongue. The wily, knowing not 
 where they might be lurking, were careful to call 
 them " the good neighbours," " the honest folk," 
 " the little folk." " the gentry," " the hiU folk," 
 and " the forgetful people," the " men of peace." 
 Klippe is the Forfarshire name for a fairy. A 
 well-known minister of the Church of Scotland 
 related, this century, at a dinner in Edinburgh, 
 how his father had met a klippe in a bare moor- 
 land in Forfarshire, a little brown-faced elf who 
 started up on the path before him, walked before 
 him awhile and then vanished. 
 
 It was the poets who gave the " still people " 
 the epithet of " the crew that never rest." Our 
 good neighbours from pigmyland seem to have 
 been divided into various classes or degrees. 
 There were trows or drows, which derivation 
 Scott explains " being a corruption of duergar or 
 dwarf, and who may, in most respects, be identi- 
 fied with the Caledonian fairies." It was the 
 skow or Biergen trold that Lucas Jacobsen
 
 94 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 Debes complained of disturbing his congregation. 
 They belonged to the woods and wilds and 
 appeared in caverns and subterranean haunts 
 like the German kobold. Belonging specially to 
 Scotland was the bogle, a mixture of the friendly 
 fairy with a dwarfish grotesqueness of figure and 
 nature. Then also there was the Pan-like ourisk 
 of the Highlands, a hairy lubber, who hanging 
 about homesteads watching the humans at work, 
 wished to emulate them and became harnessed 
 for mortals' use. He was trained and bribed by 
 food, becoming readily a hewer of wood and 
 carrier of water. His undulled savage instincts 
 allowed him to foresee coming events, so he was 
 credited with repaying his patrons by giving 
 timely warning. He worked hard for small 
 reward, for the wages he craved for most was the 
 milk of human kindness. He was easily offended 
 and strong in his Hkes and dislikes. It became 
 in ancient days a fashion for the great houses to 
 encourage an ourisk to attach himself to them, 
 and in course of time he became part of their 
 entourage and grew into the banshee, the spirit 
 who wailed to them of coming evil. All is fair in 
 love and war, and knowing that the hairy ourisk 
 was both liked and feared, Scott mentions that
 
 FAIRIES 95 
 
 the celebrated freebooter, Rob Roy, once gained 
 a victory by disguising a part of his men with 
 goat skins so as to resemble the ourisk, or High- 
 land satyr. 
 
 The kelpie, the water-witch, who lurked by 
 Border water-sides, and took the toll, ever and 
 anon, of a human life, was a Caledonian spirit. 
 The kobolds, common in German lore, like the 
 duergar Sir Walter tells us of, haunted the dark 
 and solitary places and were seen often in the 
 mines, where they seemed to imitate the labours 
 of the miners and sometimes took pleasure in 
 frustrating their objects and rendering their toil 
 unfruitful. Sometimes they were malignant, 
 especially if neglected and insulted; but some- 
 times also they were indulgent to individuals 
 whom they took under their protection. These 
 trows and bogles, kobolds and kelpies alluded to, 
 were more of the goblin kind than the merry- 
 making, aerial people we connect with the name 
 and nature of fairy. These lightsome, tricksy 
 folk were again sub-divided. There was the 
 English pixie, the Scottish brownie and spunkie, 
 full of merriment and teasing propensities. Mr. 
 Campbell, in his Superstitions of the Scottish 
 Highlands, explains " a difference of size as weU
 
 96 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 as of name has led to these being described as 
 separate beings, but they all have so much in 
 common with the Celtic fairies that we must 
 conclude they were originally the same." " The 
 true belief is that the fairies are a small race, the 
 men about four feet or so in height, the women 
 in many cases not taller than a little girl. At one 
 time the elves are small enough to creep through 
 keyholes, and a single potato is as much as one 
 of them can carry; at another they resemble 
 mankind, with whom they form alliances and to 
 whom they hire themselves as servants." These 
 honest folk, by whatever name they were known, 
 could be helpful to the mortals around them if so 
 minded. They hked to earn their title of good 
 neighbours, though whimsical and capricious in 
 their friendship. When they arrived at a new 
 place of residence they were wont to bless their 
 new home, repeating the following couplet full 
 of sweet content, a hopeful motto for mortals 
 who change their dwelHng : — 
 
 " Though good the haven we have left, 
 Better be the haven we have found." 
 
 Even in the glaring, uncompromising light of 
 to-day, in the westmost British Isle there are 
 those who believe in the existence of " the crew
 
 FAIRIES 97 
 
 that never rest," for in The Celtic Twilight Mr. 
 Yeats tells how he himself has seen the inhabi- 
 tants of the " dim country." He went with one 
 who had the second sight to " a notable haunt of 
 the forgetful people, a shallow cave amidst black 
 rocks, with its reflection under it in the wet sea 
 sand." There he was granted a sight of the tall 
 queen in gleaming garments. In the Celtic 
 gloamin', now as in the light of other days, the 
 fairies have changed little in their dress — green 
 as a rule being their favourite colour. There is 
 also a grey called the fairies'" grey, a glaucous 
 green hke the leaves of the eucaliptus. It is the 
 women who adhere mostly to the verdant hues, 
 for the men in some places are called the little 
 red men, their clothes being dyed with crotal 
 from the lichen, and their cowl-like hats were 
 scarlet. They love showy splendour, and the 
 gorgeousness of their apparel in their pageants 
 impressed beholders. 
 
 The following information concerning the 
 government, etc., of fairyland is taken from 
 Aytoun. " The queen of fairyland was a kind of 
 feudatory sovereign under Satan, to whom she 
 was obliged to pay kane or tithe in kind, and 
 as her own fairy subjects strongly objected to
 
 98 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 transfer their allegiance, the quota was usually 
 made up in children who had been stolen before 
 the rite of baptism was administered to them. 
 This belief was at one time universal throughout 
 all Scotland and still prevalent at the beginning 
 of this century. There was also a king of elf- 
 land. From the accounts extracted from or 
 volunteered by witches, etc., preserved to us in 
 justiciary and presbyterial records he appears to 
 have been a peaceable, luxurious, indolent per- 
 sonage who intrusted the whole business, includ- 
 ing the recruiting department, to his wife. We 
 get a glimpse of both their majesties in the con- 
 fessions of Isabella Gowdie in Aulderne, a parish 
 in Nairnshire, who was indicted for witchcraft in 
 1662. She said, " I was in Downie Hills and got 
 meat there from the queen of the fairies, more 
 than I could eat. The queen is bravely clothed 
 in white linen and in white and brown cloth, and 
 the king is a braw man well favoured and broad 
 faced. There were plenty of elf bulls rioting 
 and skoyling up and down, which affrighted me." 
 The Rev. Mr. Kirk, who seems to have had 
 intimate knowledge of the wee folk, states " that 
 in fairyland they also have books of various 
 kinds — history, travel, novels, and plays — but no
 
 FAIRIES 99 
 
 sermons, no Bible, nor any book of a religious 
 kind." 
 
 Despite their endeavours to be useful the 
 fairies, from all accounts, only succeeded for all 
 their fussing in hampering work. They seem by 
 some tales to stand for a personification of busy- 
 bodies. Little good ever came^ of haying the 
 fairies for helpers. " No wise man will either 
 desire their company or their kindness. When 
 they come to a house to assist at any work the 
 sooner they are got rid of the better. If hired as 
 servants their wages at first appear trifling, but 
 will ultimately ruin their employer. The benefit 
 of their gifts goes ultimately to the fairies them- 
 selves or (as it is put in the Gaelic expression) 
 ' the fruit of it goes into their own bodies.' " 
 This statement seems ungrateful and thankless, 
 for there are stories of fairies repaying debts in 
 truly generous fashion: not only is the loan of 
 meal returned, but the fairy bowl of ground grain 
 returned never grows less, till some discontented 
 member of the family grumbUngly asks if they 
 are never to have aught but barley meal to the 
 end of their days, and when next the good wife 
 dips her hand into the barrel, behold, it is empty, 
 for the invisible host around had hearkened to
 
 100 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 the malcontent and withdrew their favour. The 
 fairies, with these alert ears and easily-offended 
 natures of theirs, proved stem monitors. If 
 mortals were not grateful and content they 
 listened to their fretful repinings and gave them 
 some cause to complain. When people grudg- 
 ingly said that their healthy children might be 
 even rosier, or disparaged their crops and herds 
 and complained they might be still better, the 
 fairies heard, and the apple-cheeked children 
 paled and grew weakly, the heavy grain was 
 shaken, a murrain fell on the beasts in their 
 fields. It was reported that the fairies who 
 blighted the enviable things mortals had despised 
 reaped the benefits that the human beings were 
 deprived of. Their kine grew fat, while those of 
 the grumblers were wasted and lean. Their 
 harvests were safely garnered and the farmers' 
 full ears of corn were winnowed by the winds. 
 The fairies, naturally, when such rich prize-money 
 fell to their share, eavesdropped muchly. Fairies 
 seemed, out of a spirit of mischief, not that they 
 needed food, to have a fancy to raid dwellings 
 and take what they liked. Handmills they were 
 partial to, and when their women ground the 
 com, they sang at the task so blithely, mortals
 
 FAIRIES loi 
 
 who walked over the green mound where they 
 dwelt paused and listened and learned their 
 songs, Friday was a day on which the fairies 
 seemed to hold revel above ground, raid houses 
 in open daylight, and investigate the very 
 dishes preparing for dinner. No wise person 
 named Friday but called it " the day of yonder 
 town," for the fairies preferred it so, and it was 
 well to curry favour with these tricky good 
 neighbours. When they journeyed in com- 
 panies they took advantage of the wings of the 
 wind to speed them and so wheel them past the 
 plodding traveller, who heard the laughter of the 
 still folk go and the jangle of the bridles of their 
 caprisoned steeds as they glided by. They are 
 perverse pigmies — they arrive from the west. 
 Usually invaders borne on the tide of conquest 
 have come from the other side of the compass, 
 but, on the contrary, soulless men of peace 
 journey withershins about, and come from the 
 sunset land. There is a verse of an old song 
 bidding mortals — 
 
 " Shut the North window 
 And quickly close the window to the South, 
 And shut the window facing West — 
 Evil never came from the East." 
 
 The god of light and warmth rose in the east
 
 102 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 — the Star of the East guided the Magi, and as 
 Christianity grew the direction from whence the 
 dawn arose was looked on as sacred and safe. 
 Although fairies in the tales we love with their 
 opportune gifts invariably prove valuable 
 friends, their help and comradeship were not 
 sought after. Mortals dreaded to meet them on 
 the " day of yonder town " flitting along on the 
 eddy of wind. Firm was the belief that they 
 would capture a mortal and take him prisoner 
 to their bloodless, soulless kingdom. Music and 
 meat and dancing they had, but these did not 
 tempt prince or peasant. A Mayo woman in 
 this young century of ours has told the gifted 
 young writer of to-day, Mr. Yeats, how she has 
 seen the denizens of Elfinland. " Her thoughts 
 and her sights of the people of faery are pleasant 
 and beautiful too, and I never heard her call 
 them the fallen angels. They are people like 
 ourselves, only better-looking, and many and 
 many a time she has gone to the window to watch 
 them drive their wagons through the sky, wagon 
 behind wagon in long line, or to the door to hear 
 them singing and dancing. They sing chiefly, it 
 seems, a song called ' The Distant Waterfall.' 
 They are always good to the poor, she said. If
 
 FAIRIES 103 
 
 you do good to them they will do good to you, 
 but they don't like you to be on their path." 
 This path was the track they pursued when 
 taking an earthly journey. More than one 
 traveller has returned from their realm, and the 
 story of Thomas the Rhymer's visit to Elfland is 
 specially worth recording, for as Scott says, he 
 dwelt on Thomas of Erceldoune's history as the 
 " oldest tradition of the kind which has reached 
 us in detail, and as pretending to show the fate 
 of the first Scotch poet whose existence and its 
 date are established both by history and records. 
 But the legend is still more curious from its being 
 the first and most distinguished instance of a man 
 alleged to have obtained supernatural knowledge 
 by means of the fairies." Thomas the Rhymer, 
 one of the earliest of Scotland's versifiers, hved 
 at Erceldoune, by the Leader. Owing to his love 
 of lonely wanderings and communing with 
 nature, he acquired the reputation of being a 
 master of magic. " Divested of fable," says 
 Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, " we should probably 
 find him standing forth as a very prominent 
 figure amidst the worth and talent of our 
 countrymen." There, by the bogle-haunted 
 Huntly burn, under the shade of the Eildon tree
 
 104 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 (now gone, but a cairn marks the spot where it 
 grew and flourished), the Laird of Learmont lay 
 ruminating one day when there appeared before 
 him a wondrously beautiful lady. An ancient 
 ballad tells us — 
 
 " Her skirt was o' the grass green silk, 
 Her mantle o' the velvet fine; 
 At ilka tett of her horse's mane 
 Hung fifty silver bells and nine." 
 
 She informed him she was the queen of fair Elf- 
 land, and looking on her, True Thomas doffed his 
 cap " and louted down to his knee," and she 
 carried the learned poet away there and then 
 from the magically-cloven Eildon's slope, show- 
 ing him many strange sights as they journeyed 
 and many devious routes, till the queen drew his 
 attention — 
 
 " . . . to that bonny road 
 That winds about the fernie brae ? 
 That is the road to fair Elfland 
 
 Where thou and I this night maun gae." 
 
 " It was mirk mirk night, and there was nae stern light, 
 And they waded through red blood to the knee; 
 For a' the blude that's shed on earth 
 
 Rins through the springs o' that countrie." 
 
 They came at last to the fairy kingdom where 
 revelry and dancing were the order of the day. 
 Thomas passed so delectable a time that when
 
 FAIRIES 105 
 
 the queen asked him how long he thought he had 
 been there, he calculated some seven days had 
 been passed chasing the golden hours with flying 
 feet. He could scarce believe the beautiful 
 sovereign when she assured him he had been 
 gone from earth five years and two. Every 
 seventh year the fairies had to pay to Satan a 
 life, and the clever little people preferred that 
 this debt should be paid by a mortal. Thomas 
 of Erceldoune being a well-favoured-looking man, 
 the queen advised him to flee, sure that the 
 devil's ambassadors would claim so comely a 
 captive. As a parting token of goodwill the 
 elfish queen bestowed upon him a gift which he 
 fain would have dechned — namely, with a tongue 
 which could not lie. The Rhymer protested 
 that such a present would be highly inconvenient, 
 explaining blunt veracity at market, kirk, court, 
 or ladies' bower, would make him unfit to bargain 
 successfully, or appear well before his neighbours 
 in church and finish his career as a courtier. 
 But the queen pressed this honest-tongued favour 
 upon him, and so for ever after he spoke with 
 unflinching candour, earning for himself the title 
 of True Thomas. He was also invested with a 
 supernatural discernment which penetrated the
 
 io6 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 veil of the far-off future. Thomas returned safe 
 from the incessant beguihng revelry of Fair\'- 
 land, and with his tongue of truth he uttered 
 prophecies still quoted. Many other people 
 have declared that they too had dwelt with the 
 fairies, but none were men of outstanding ability 
 and importance like the Laird of Learmont. 
 
 The speed with which time in fairyland flies 
 was not only Thomas the Rhymer's experience. 
 A miller, so folks tell to-day, fell asleep on a 
 grassy mound in a peaceful strath in the north. 
 The little folk took him off, and on the anniver- 
 sary of his capture, when the elves danced again 
 of a June night among the nodding grass and the 
 bluebells, his friends reclaimed him. He awoke 
 as from a pleasant dream, shouldered his sack, 
 and went off towards home. None of his neigh- 
 bours could persuade him he had been asleep for 
 twelve months. He thought they were jesting 
 till, nearing his cottage, his wife met him with a 
 child chnging to her skirts. He had left a year- 
 old baby when he went to fetch the sack of meal 
 home. He returned to find the baby a prattling, 
 toddling wee thing, and not till then did he 
 reahse that the fairies had held him a twelve- 
 month in thrall.
 
 FAIRIES 107 
 
 Gifts received, or spoil acquired by mortals 
 from the little people, are treasured amongst us. 
 The elves were hospitable. They liked their 
 human neighbours to eat, drink, and be merry 
 with them. Endless tales are told of them 
 biding their big neighbours, who strayed in 
 among them while they were carousing, to partake 
 of their feast. A goblet in which they were 
 drinking a " richt gude willie waught " in their 
 sovereign's honour roused the envy of a Mus- 
 grave. He rushed in, seized the glass, mounted 
 in hot haste and galloped away with his stolen 
 trophy. Some authorities hold that the good 
 folk are not averse to crossing running water. 
 It is only a wicked class of them whose powers 
 are blunted by traversing flowing streams. But 
 legend tells us Musgrave pressed his steed 
 towards the brook, for he knew if once he forded 
 it, the rain of fairy flints showered at him, and 
 all pursuit, would cease. His terrified courser, 
 spurred by steel and fear, leapt the water. 
 Safe across the river he paused, and borne 
 on the breeze, Musgrave heard his despoiled 
 pursuers forgivingly sing — 
 
 " Joy to thy banner, bold Sir Knight, 
 But if yon goblet break or fall, 
 Farewell thy vantage in the fight, 
 Farewell the luck of Eden Hall."
 
 io8 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 In the Musgraves' Cumberland home the 
 illicitly - obtained " luck " — a glass goblet — 
 remains intact, carefully preserved. 
 
 The Macleod clan appear to have been specially 
 favoured by the fairies. One of their name 
 entered an elfin brugh when a banquet was in 
 progress. He was warmly welcomed. " Here's 
 to you, Hugh," " I drink to thee, Hugh," they 
 cried, bowing to him and quaffing from a glitter- 
 ing cup. When the bowl was passed to him, 
 instead of proposing a toast, Hugh bolted with 
 it, eluding the elusive little folk, who loosed 
 their dogs to overtake the thief, but he escaped. 
 He had a narrow escape. He heard the hound 
 called Farvann shouted for. If this four-footed 
 guardian of the fairies had captured the false 
 Macleod it would have gone ill with him, for the 
 spunkies' dogs, from all accounts, resembled 
 Sherlock Holmes's baffling quadruped enemy, the 
 Hound of the Baskervilles. The elfish tyke, like 
 themselves, was green of coat and as large as a 
 two-year-old stirk. Its tail was sometimes curled 
 over its back like a pig's, sometimes plaited into 
 a long wisp. The fairy hound was either kept 
 tied as a watch in the brugh, or escorted the 
 women on their search for cows to milk. Some-
 
 FAIRIES 109 
 
 times it was allowed to roam alone, making its 
 lair in clefts. Like the fairies, it moved silently, 
 but for aU its gliding gait, the print of its paws, 
 as big as a human hand, were found on mud or 
 sand or snow. Its voice was sonorous and far- 
 reaching, being heard even by those sailing on 
 the seas. It paused between each bark and at a 
 time gave vent to only three roars. Its baying 
 struck terror into the pursued, who was invari- 
 ably overtaken and destroyed after the third 
 bark if he had not hidden himself from his 
 unearthly pursuer. Hugh Macleod, we learn, 
 escaped from Farvann, and the goblet he had 
 stolen long glittered at Raasay. To Macleod of 
 Dunvegan was given by an elfin mistress the 
 green fairy banner still preserved in the hoary 
 castle in Skye. It is a useful possession, swaying 
 even the tide of battle, gaining the victory, not 
 for the strong, but for the weaker, oppressed 
 side, by the supernatural power in its folds. 
 Three times in dire emergencies it may be waved 
 with success. Twice it has been flung to the 
 breeze, and its third miracle has yet to be 
 wrought. Meanwhile, to-day, it lies secure in the 
 Macleod's thousand-year-old stronghold, await- 
 ing to flutter once more in some great strait,
 
 no FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 when its owner is fighting back to the waU. 
 Perhaps its third charmed wave may be kept 
 till the long-prophesied battle on the Clyde is 
 fought, the battle which Thomas the Rhymer 
 awaits, when he will rouse from his slumber, 
 and ballad story tells how — 
 
 " When Thomas comes with his heroes 
 The day of spoils will be on the Clyde. 
 Nine thousand good men will be slain 
 And a new King will be set upon the throne." 
 
 In bygone times, when fairies were seen by the 
 people, or wheeled in invisible, aerial armies 
 around, doughty warriors faced these uncanny, 
 supernatural little folk with unflinching bravery, 
 deeming them foemen worthy of their steel. 
 The number of the host of fairy enemies made 
 up for their small size, and a regiment of pigmies 
 armed with deadly weapons might well make 
 the stoutest knight quail. 
 
 The fairies, like the gipsies, though they were 
 said to have many bairns of their own, had a 
 longing to steal human babies. To guard the 
 infant and even its mother from being borne off 
 from the humblest of cottages to the fairies' 
 palace, cautious and incessant watchfulness was 
 needed. Cold iron fairies misliked, and the new-
 
 FAIRIES III 
 
 born babe and its mother were protected from 
 the elves by iron. The fairies were so far honest 
 that when they abducted an infant they left in 
 the cradle one of their own. This changehng 
 never throve; it became an ill-conditioned, 
 weird child. When it grew up its ease and grace 
 in dancing, and sometimes its musical excellence 
 betrayed its origin. Music was a gift the fairies 
 possess — one they sometimes gave to mortals. 
 The strains of pipes and songs were ofttimes 
 heard by men, though they saw no player, and 
 this bears out the idea of the Rev. Mr. Kirk that 
 the elves were astral beings who floated around 
 invisible, or appeared as they willed to the dull- 
 eyed inhabitants of this world. Those who have 
 ears to let them hear can execute tunes, curious 
 and uncommon, which they say they learned 
 from the spirits. For instance, there is the 
 " Song of the Hillock " which was heard by a 
 woman who, noticing her dog with ears cocked, 
 transfixed on a knowe, followed him and 
 hearkened. The fairies were butter-making, and 
 as they churned, lilted. The woman remembered 
 the rune, and " for three generations, i.e., till our 
 Victorian era, it was chanted." Macrimmon, a 
 piper to Macleod, acquired his skill from the good
 
 112 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 neighbours. He was going across the mountains 
 to a pipers' competition and stumbled into a 
 fairy dwelhng. The dance-loving " men of 
 peace " were kindly disposed towards the eager 
 boy-musician and gave him a magic black 
 chanter, which remained an heirloom in his 
 family, and their skill was such they outrivalled 
 all pipers, so that " their fame will last while 
 wind is blown into sheepskin." 
 
 The fairies were fickle in their bestowal and 
 withdrawal of favours, and changeable as an 
 April day. 
 
 " Rain and sun, 
 Little people at their meat; " 
 
 says one adage, but from all the lore regarding 
 them (and there is no small measure thereof) 
 they seemingly have given many benefits to man 
 — some trophies, as the cup at Raasay and the 
 luck of Eden Hall had been filched from them — 
 but the priceless fairy banner remains at Dun- 
 vegan as a visible proof of their goodwill, besides 
 the Macrimmon's musical talent, and sweet 
 melodies they taught us. Except the indict- 
 ment that they stole children and lifted also 
 older mortals, the fairies were truly good neigh- 
 bours — freakish, and sometimes interfering, but
 
 FAIRIES 113 
 
 as a choir invisible beguiling the road, hospitable, 
 repaying what they had borrowed with lasting 
 lavishness, although their offerings might be in a 
 curious guise, or handicapped by some seemingly 
 whimsical restriction. Then we all are indebted 
 to the fairies for the tales they bequeathed to us, 
 for their legends are a rich possession. It has 
 added a joy to childhood, and fairy lore has 
 entwined itself from nursery days about our 
 hearts in ever-green sprays. Its teaching has 
 borne good fruit in after Ufe, impressing goodness 
 and mercy upon us more than many sermons. 
 In fairy hterature we learn that the presumptu- 
 ous are brought low, while those whose gentle- 
 ness and kindness of heart have made them side 
 with the weak and oppressed are exalted and 
 rewarded. Little deeds of kindness, little words 
 of love, hke bread cast upon the waters, return 
 to the heroes and heroines of fairy story, not 
 even after many days, but is immediately 
 garnered. The fairy tales teach us to be con- 
 siderate and well disposed to bird and beast. 
 The saying, a little bird whispered to me, is a 
 relic of those times when the beasts of the field 
 and the fowls of the air spoke in a language in- 
 telligible even to human beings. The feathered.
 
 114 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 winged creatures were the swift and sure 
 messengers in an age before post and telegrams. 
 
 Fairy godmothers have become proverbial for 
 their ways of pleasantness. They could, with a 
 wave of their wand, bridge over difficulties and 
 assist their favourites. They lent prompt aid to 
 the helpless and needy, encouraged the sat-upon 
 but deserving ugly ducklings of the flock, and 
 gave them fine feathers. Fairy lore teaches the 
 child to be friendly and generous to the feeble 
 and despised. The decrepit crone, helped over 
 a slough, casts off the weather-worn cloak and 
 stands in sparkling raiment beautiful to behold, 
 ready to fulfil the wishes and load with favours 
 the mortal who did not despise her in her wrap 
 and wrinkles. The proud girl spurns and ill- 
 uses the four-footed creatures, while another, 
 rich in heart if not in goods, bestows sympathy 
 and assistance on some timorous beastie. Soon 
 the purse-proud, arrogant lass is brought low 
 and the kindly one exalted. The heroine of the 
 fairy tale shares her crust with the hungry, 
 makes them welcome to her few possessions, and 
 in the end finds her gifts are returned with a 
 thousandfold interest. This sharing their all 
 was the symbol of a truly generous disposition.
 
 FAIRIES 115 
 
 The wealthy might scatter largesse and think 
 they had done nobly, though their well-filled 
 pockets were not perceptibly lighter, but the 
 " mite " given by those who owned but a mite 
 was taken in good stead. Sir Launthal set forth 
 in search of the Holy Grail, and rode far afield in 
 his pursuit all gaily bedight in his golden armour. 
 He gave from his well-filled coffers with a liberal 
 hand, but no heavenly blessing fell upon him. 
 Only when returning, stripped of his wealth, 
 humble of heart at his failure, the knight, wearied 
 and saddened by his fruitless search, near to his 
 own gate gave to a diseased beggar half of his 
 remaining bite and sup : — 
 
 " He parted in twain his single crust, 
 He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 
 And he gave to the leper to eat and drink." 
 
 The cup of cold water he received back was 
 the long-sought-for Holy Grail. While he stared 
 amazed, he heard from the whilom beggar's 
 sacred lips that it is not what we give, but what 
 we share with another's need that is doing His 
 will:— 
 
 " Who gives himself with his alms feeds three — 
 Himself, his hungering neighbour, and Me." 
 
 In the fairy stories which Grimm and Hans
 
 ii6 FOLK LORE L\ LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 Andersen have written for us, we learn this 
 simple creed — that the gift without the giver is 
 bare. The fairies see the sham through all the 
 cheap outward show, and they teach in their 
 tales what cost Sir Launthal a toilsome journey 
 to realise. Impishly mischievous, fickle as April 
 weather, were fairies, if the tales be true told by 
 those who aver they had met with them ; but in 
 Grimm or Hans Andersen their capriciousness 
 disappears, their helpful services shine forth in 
 no uncertain, will o' the wisp gleams, but \%T[th a 
 steady brilliance which lights the way through 
 seductive snares. The fairy lore shows the 
 benefit of sweet content as well as strict observ- 
 ance of the given word and punctual fulfilment 
 of promises. Cinderella, dazzled by the bril- 
 liance of the ball, forgot to leave at midnight 
 as her godmother had commanded, and lo! her 
 regal trappings began to fade, but she made 
 haste to redeem her promise, and was requited. 
 People had to consider well who was to be bidden 
 to the feast in the days fairies flew around. 
 They must leave out no one, however shabby or 
 old, or despise the seemingly worthless gifts. 
 The neglected one might have some friend in the 
 court at Elfinland, and the seemingly small offer-
 
 FAIRIES 117 
 
 ing brought to christening or marriage might be 
 a magnet to wealth and honour to the receiver, 
 a talisman worth more than the bejewelled dona- 
 tion the wealthy brought. 
 
 To fairies in times past mortals were indebted 
 for valuable service rendered — and whether it 
 was dull-headed human beings, or the sprites 
 themselves who bequeathed to us fairy tales, 
 their lore has been and still is a goodly heritage 
 we all enjoy and can profit by the lesson their 
 tales teach. " Those that see the people of faery 
 most often, and so have the most of their wisdom, 
 are often very poor," says a writer of our cen- 
 tury. And, after all, can we come to so great 
 evil if we keep a little fire on our hearths and in 
 our souls, and welcome with open hand whatever 
 comes to warm itself by our hearth, and whether 
 it be man or phantom, do not say too fiercely, 
 even to the dhouls themselves, " Be ye gone."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 fishermen's superstitions 
 
 " Green earth has her sons and her daughters, 
 And these have their guerdons, but we 
 Are the wind's and the sun's and the water's, 
 Elect of the sea." 
 
 Swinburne. 
 
 The sons of the sea rovers, though aware of the 
 danger of their calhng, were never afraid to face 
 the billows. They saw their fathers set forth, 
 ofttimes never to return, but, undeterred by 
 knowing full well that after a life of toil a water\'' 
 grave awaited them, they too invariably adopted 
 the same precarious profession. In the West of 
 Scotland a pretty legend exists to account for 
 this hereditary perverseness. A man had be- 
 come enamoured of a mermaid whom he first 
 espied combing her " ling lang yellow locks " while 
 he was wandering along the shore. He was 
 warned by a sea god that swift death awaited 
 ii8
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 119 
 
 him if he pursued his suit. Finally he was per- 
 suaded by threats and bribes to turn his atten- 
 tion back to a las^ of his own race who had 
 tarried for him inland. The lover told his adviser, 
 though he would do as he was bidden he would 
 not forget the halcyon days of summer he had 
 spent, lingering by the tide with the fair lady of 
 the sea who had entranced him. The merman, 
 struck by the landsman's fondness for all that 
 appertained to his watery realm, promised him 
 that his descendants would likewise be ocean 
 lovers. Before the earth dweller turned his 
 steps inland to woods and fields the sea god 
 baptised him with the splash of a wave. His 
 race in this country grew and increased, and sure 
 enough, the fascination for the salt water never 
 left them. They stand on our shores to-day, like 
 the deep ocean, dressed in dark blue, scanning 
 with keen eyes the dancing waves, and never, 
 how far inland they may go, able to cast off their 
 desire to roam over the world of waters. The 
 sea is to them as a woman whose beauty attracts, 
 but her favours or her frowns alike bring trouble. 
 Her smiles lure the sailor forth, and then she 
 swoops down on him like a fury. In the West 
 of Scotland, to ward off disaster from the siren of
 
 120 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 the seas, children, before they were twenty-one 
 days old, had their right hand baptised in the 
 waves. If done at the flow it averted death by 
 drowning. The watery grave of those who by 
 misadventure had their tiny baby fists dipped 
 into the briny, hungry waves at ebb-tide is 
 chronicled to-day. 
 
 The fisherfolk remain strangety conservative 
 in their ways, though their minds are enlarged, 
 their wits sharpened by their voyagings. A 
 modern writer explains that one reason why 
 the Russian peasants have remained so stolid, 
 dumbly enduring abuse, is because in their 
 country they had no seaboard, therefore never 
 any new ideas come to them. They have no 
 wish to penetrate beyond their forests, and this 
 stay-at-homeness has kept them for generations 
 unprogressive. The population on our shores, 
 on the other hand, was for ever open to new im- 
 pressions, and with wits alert ready to receive 
 such. Our fisherfolk are more than usually intel- 
 ligent, keeping abreast of the times, although they 
 rigidly adhere to certain customs and seemingly 
 childish superstitions. They judge of the atmo- 
 spheric changes by symbols taught to their fore- 
 bears in ages past. The fleecy, mackerel-backed
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 121 
 
 cloud which indicates more than a capful of 
 wind, and seagulls flying inland when skies are 
 fair, they note as a storm warning. Sir Patrick 
 Spens, King Alexander's skeely skipper, misliked 
 seeing " the new moon wi' the auld moon in her 
 arm," and sure enough, he and all the good Scotch 
 lords who sailed with him from Norroway, " never 
 mair cam hame." A halo round the sun or 
 moon was not welcome ; brocks they are called. 
 
 " When the sun sets in a brock 
 He'll rise in a slauch; 
 But if the brock dees awa' 
 Ere he sets in the sea. 
 He'll rise in the morning 
 Wi' a clear e'e," 
 
 says one adage. Rainbows were not welcome 
 unless they came when there was clear shining 
 after rain. The broken ends of the bow foretold 
 uncertain weather, as also did the " merry 
 dancers " — the aurora horealis. The fishers 
 noted the coming storm in the cat's tail. When 
 grimalkin was playful he chased his own brush. 
 The furniture cracking, the beasts scratching 
 themselves, told of a change. The tribe of the 
 sea read the face of the waters as if it were a 
 printed book. They were forced to be weather-
 
 122 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 wise long before the days of barometers, baro- 
 graphs or telegraphed storm warnings. They 
 had to study the ocean and sky not only for food 
 and money, as the farmer does, but for their 
 safety when on the deep. Harvesting the hale- 
 some faring of the sea costs lives of men, how- 
 ever skilful mariners may be. Harbours before 
 last century were few, and the crafts of days 
 of yore seemed, to modern ideas, but poorly 
 equipped to face the billows. The ancient 
 Britons had learned to stretch the skins of beasts 
 on a slim framework, and these cunningly- 
 fashioned wood and hide boats imitated the shape 
 of the sea birds which, while resting on the waves, 
 breasted their undulations. Even now on the 
 west coast of Ireland, where the long rolling 
 billows of the Atlantic break, the boats used 
 there are these light coracles. They face the 
 swell and the surf and float over the mountainous 
 sea with a bird-like grace and ease, whereas a 
 modern-shaped, low-bowed boat would fill and 
 swamp. The Vikings built their galleys high- 
 prowed, shaped like swan or gull. Far indeed 
 over the ocean they sped if the surmise in regard 
 to that round tower at Newport on America's 
 shore be as Longfellow sang of it and antiquarians
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 123 
 
 conjectured, namely, that it was built by some 
 venturesome Berserker whom the " wind of 
 God " had sent scudding across the Atlantic 
 before Columbus's day. There the skeleton in 
 armour built the lofty tower for his wife's bower 
 on the fringe of the undiscovered great world. 
 Despite their long voyages the Vikings and our 
 mariners of old were discreet. They rested in 
 winter. All their weather-wise lore could not 
 preserve them from the season of gales, so in this 
 land statutes were in force which forbade the 
 lieges of the kings of Scotland risking their 
 lives sailing on the seas in the darksome, 
 turbulent months between St. Jude's Day and 
 Candlemas. 
 
 Some of the fishermen's customs still in vogue 
 date back to prehistoric times. A rite of those 
 who live by the sea was practised on our western 
 shores till lately. The people by the ocean 
 depended on the great waters not only for fish 
 but for manure for their fields of grain, so on 
 Hallowmas, and some sa}- on St. Columba's Eve, 
 they offered libations of ale and gruel to the god 
 of the sea. A man at midnight between Wednes- 
 day night and the eve of Maunday Thursday 
 walked waist deep into the tide and chanted the
 
 124 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 following prayer, while those on land took up the 
 refrain : — 
 
 " O God of the sea, 
 Put weed in the drawing wave, 
 To enrich the ground. 
 To shower on us food." 
 
 So we see along our coast there lingers the ritual 
 of fire and oblations, and the fisher who pleads 
 from the sea sustenance looks from his boat at 
 the monoliths which, looming through the mist, 
 look " like a company of stolid carlines met in 
 council." The sea god to whom toll was paid 
 was in some parts called Shoney. It was a chill 
 period in which to walk into his territory and pay 
 tribute. The people were wretchedly poor on 
 the land side of his sovereignty, but they 
 combined to brew ale for the ceremony. They 
 held a prayerful service in a church by the shore 
 first, then proceeded to watch the beaker of th^ir 
 home-brewed ale being poured on the waves 
 while they chanted the lines with their chosen 
 agent, after which they returned to the church, 
 where a candle burned, and at a signal its feeble 
 light was extinguished. Then, armed with pro- 
 visions not wasted on Shoney, they adjourned 
 to some field, where they ate and drank and 
 sang till dawn. The church, hke most since
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 125 
 
 Columba's time, when he, the pioneer missionary, 
 first lit the eternal light of Christianity on his 
 lone islet on the western fringe of Scotland, had 
 evidently decided to pander to the god of the sea 
 and allow his worship. 
 
 A custom dating back to dim, distant days is 
 the annual burning and making of the clavie at 
 Burghead, in Morayshire, x^nd what was the 
 origin of the word clavie, or the meaning of the 
 belief adhering to it, no one knows. On Yule 
 night, according to past dating, they make this 
 unique clavie, i.e., a barrel sawn in two, to the 
 lower half of which there is affixed a long handle. 
 In the manufacture of the clavie it is all-im- 
 portant that no iron hammer is to be used, but a 
 stone does in its stead. The barrel is filled with 
 wood dipped in tar and piled so as to form a 
 pyramid with a hollow in it. Into the centre of 
 the pyre is placed a burning peat. Another rule 
 as well as that no metal hammer is allowed, is 
 that no light be set to the tarry pile except b}' 
 a brand already ablaze, and a modern match is 
 sternly excluded. The clavie set aglow, a 
 further libation of tar is poured upon it, and, 
 regardless of flame and smoke, a man shoulders 
 the flaring clavie. If he falls, or even stumbles.
 
 126 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 it augurs ill for the town, so a bearer strong 
 thewed is carefully selected. When a bearer is 
 wearied, or is choked by smoke, another is 
 always there eager to carry the clavie. One 
 after another they step forth until the town has 
 been encompassed by the flaring barrel. Then 
 they march to a hillock called the Doorie, where 
 on a stone the remaining blaze is placed and more 
 fuel added. In past centuries it was fed all 
 night long till a new day dawned, but in this 
 hurrying age time is money to the fisherfolk, so 
 now they let the fire burn on the altar but for a 
 brief space and proceed to roll what remains of 
 the smouldering barrel adown the western slope. 
 On its last journey a scramble is made by the 
 onlookers, for every one in the crowd wishes to 
 seize a brand from the descending, dying clavie. 
 One secured, the possessor bears it home in 
 triumph, for it is credited with the power of pre- 
 serving those under the roof tree that shelters it 
 from ill for a year. In bygone times one strong 
 man was selected to carry the clavie around the 
 town, but now the post of honour is shared among 
 several of the able-bodied. Also in days of yore 
 the ships in the harbour were visited by the 
 clavie. Indeed as late as 1875 the clavie was
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 127 
 
 carried on board one vessel about to make her 
 first voyage. Grain was showered on her deck, 
 and then with a sprinkling of fire and water she 
 was named Doorie. The town has grown greatly 
 and assumed bigger proportions than the fiery 
 clavie can encircle, so only the older part is 
 girded by the burning barrel. What the mean- 
 ing of this clavie ceremony is we can only conjec- 
 ture, from some of its rites, that its origin was in 
 the pagan past, and instituted by an extinct 
 race to protect their homes and persons by sea 
 and land. 
 
 Peculiar to another seaport towTi is a rite 
 unique as that of the clavie. At Queensferry, 
 within ten miles of Scotland's capital, every year 
 saw the upkeeping of a singular practice. It is 
 thought to commemorate the arrival of Margaret 
 Athehng and her marriage with Malcolm Can- 
 more. It was lucky for that widowed king that 
 so well-dowered, well-bom a princess was driven 
 by stress of storm to seek shelter in the Firth of 
 Forth at his very doors, for in those days the 
 " king sat in Dunfermline tower, drinking the 
 blude-red wine." He could not leave his dis- 
 traught realm to seek a helpmate. England 
 barred him to the landward, and it needed
 
 128 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 time and fine weather to journey overseas to 
 woo a fitting wife. Margaret Atheling, by one 
 chronicler, is reported to have been vivacious, 
 but we know her best as the queen muchly given 
 to good works— a most zealous Catholic, intolerant 
 of other sects. She thought the lives of her 
 monkish emissaries were endangered traversing 
 the Firth, so at the strait where her vessel had 
 first anchored, she instituted a boat to cross in, 
 and the place was named after the royal lady. 
 At the village of the Queen's ferry, the port of 
 the passage between Edinburgh and Dunferm- 
 line, yearly, in early August, on the day preced- 
 ing the fair, the inhabitants bedecked the burry 
 man. The chief most figure was a lad dressed in 
 loose garments, which were covered over with 
 burrs from the thistle or burdock (the arctomus 
 hardana). They grow near Hopetoun and 
 further up the Firth at Blackness in plenty, and 
 were collected for the occasion — " so essential 
 are they deemed to the maintenance of this 
 curious ceremony, the origin and object of which 
 are lost in antiquity and long ago foiled the 
 antiquarian research of even Sir Walter Scott. 
 The custom in question can be traced back to the 
 period of the last battle of Falkirk, for an old
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 129 
 
 woman of eighty, whose dead mother was aged 
 thirteen at the date of the battle (1746) stated 
 that the observance has been unaltered from 
 then till now (1885)." When the burry man, 
 encased as if he were in armour in his suit of 
 close-sticking burrs, grasping staves adorned 
 with flowers, marched through the town, shouts 
 were raised at every door, and the dwellers came 
 forth with greeting and money to wish him well. 
 The revenue thus accrued was divided between 
 the chief actor and the lads who helped to yearly 
 resurrect the burry man of Old Queensferry. 
 
 Conservative in its ways, sticking to dress and 
 vogues of its own, is the fishing village of New- 
 haven, almost within hail of " High Dunedin's " 
 castled rock. Villas have encroached on it and 
 nearly crowded it into the Firth, by whose margin 
 it grew many centuries ago. Some think the 
 originators of these sterling fisherfolk were of 
 Flemish extraction. Howbeit the wives, creel on 
 back and much be-petticoated (wearing some- 
 times fifteen short skirts) cry their wares, caller 
 o'o and caller herring, with clear-voiced strength 
 through Edinburgh's grey streets, and their men 
 in the blue clothes bring a smack of the salt water 
 into twentieth - century Princes Street. New-
 
 130 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 haven was a fishing hamlet in James IIL's reign, 
 and his son, hking the looks of the tribe of the 
 sea who dwelt near to his " House of Kings " at 
 Holyrood, established a rope walk there and 
 finally enlarged the place, for this gallant Stuart 
 king was the first after Bruce to foresee Scotland, 
 hemmed in by our auld enemies, the English, 
 would have to form a navy if she wished to 
 become a power and hold her own among the 
 nations. He added houses to the fishing village 
 for his workmen. Instead of being known as 
 Our Lady's Port of Grace, by which title it had 
 heretofore been named, James's dockyard was 
 dubbed The New Haven. Blackness, so much 
 further up the long-armed Firth, was the old 
 port which, till then, had done much trade; for 
 it was nearer Dunfermline and Linlithgow, where 
 the Court held its revels. Holyrood became, as 
 Stuart rapidly succeeded Stuart, a favoured 
 residence, and when James resolved to found a 
 navy, he determined to see his ships grow rib by 
 rib under his own eye. To escape from toils of 
 state, from the revels he perforce held, he with 
 his train of nobles ambled dowTi by Bonnington 
 to his chosen haven, and watched the men at 
 work and heard their hammers ring and their
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 131 
 
 saws rasp. James's interest in the building of 
 his huge ship, the Great Michael, gave an impetus 
 to the sea village he had patronised. It was 
 endowed with certain burghal rights, and in its 
 midst was built a chapel called St. Mary's. We 
 cannot picture the jacketless, blue-dressed fisher- 
 men, or their buxom, independent wives wor- 
 shipping as Romanists. However, a generation 
 later, along with the timber for Mary of Lor- 
 raine's palace on the castle hill, came Lutheran 
 literature, which landed close by Newhaven. 
 The fisherfolk, early in Reformation times, 
 became staunch Presbyterians. Yet so tena- 
 cious are the lilts of folk lore, in their children's 
 songs there remains still a trace of the Catholic 
 ways and days. The wee lasses and lads at one 
 game sing — 
 
 " My coffin shall be black, 
 Six angels at my back, 
 Two to sing and two to pray 
 And two to carry my soul away." 
 
 These fisher-bairns, playing with the cordage on 
 the shore, looking out on the devouring sea which 
 has been often in generations past their paternal 
 breadwinners' grave, end this rhyme peculiar to 
 Newhaven with the verse —
 
 132 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 " Ding (long knell, 
 The passing bell, 
 
 And good-bye to you, my darling. 
 Bury me in yon old churchyard 
 Beside my own dear mother." 
 
 The father's resting-place was doubtful, but in 
 the God's acre in the midst of the village the 
 sturdy wives, the true helpmates of the fisher- 
 men, were of a surety laid. In this enclosure, at 
 the times of burial there, Mrs. Cupples, writing 
 in 1888 and recalhng Newhaven as she had seen 
 it in her childhood, says: " In the grass-grown, 
 ancient enclosure just now referred to, when a 
 funeral took place, it was very noticeable how the 
 coffin was borne along, in crowded procession, on 
 poles held by the chief mourners; and how, as it 
 passed within the said old burying-ground, each 
 follower dropped into a plate beside the entrance 
 his contribution in silver, its purpose being to 
 defray all necessary expenses." " Dwelling," 
 says a writer in 1865, " only a few bow-shots 
 from the metropolis of an ancient kingdom, this 
 people remain isolated, apart, distinct in costume 
 and dialect, in manners and mode of thinking. 
 The customs, laws, and traditions of their fore- 
 fathers appear as if they had been stereotyped 
 for their use. To think of dogs is unlucky; of
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 133 
 
 hares terrible! Should a reference be made to 
 a ' minister ' as such, vague and undefined terror 
 fills every bronzed visage, as he should be spoken 
 of only as ' the man in the black coat ' ; and 
 Friday is an unlucky day for everything but 
 getting married, and to talk of a certain man 
 named Brounger is sure to produce consterna- 
 tion." This John Brounger, who is unmention- 
 able, was an age-enfeebled fisher of Newhaven, 
 who, when too frail to go to sea used to beg of 
 some of the able-bodied boys in blue oysters 
 from their catch. If they refused his demand he 
 cursed them and wished them on their next trip 
 ill-luck. The curse was sometimes fulfilled, so 
 to propitiate him he as a rule got his toll of 
 oysters as an established right. Hence it came 
 to pass if a fisherman said, John Brounger is in 
 your head sheets, or aboard, the crew pulled in 
 their nets and putting out their oars circled 
 round thrice to break the spell. 
 
 The strapping women of Newhaven and 
 Cockenzie have so big a share in the work of 
 earning a livehhood, when they hear of one of 
 their men marrying out of their circle they 
 exclaim contemptuously, " Her! what wad she 
 do wi' a man that canna win a man's bread? "
 
 134 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 In a community that seldom marries with the 
 outer worid, the same names are common, and 
 the fishermen are distinguished by having their 
 wives' Christian names added to their surnames, 
 such as Maggie's Flucker. An old ballad tells of 
 a Newhaven wedding, on the lucky day: — 
 
 " Weel Friday cam', the growing moon 
 
 Shone beautifully clear, 
 An' a' the boats wi' flags were drest 
 
 Frae Annfield to the pier. 
 An' Doctor Johnston, worthy man, 
 
 Had twa-three hours to spare, 
 Sae he toddled to Newhaven 
 
 An' spliced the happy pair." 
 
 Above Newhaven's red roofs there appeared, 
 till recently, a giant willow. The legend of its 
 origin has been preserved. It grew to be a 
 towering tree seen from afar on the summit of 
 the Whale Brae, a steep street where once an 
 inquisitive monster of the deep ran ashore. 
 Judging by the girth of the willow it must have 
 been long, long ago that a fisher-wife with her 
 bairn, cradled in the skull of her creel, sat one 
 spring waiting for her man's sail to heave in sight. 
 She would doubtless be busy knitting, and, like 
 her Newhaven sisters, would be an accomplished 
 weaver of wool, so she could scan the Firth for
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 135 
 
 her gudeman's craft, or turn and look on her 
 babe while her quick fingers all the while webbed 
 the wool into warm garments for her sea-rover. 
 At last she spied his boat come raking through 
 the spray, and rose to shoulder her creel and 
 meet it, when a blizzard loured down and hid 
 the Firth from sight. When the squall had 
 swept past no sail was visible. She reahsed 
 what had happened: she was a widow and her 
 bonnie bairn orphaned. She sank in a swoon 
 of despair by its osier, fishy cradle. The wild 
 winds of March were heavily laden with icy cold 
 from the north. On the track of the blast that 
 had wrecked the boat and blighted the life of the 
 fisherman's hostages to fortune, as the new-made 
 widow lay unconscious, clasping her babe, there 
 came a snowstorm and swathed the grief-srr»tten 
 woman and her little child in a white pall. The 
 bank below whose bield she had sat slipped and 
 buried them. The fishers, when the snows 
 melted, sought and found her and her babe on 
 this hill by the sea above their Port of Grace, 
 now a gardened suburb. They buried them in 
 the old churchyard — the churchyard which is now 
 a drying-green wedged among houses bordering 
 on the electric-carred roadway. It was spring-
 
 136 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 time, warm days had come, and the wicker 
 creel the baby had lain in had been freshly woven. 
 It had been cast aside, but one of the wands 
 rooted in the vernal brown earth had sprouted. 
 An old woman from the village noted it and 
 prophesied that the wand from the new-made 
 wicker cradle would grow into a great tree — a 
 landmark for the homeward-bound mariner. 
 Generation after generation of fisher-lads would 
 sport below the tree or climb its branches. 
 This strangely-planted willow would grow and 
 flourish while the trade and prosperity of the 
 village increased. But the soothsayer added it 
 would fall either when the fishing trade left New- 
 haven, or when boats, great decked boats fit to 
 face the German Ocean even in winter, set sail 
 from the harbour over which the tree kept 
 sentinel. When the willow grew hoary with 
 years, houses compassed it about, but with the 
 title deeds of the site on the brae head called 
 " Willow Bank " went instructions that the tree 
 was not to be destroyed. The better to preserve 
 it, it was girded round with an iron railing, and 
 its legend put into rhyme. In the mid- Victorian 
 era trawling began to lessen the fishermen's 
 gains. Down one wintry night came a great
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 137 
 
 arm of the watchful willow, and the men taking 
 this as an evil omen, were with difficulty re- 
 strained from attacking the trawlers to save 
 their sea trade. Luckily for law and order, for 
 generations they had at Newhaven been shep- 
 herded by good divines. Mr. David Johnston 
 of St. Ninian's, North Leith, for fifty-nine years 
 (1765-1824) had ministered to them. When 
 Leith was in a panic over the threatened inva- 
 sion by the renegade, Paul Jones, he not only 
 exhorted his people to pray for protection, but, 
 being a practical man, who believed that the Lord 
 would the better help those who tried to help 
 themselves, he urged the fishers to form them- 
 selves into a band of sea volunteers, and he was 
 the first to enlist. He may have married the 
 young iisher-wife who watched from the green 
 hill by the sea and saw her husband's boat sink; 
 at any rate Mr. Johnston knew the willow which 
 grew into a landmark for the home-steering 
 rovers. When the tree broke in twain the Rev. 
 James Fairbairn administered to the spiritual 
 welfare of the red-tiled village which Edinburgh, 
 " flinging her white arms to the sea," had en- 
 croached on. He reminded the people there was 
 a saving clause in the soothsayer's prophecy.
 
 138 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 When she saw the wand, tenacious of hfe, first 
 shoot, she said it would survive till the trade 
 left the village, or till decked boats bore with 
 their crews out of harbour. He urged his people 
 to set to work to get bigger craft. He opened 
 up the means for them to do so. He loaned 
 money when they collected enough to meet 
 him half-way. He borrowed more on his own 
 security for them. Gradually a well-equipped 
 fleet of big brown-sailed, decked smacks, headed 
 by the James Fairbairn, sailed from Newhaven, 
 and so prosperous were they they elbowed the 
 small boats out of the harbour. When the last 
 of the obsolete smacks was finally superseded, 
 the huge, prophetic willow, first watered by the 
 young widow's storm of tears, fell in the sixties 
 of last century, its mission fulfilled. 
 
 Sailor-men all along our coast share a dislike to 
 meeting when the Blue Peter is flying, or men- 
 tioning while under canvas pigs or parsons. At 
 Cockenzie a stranger's well-intentioned " Good- 
 morning " to a fisher on his way to his boat 
 would make him remain at home, as it was inter- 
 preted to be an evil omen. Superstition makes 
 the fishers clap a guard on their tongue, for 
 God's name taken in vain, specially on entering or
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 139 
 
 leaving a port, will make the crew shudder and 
 cry for cold iron to grasp to remove the ill-luck. 
 How they ever get to sea at all with pigs and cats 
 to cross their path is a wonder. A hare too is an 
 unchancy beast to meet when seaward bound. 
 In this our present century, one day in the Scots- 
 man there was the notice of a case of malicious 
 mischief. Some youths had caught a wounded 
 hare and stowed it away in a fisherman's boat, 
 so that when he set sail it would inevitably be 
 found. The witch-absorbing quality of a hare, 
 the universally - credited unluckiness befalling 
 any one if it crossed their path when setting forth 
 on a venture, is well known. This hare the lads 
 secreted on board the smack, when its limping 
 forth from its hiding-place would strike terror 
 into the crew, for who would, however prosperous 
 the weather looked, sail in a witch-ridden boat? 
 So serious were the consequences of this prank, 
 the originators were had up before the sheriff 
 for " conspiracy." Friday is avoided by the 
 fishermen for setting out on any enterprise 
 except on a matrimonial venture. Maybe the 
 idea of being dangerous to sail upon had arisen 
 as it was the day the fairies were rife, but now, 
 in times of keen competition, men have to
 
 140 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 hoist their sail on a Friday. The lottery of fish- 
 catching, its precariousness, the hazards on the 
 changeful sea, fostered a belief in the sailors of 
 omens, for which they still look before they 
 depart from the firm land. " When a fisherman 
 left his house to proceed to his boat it was con- 
 sidered unlucky to call after him, even though 
 he had forgotten something essential. If he 
 was a Shetlander he was ' particular as to meet- 
 ing a person by the way lest they should have an 
 evil eye, or some accidental malformation.' It 
 was considered a good omen to meet an imbecile 
 or a person deformed from the birth." These 
 were called by the Shetlander Gude's poor, and 
 being of God's making they were not despised. 
 After meeting one such when setting sail, if the 
 ship prospered, to God's poor was given an aamas 
 or kjoah, i.e., a dole. As in the case of John 
 Brounger of Newhaven, folk lore or superstition 
 made the fishers give of their store to the poor, 
 the needy, and those whom Providence had 
 afflicted. " It was believed any one who crossed 
 a fisherman's path when he was on his way to 
 his boat intended to scathe him. When the 
 fisher came to the spot where his way had been 
 crossed, he took out his knife and scratched the
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 141 
 
 ground in the form of a cross, uttering the word 
 ' twee-to-see-die ' and spat on the place. The 
 sign of the cross was considered an antidote 
 against the intended evil, and the spittle an 
 emphatic expression of contempt for the un- 
 chancy hag." 
 
 The short sward of the links shorn close on the 
 east coast of Scotland by the keen winds is use- 
 ful for other purposes than golf, ancient though 
 the royal game be. May is a month evidently 
 from pagan times that is sacred to many rites. 
 To the Douny Dell in the Bay of Nigg in Kin- 
 cardineshire there was a narrow way from the 
 mainland called the Brig of ae Hair, which led to 
 the green knowe which was all but an island. 
 Across this hair-breadth bridge in the merrie 
 month the young folks went to carve their names 
 in the turf. There was a well there dedicated 
 to St. Fittick, and it was evidently deemed 
 expedient to let him know whose names were 
 associated, not writ on water, but cut side by 
 side on the grass on his semi-isle. 
 
 Herrings in folk lore seem to be quick to hear, 
 and discordant notes jarred on them. The 
 church bell of St. Monance (which hung on a 
 tree) must have sounded harshly, evidently not
 
 142 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 attuned to musical ears, for when the herring 
 were around the coast it was not rung because it 
 was averred the silvery harvest of the sea were 
 frightened from the shores of Fife by its jangling 
 knell. Herring, according to the fishers, are 
 among the blessed in this world, at any rate they 
 make for peace, fleeing when they hear a war of 
 words, and withdrawing from the land where 
 quarrels are rife. Where blood is shed they do 
 not return that season. Their mode of pro- 
 cedure should make the fisherfolk beware of 
 entrance to a quarrel. The sea-ploughing Manx- 
 man adds in the Htany after the prayer for the 
 fruits of the earth a petition for the continuance 
 of the blessings of the sea, for the harvesting of 
 herring is as important to them as the garnering 
 of grain. They are a truly religious community, 
 our fisherfolk. The dangers of their calHng 
 make them realise how unstable is their tenure 
 on this life, and during it how hard it is to procure 
 a livelihood. They taste to the bitter dregs 
 the sorrows of the sea; but they scan it with 
 calm, unflinching gaze. Nature has whispered 
 the secret to the trees how to withstand the 
 gales. She has made them throw out their 
 roots in the direction from which the prevaihng
 
 FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS 143 
 
 winds assail them, grip the ground and defy the 
 assaults of the blasts. So with the fisherfolk. 
 They know their storm of fate will inevitably 
 come from the turbulent temper of the sea they 
 love, but from generation to generation they 
 have so builded up their forceful characters that 
 even women and children look with unflinching 
 bravery over the ocean, prepared to bow but not 
 to break before the felling blows of fate ; and the 
 men, however loud the winds howl as they speed 
 over the rising waves, lustily sing: — 
 
 " We put our trust in Providence 
 And trust His gracious aid." 
 
 In many parts of our shores before the men set 
 out on their quest they gather in the church for a 
 farewell service, and in some parts the minister 
 blesses the nets and prays that they may be 
 filled. 
 
 The sailors the world over believe in the sweet 
 little cherub which sits up aloft to watch over 
 Jack at sea. He has not to climb very high on 
 the fishing boats, but he has these mariners' 
 fortunes at heart. Watts, the great artist of 
 our day, realised this, for one of his most popular 
 pictures is that of the curly-headed cherub 
 fluttering over the green waves. In his plump
 
 144 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 little hands he holds the end of the brown lines. 
 His knees are bent as if asking a favour. " Good 
 luck to the fishing," he pleads. 
 
 " Weel may the boatie row 
 That wins the bairnies' bread," 
 
 sing the fisherfolk, watching the brown sails 
 scudding along. Every hope for man's good is 
 a gain, and the fairies and folk lore teach us a 
 benison falls also on well-wishers, and so the 
 song ends by asserting — 
 
 " And happy be the lot of all 
 That wish the boatie speed."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 
 
 " The rough bur thistle spreading wide 
 Among the bearded bear, 
 I turned the weeder chips aside, 
 And spared the symbol dear." 
 
 Burns. 
 
 To turn from sea to land, round the flowers and 
 trees about us a wealth of legend clings. They 
 are not only rooted in our affections as friends of 
 our youth, but our country's history is wreathed 
 in them. The Rose and the Thistle now twine 
 together, and they foster under their prickles the 
 Shamrock. The Rose's entrance into Scotland 
 was not under popular auspices. It was that 
 Hammer of the Scots, Edward I., who had a 
 golden rose for his device, perhaps derived from 
 his mother, Eleanor of Provence. The Thistle 
 resented intrusion, but had for a time to succumb 
 to the Rose. Gradually the queen of flowers 
 became the emblem of England. It grew into 
 the gage of Red and White when Henry VI. 
 
 145 K
 
 146 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 chose the one, Edward the other, and round these 
 rival roses raged civil war. The scented petals 
 of both were dyed in the life blood of English- 
 men. Badges were a necessity, for before the 
 days when uniforms distinguished warring com- 
 panies, when mail veiled friend from foe, some 
 mark had to be worn on the helmet. In old- 
 fashioned gardens a rose flourishes of blended 
 colours called York and Lancaster, a symbol of 
 the unity of the two rival factions when Henry 
 VII. married Elizabeth of York, engrafting one 
 of the chief surviving branches of the White 
 rose tree upon the rooted stem of the Red flower, 
 and out of that peace-making union sprang the 
 heraldic rose of the Tudors. The shamrock, so 
 folk lore says, became the symbol of the most 
 distressful country'' in St. Patrick's days. He 
 was preaching to the Irish and could not explain 
 to his converts the doctrine of the Trinity, so he 
 illustrated his meaning by plucking the lowly 
 trefoil at his feet, and " he assured his hearers 
 that as in the distinctly three cleft leaflets there 
 was trul}^ but one leaf, so might this great doc- 
 trine of the Three in One be in poor fashion 
 believed and accepted in humble faith." As to 
 the thistle, " poverty, ill-luck, enterprise, and
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 147 
 
 constant resolution are the fibres of the legend of 
 this country's history," says Conan Doyle, while 
 another modern writer endorses the statement, 
 " cold and poverty and storm are the nurses 
 of the qualities which make for empire." The 
 Scots' land, that " barren ridge of hills between 
 two inclement sea-ways," as Robert Louis 
 Stevenson calls his native country, elected 
 for its emblematic flower no summer-blooming, 
 sun-nursed rose, or fond as she is of doctrine did 
 she choose a plant explanatory of religion, but 
 history or tradition fixed for the Spartanly- 
 nursed north on the hardy, prickly thistle whose 
 seeds spread on the wings of the wind and which 
 roots and flourishes in apparently stony soil. 
 Cackling geese saved sleeping Rome, likewise the 
 thistle gave Scotland timely warning, and her 
 people were grateful to it for averting disaster. 
 The invading Danes had stolen on the sleeping 
 camp of opposing natives, but the latter were 
 florally guarded. The thistle undertook to act 
 as a barbed wire entanglement. Nature reared 
 it in the dark ages when modern tactics were un- 
 dreamt of. The thistle's lancet-shaped foliage 
 made the stealthily-creeping, bare-legged Danes 
 give tongue. The Scots heard their smothered
 
 148 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 curses, awoke, and armed. That is how, some 
 say, the repulsing thistle was adopted as Scot- 
 land's insignia, along with its defiant motto, " Ye 
 dauma meddle wi' me," which became in the 
 sleeker Latin tongue under the British Solomon's 
 orders, " Nemo me impune lacessit." In James 
 III.'s reign the symbol of the thistle was first 
 mentioned among the crown jewels, and on the 
 marriage of his son to Margaret Tudor, Dunbar 
 indited a prophetically-named poem " The 
 Thrissel and the Rose." This bride brought 
 about the union of the sister kingdoms, although 
 at the time of her marriage no seer foretold that 
 she brought along with her dowry the succession 
 to the crown of England. Her great grandson 
 followed the Stone of Destiny to Westminster 
 when her niece Elizabeth died. So, henceforth, 
 the armed Thistle and the gentle Rose grew side 
 by side. The wild thistle had been associated 
 before this with fair garden flowers, for it had 
 stood shoulder to shoulder with the lilies of 
 France. 
 
 "If you would France win, 
 Then with Scotland first begin," 
 
 was an olden saying, and ambassadors knew how 
 true an adage this was, for when the Rose was a
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 149 
 
 dreaded flower, encroaching on the Thistle's 
 domain, France was her ally and helped to 
 keep the Rose's roots from spreading beyond 
 her legitimate kingdom. The Stuarts, a century 
 after the Rose and Thistle had entwined together, 
 for their special badge adopted an oak leaf in 
 grateful recollection of the sheltered hiding-place 
 Charles II. had found on the tree. The leaf 
 proved to be a somewhat prophetically transient 
 emblem, lacking the tenacious staying power of 
 the thistle. The Jacobites sadly watched it, 
 like their hopes, fade and wither. From the 
 broom which Geoffrey of Anjou plucked and put 
 for cognisance in his helmet his race took their 
 name of Plantagenet. The Forbes in the north 
 have it also for their badge, for the heather and 
 the broom are closely associated together with 
 the hills of Scotland. White heather from its 
 scarcity is prized. Some folk say it is the print 
 left by the resting fairies. When the heather 
 was on fire the blaze meant in days of yore, un- 
 sheathed swords in the Highlands. It was a 
 beacon for the clans — 
 
 " To arm and make ready then, 
 Sons of the mountain glen." 
 
 In Scottish song we meet ofttimes with the
 
 150 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 birks. On the grave of true lovers whom death 
 has not divided the birk and the briar flourish 
 together, as when the actors in the tragedy of 
 Douglas are laid to rest, 
 
 " Lord William was buried in St. Marie's kirk. 
 Lady Margaret in St. Marie's quire, 
 And out of her grave there grew a birk 
 And out of the knight's a brier." 
 
 When the Black Douglas came along full of 
 vengeance, for had not his daughter's lover 
 fought and slain his seven sons — 
 
 " He pull'd up the bonny brier 
 And flang it in St. Marie's Loch." 
 
 To " pu' the birks sae green " is an ill omen. So 
 we read in one version of " The Dowie Dens of 
 Yarrow"; in others it is heather. There was a 
 wife who dwelt by Usher's Wells in ballad story — 
 
 " A wealthy wife was she, 
 She had three stout and stalwart sons 
 And sent them o'er the sea." 
 
 They returned to her from the dead and in their 
 hats were branches from a birch. 
 
 " It neither grew in syke nor ditch 
 Nor yet in any sheugh; 
 But at the gates o' Paradise, 
 That birk grew green eneuch." 
 
 Though presaging ill in dreams to see it green it
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 151 
 
 is a popular favourite, so it may well grow grace- 
 fully on its silvery stem, humbly drooping its 
 branches at Heaven's gate. 
 
 The cross of the Saviour, tradition says, was 
 made of the bourtree (elder). It is not misliked, 
 often being planted about dwelhngs, but it is 
 deemed unlucky to cut it. Before trimming it to 
 shoot out anew in spring, it was customary to 
 mention the fact to the free-growing elder in the 
 following words : — 
 
 " Bourtree, bourtree crooked. 
 Never straight and never strong, 
 Ever bush and never tree 
 Since our Lord was nailed on thee." 
 
 That rhyme exonerated the gardener from ill 
 intent. The ever-quivering aspen twists, so the 
 story sayeth, for ever restless with the shame 
 that it was the tree Judas chose. The poet sings 
 in " Gloomy winter's now awa " of " the silver 
 saughs with downy buds," the precursors of 
 spring gleaming and shining against the grey 
 skies of February. Saughs have stood for 
 sorrow ever since by the waters of Babylon the 
 harps were hung on their branches. All the 
 flowers which Goethe classes as " the beautiful 
 hieroglyphics of Nature, by which she indicates
 
 152 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 how much she loves us," are easily understood 
 by unlettered children, and round the blooms 
 they love the best they have woven garlands of 
 association which remain perennial throughout 
 life. 
 
 Daisies, the wee modest crimson-tipped flowers, 
 smiling up into little faces, have been always 
 prime favourites. They are forged into chains 
 by tiny lingers. Bairn wort it is called in 
 the borderland, for it is indeed the children's 
 playmate. " The go wans fine " are dear to 
 Scots the world over. Whether the gowan is 
 the larger, long-stemmed species, or the bright- 
 faced, simple floweret — the day's eye — smiling 
 up from out of the carpet of grass at us from 
 dawn to dusk, from earliest spring to the season's 
 end, we know not. It is a lesson to many — 
 humble, contented, with its unflinching gaiety, 
 its bright eye, always admired and popular with 
 young and old. The anemone of our April 
 woods was patronised by our good neighbours 
 the fairies. Inside its drooping bells, which 
 promptly closed around them, they took their 
 beauty sleep, clasped in its petals, when weary 
 of dancing in the glades or wind-swept moors. 
 Some old people remember in their time Easter
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 153 
 
 eggs were invariably dyed by its juice, and 
 at the spring festival of the church this blue 
 " Pasque " flower, as it was called, was worn. 
 " The pretty name ' windflower,' " says Mrs. 
 Miller Maxwell in Children's Wild Flowers, " is as 
 old as the centuries, for it comes to us echoing 
 down from that mysterious Egypt where, while 
 regarded with tenderness, it yet appeared as the 
 emblem of sickness and suffering. Later on 
 the Romans, ever borrowers of other customs, 
 wore wreaths of anemone only, which they called 
 Egyptian garlands, when entreating the favour 
 of the gods for some beloved sick one's loss. 
 Constantly we find joy and sorrow intermingled, 
 for this same anemone, if mixed with other 
 blooms, was worn at feasts and merry makings, 
 these wreaths having been hung round the statues 
 of Venus, their particular patroness. A special 
 significance was given to the first anemone of 
 the year. The flower was plucked with rever- 
 ence and rehgious ceremony, and the magic 
 words repeated, ' Anemone, I gather thee for 
 remedy against all disease,' and then the blossom 
 was put carefully away and kept in its hiding- 
 place till illness threatened." 
 
 A companion to the fairy-cradling anemone,
 
 154 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 which also, slender of stem, braves the breeze on 
 the wind-shorn uplands and decks the sea-braes 
 revelling in the briny air, is the bluebell. It 
 nods among the grasses on the auld fail dyke, 
 roots on the sandy bank by the wayside, and 
 is a welcome flower where'er it blows. It is 
 lengthily named by botanists campanula rotundi- 
 jolia, but its folk-lore name of harebell tells how 
 it tinkles warningly to the beasts who crouch in 
 their lair near to where it springs, and it sings 
 to them a soft, low melody. Scott speaks of — 
 
 " The slight Harebell that raised its head 
 Elastic from her airy tread, 
 For waving on its thin tall stem, 
 It bends before the gale which breaks 
 The wind-resisting forest trees." 
 
 The bluebell's elegant, thimble-Hke flowers the 
 fairies loved, and pranked along on pageants 
 becapped with harebell hats. The white species 
 is considered lucky when found growing wild. 
 The commoner blue was said to be worn in 
 honour of St. George, but St. George's Day is in 
 April, and the old rhyme likely enough applies to 
 the wild turquoise-coloured hyacinths which at 
 this season Tennyson says are like the heavens 
 upbreaking through the earth. 
 Ash trees were lucky to have planted around
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 155 
 
 a dwelling. They defended the householder 
 from witches, but as a green shade they are 
 unsatisfactory, being not only loth to clothe 
 themselves with leaves, but shedding them early 
 in the season again. Throughout the Highlands, 
 often the very stones of a deserted cottage or a 
 clachan of hill-side homes have been carted away 
 to mend walls, and a grassy mound and a few lonely 
 ash trees only remain to tell where there had 
 been many a poor black cottage grimy with peat 
 smoke. The old folks, the kind folks who loved 
 the place of old are overseas. The rowan, the 
 ash's relative, is nurtured too b}^ the cottage door. 
 Its red berries make necklets for the children. 
 There lingers since the Roman era a belief in red 
 as an amulet, a preventive of evil. Coral was 
 worn for this reason and holly berries prized 
 therefor. Tennant in his Tour through Scot- 
 land mentions that farmers placed boughs of the 
 mountain ash in their cow-houses on the second 
 of May to protect the beasts from malign in- 
 fluence. It was an antidote to all the wiles of 
 witchcraft. A branch of it above the dairy 
 doorway kept the milk sweet. The staff of the 
 churn was made of it so that evil spirits would 
 play no pranks with the butter. The ash was
 
 156 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 sought for for a Yule log, for the giant tree Ygg- 
 drasil which roofed the gods in Asgard was the 
 ash. 
 
 Christianity adopted the flowers and used 
 them as emblems of their saints, flowering at 
 the time of their particular festival, so many 
 flowers became herbs of grace bracketed with 
 holy names. For instance, June 24 is St. John's 
 Day, and the yellow flower {hyperictim per- 
 foratum) became associated with that feast time. 
 The common fern on St. John's Eve was pulled 
 in the height of summer when witches were 
 abroad; it was a panacea against their incanta- 
 tions. St. Peter's wort was the cowslip, and the 
 bunch of yellow blooms his keys. Southern- 
 wood, whose sweet scent savours of a country 
 church, has also the name apple-ringie. It is 
 the herb of St. Ninian, Saint Rin's wood. The 
 " apple " is from an old word, aplen, for church, 
 or house of the church, so maybe St. Ninian grew 
 the fragrant wood at his home, and it smells 
 still of the kirk and summer. Many flowers 
 with lady in their name had been adopted by 
 the Church and consecrated to the Virgin. The 
 crown imperial lily has its blooms turned down 
 and in the depth of its bell-shaped flowers are
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 157 
 
 great spots. It is said to have assumed this 
 shape for shame at not having bowed to the 
 Lord, and the drops in the depth of its cup are 
 the everlasting tears it sheds in contrition. The 
 flowers throughout the year make us enjoy the 
 friendship of the seasons. They are, as " one 
 who dwelleth by the castled Rhine " said, " stars 
 that in earth's firmament do shine." They 
 lighten and gladden our way, and no place is so 
 exposed, so stony, but they thrive and glow, in 
 some cases turning wastes into fields of cloth of 
 gold. No wonder Linnaeus fell on his knees and 
 gave thanks for the " mountain gorses ever 
 golden " so gallantly blooming the whole year 
 long. 
 
 There are delicate flowers which cannot face 
 the nipping winds, but peep out at us from nooks 
 where they are cosseted by stronger brothers, 
 or seek shelter in the woodland dells where 
 " spunkies dance." The fragrant violets' scent 
 recalls — 
 
 " The sweet South, 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
 Steahng and giving odour." 
 
 Its companion, the primrose, has become the 
 badge of the Conservatives on the supposition
 
 158 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 that it was Beaconsfield's favourite flower. For 
 on April 19 it is torn from its home on dells and 
 braes and sent up to towns in ton loads to do 
 honour to the great leader's name, yet only once 
 in his writings did D' Israeli mention the pale 
 floweret and pronounce it good for flavouring a 
 salad. Forget-me-nots of Heaven's divinest 
 blue mark the streamlet's course, where they 
 grow profusely " for happy lovers." Blue is 
 the sweetest colour that is worn, green is the 
 emblem of grief, and yellow is forsworn or false, 
 so lovers' knots and lovers' bouquets are of 
 the forget-me-not 's true blue. Every flower we 
 tread on, from the butter-coloured celandine, the 
 herald of wild spring, which appears before even 
 the " maids of February " whiten the garden 
 with their snowy bells, all through the seasons 
 till " the reed is withered from the lake and 
 no bird sings," there is on moor and bosky 
 shelter some plant abloom, some tree overhead, 
 which folk lore and association has endeared to 
 us. As well as legend and wood myth to interest 
 us, beaut}^ to please the eyes, the flowers have 
 been given powers to heal bodily ailments. 
 Nature has placed the antidote near the bane. 
 If you have not grasped the nettle hke a man of
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 159 
 
 mettle, but handled it gently and been stung for 
 your pains, the soothing dock is near. There is 
 a balm as well as beauty in every flower. Fox- 
 gloves relieve the heart-sore. The poppies wave 
 among the wheat — together grow the tall, culti- 
 vated staff of life, and, planted by Nature among 
 the straight cereal, ripples the scarlet wave of 
 sleep. As Hamilton Aide says: — 
 
 " When on some fevered bed perchance, 
 The corn will not avail, 
 Nor wine nor any potions deep, 
 To call one little hour of sleep 
 Over the eyelids pale; 
 'Tis then those useless scarlet coats 
 (Like some of human kind), 
 Prove their strong hearts can soothe distress, 
 For all they wear a gaudy dress 
 That flutters in the wind ; 
 Their sundried leaves have not in vain 
 Outlived the harvest day. 
 If life has gained one hour of peace. 
 If troubles for a moment cease 
 Under the poppies' sway." 
 
 The queen of flowers, the rose, stands for the 
 emblem of silence — suh rosa is a secret message. 
 Eros in Greek mythology presented a rose to the 
 god of silence, and from the East comes another 
 proverb, " A httle bird told me." It is a saying 
 often in our mouths to-day, and in ballad story 
 we read how Johnnie of Breadeslee, when he
 
 i6o FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 and his " gude graiehounds " lay aweary with 
 the chase and glutted with venison they were 
 shot by the seven foresters, Johnnie cried: — 
 
 " O, is there nae a bonny bird, 
 Can sing as I can say, 
 Could flee away to my mother's bower 
 And tell to fetch Jonnie away? 
 The starling flew to his mother's window stane. 
 And it whistled and it sang, 
 And aye the ower word o' the tune 
 Was ' Johnnie tarries lang.' " 
 
 The bird as a messenger is a relic of the days 
 when man and beast spoke together. Birds 
 were the swift messengers that sped from country 
 to country. They flutter about us still, for any 
 one who reads the fables of old finds from east 
 to west our little brothers of the air bulk largely 
 in fairy story. In Egypt to-day they say God 
 blesses the house on which the birds build, and 
 we look for a stroke of good fortune when the 
 swallow nests in the eaves. In Scotland the old 
 " doocot," surviving the manor house to which 
 it belonged, stands alone in a field. Superstition 
 would not allow of its being destroyed despite 
 its feathered inmates being voracious poachers 
 among the farmers' new-planted crops. It is 
 still held it forbodes ill to strip the pigeon house, 
 so the feathered poachers have a roof kept over
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS i6i 
 
 their heads though the chimney stone is cold in 
 the manor. Piebald birds or beasts, by reason 
 of their " kenspeckle " coats, are subject to notice, 
 and round them the country people built a host 
 of superstitions. The pert pyots [anglice, mag- 
 pies) foretell, according to their number, birth, 
 death, marriage, or an heir: — 
 
 " One's joy, two grief, 
 Three's a wedding, four's a birth." 
 
 Or, 
 
 " One bodes grief, two's joy, 
 Three's a marriage, four's a boy." 
 
 Sir Humphrey Davy believed in two magpies 
 promising well for anglers in spring. It is held 
 to be unlucky to see one, the reason being, so 
 Sir Humphrey sa3^s, in cold and stormy weather 
 one only leaves the nest in search of food : — 
 
 " Man on the piet horse. 
 What's good for the kink host? " 
 
 Dr. Jameson says a friend of his often was 
 asked, and the rider of the parti-coloured steed 
 used to amiably order, candy. Folks in spring 
 when they first hear or see summer's heralds 
 note how to meet them : — 
 
 " Sit to see the swallows fly, 
 Stand to hear the cuckoo cry. 
 Is the foal before its mother's eye, 
 A happy year will come and fly."
 
 i62 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 In Scotland the cuckoo is called the gowk, and 
 in some rhymes it is well not to stand but to 
 " gang and hear the gowk yell." To hunt the 
 gowk on April i, is synonymous with making 
 a fool of yourself, for seldom is it heard tiU May. 
 A cock crowing with its head into the door of a 
 house was said to be a sure token that strangers 
 would soon cross the threshold. So prevalent 
 was this belief, when thus warned, the goodwife 
 would proceed to tidy up the house and prepare, 
 like Leebie in Thrums, to receive visitors. A 
 hen that crowed brought ill luck to the owner, 
 ^and when it evinced such an unwomanly voice 
 it was promptly killed. " Whistling maids and 
 crowing hens are no canny about a house," says 
 the Scotch proverb. A bird coming into a house 
 was as a rule thought to be propitious; but if a 
 cuckoo cried from the chimney, it was held to be 
 a certain sign that death would be below that 
 roof -tree soon. One thing in regard to this 
 latter superstition, the sign would seldom be 
 heard, for the bird who has no sorrow in its song, 
 no winter in its year, despite its impudence in 
 ridding itself of the troubles of rearing its 
 children, is a shy bird seldom seen, unique 
 though its marvellous monotone is, listened for
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 163 
 
 as the advent of summer. Whatever quarter 
 you face when first in the sweet of the year you 
 hear the cuckoo, in that direction your steps will 
 be led during the coming twelve months. The 
 robin, from its sociability and tameness, as well 
 as from the prominent part it played in happing 
 up the babes in the wood with leaves, is a prime 
 favourite. Its breast, legend says, was dyed red 
 in its attempt to pluck the crown of thorns from off 
 the Saviour's brows. The robin by its mythical 
 good deeds has immunity from molestation from 
 mankind. Even nest-hunting boys revere the 
 home of the red-breast. In some cases folk lore 
 has acted as a prevention to cruelty to birds, 
 for rhymes threatening maledictions on those 
 who harm popular birds stay the hand of evil- 
 doers. 
 
 " The laverock and the Untie, 
 The robin and the wren ; 
 If ye harry their nests, 
 Ye'll never thrive again," 
 
 is one verse which Scotch boys believe in. 
 Another verse says: — 
 
 " The robin and the wren 
 Are God Almighty's cock and hen. 
 The martin and the swallow 
 Are God Almighty's bow and arrow."
 
 i64 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 Jenny Wren was always coupled with Cock 
 Robin in the popular mind, and the bustling, 
 diminutive bird was under the Church's protec- 
 tion : — 
 
 " Malisons, malisons mair than ten 
 That harry the Ladye of Heaven's hen." 
 
 Although folk lore preserved some birds, it by 
 some curious quirk has harboured the super- 
 stition that the yellow hammer (the yorling or 
 the yite in the Scots tongue) drank a drop of the 
 devil's blood on May morning. It is persistently 
 persecuted because of this belief. With its un- 
 lucky yellow plumage, its jerky, uncertain flight, 
 it is held to be of peculiar extraction : — 
 
 " Half a puddock, half a toad, 
 Half a yellow yorling. 
 Drinks a drap o' the deil's blood 
 Every May morning." 
 
 Its note has been translated into a threat of 
 retribution from its patron, the arch fiend: — 
 
 " Cis a cis a see, 
 If ye harry my nest 
 The deil will harry thee." 
 
 Alack! this menace uttered so beseechingly by 
 the bhthe httle yite (a confiding httle bird, for it 
 likes to flutter along the hedgerows as the way-
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 165 
 
 farer plods his weary way by the dusty highway) 
 does not stay the boys' hand from cruelty. As 
 if to make up from being withheld from plun- 
 dering the robin redbreast, the yite is sought 
 and, when found, its nestlings are meritoriously 
 destroyed. " When I was young," says Mr. 
 Napier, speaking of folk lore in the nineteenth 
 century, " I was present at an act of this sort, 
 and as an illustration of courage and affection 
 in the parent bird, I may relate the circumstance. 
 The nest, with four fledglings, was about a 
 quarter of a mile outside the village. It was 
 carried through the village to a quarry as far as 
 the opposite side. The parent bird followed the 
 boys, uttering a plaintive cry all the way. On 
 reaching the quarry, the nest was laid on the 
 ground, and a certain distance measured off, 
 where the boys were to stand and throw stones 
 at it. While this was being done, the parent 
 bird flew to the nest and made strenuous efforts 
 to draw it away; and when the stones were 
 thrown, it flew to a little distance, continuing 
 to cry, and only flew away when it was made the 
 mark for the stones. This was but one of many 
 such torturing scenes yorlings were doomed to 
 suffer, but they have survived, and their con-
 
 i66 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 fidence in man is unshaken, for it is as bold 
 as the robin in seeking human companionship." 
 The plover was long detested in Scotland. Its 
 waiUng cry of peesweet as it hovers overhead 
 when its uplands are invaded by dog or man 
 earned it this hatred. It is a sentinel against 
 invaders on moors and mosses. It may well cry 
 " about the graves of martyrs," for its warning 
 note brought many of them to death in covenant- 
 ing times. The dragoons watched the fluttering 
 " teuchet " (as the plover is also called in Scot- 
 land) and knew from its movements where their 
 prey hid. Many a covenanting meeting had to 
 disperse because of the hovering, bewailing 
 plover, fearful for their young, clamouring over- 
 head. There is still in some parts a traditional 
 antipathy to the descendants of these birds who 
 thus unconsciously betrayed their companions 
 who lurked among the heather. Leyden alludes 
 to this long-remembered grudge against the pees- 
 weet, and, speaking of the Presbyterian fugi- 
 tives in the wilds, says: — 
 
 " The lapwing's clamorous whoop attends their flight, 
 Pursues their steps where'er the wanderers go, 
 Till the shrill scream betrays them to the foe. 
 Poor bird! where'er the roaming swain intrudes 
 On thy bleak heaths and desert solitudes.
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 167 
 
 He curses still thy scream, thy clamorous tongue, 
 And crushes with his foot thy moulting young, 
 In stern vindictive mood." 
 
 To turn from superstitions connected with the 
 winged messengers of days of yore to quadrupeds 
 — seers hold it is ill to dream of cows. To meet 
 in the flesh, sheep on the road are good, especially 
 if they pass you on the left. To descend to 
 smaller beasts — a bee, instead of being busy 
 taxing the flowers for honey and wax, flying 
 straight towards one denotes important news 
 a-coming. All children from generation to 
 generation have cherished the same rhyme to 
 exhort the red and black spotted, tortoise-shaped 
 little insect to hasten off whenever they meet 
 it:— 
 
 " Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home. 
 Your house is afire, your children at home; 
 All but one, that lies under a stone, 
 Fly thee home, ladybird, ere it be gone." 
 
 In Germany, too, it is met with this startling 
 news. In some places in Scotland where this 
 soldier-coated beastie was made to spread its 
 wings and fly, after it folks sang: — 
 
 " Lady, Lady Landers, 
 Lady, Lady Landers, 
 Take up your coats about your head. 
 And fly away to Flanders."
 
 i68 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 We also are all brought up in the behef it is 
 daring of the fates to kill a spider, whether it be 
 the diminutive scarlet one or the longer-legged, 
 web-spinning, fly-catching species. As Lord 
 Rosebery says: " It is never wise to explore what 
 has given you pleasure and to endeavour to 
 trace a delightful fiction to the austere sources 
 of fact," and the tale of Bruce and the spider is 
 so woven into Scottish history, I do not think we 
 would believe King Robert himself if he came 
 back and told us it was all a fiction. The per- 
 sistence of the spider and the lesson it taught 
 the disheartened king, the sermon it preached 
 for all, how to endure and strive till the goal is 
 gained, is a tale every Scotch child is told, and 
 points a moral, and the spider truly adorns a 
 tale. Cobwebs the stirring housewife cannot 
 endure, but she dreads to slaughter the weaver 
 of them. A cricket singing on the hearth is 
 believed to bring riches to the household so 
 favoured. 
 
 There is a deal of the doctrine of forgiveness 
 preached in folk lore and fairy tales, despite the 
 cold blood case of the pitiless treatment of the 
 yellow hammer and a hereditary dishke to the 
 betraying plover. It was believed evil went
 
 FLOWERS AND BIRDS 169 
 
 into the lower animals, and by this means 
 they saved human beings by absorbing it. Pigs, 
 cats, and specially hares are beasts full of ill 
 omen and unlucky if they cross the path of 
 landsman or seaman setting forth on a venture. 
 Pussie appears in many rhymes and warnings. 
 There was always a suspicion hanging about a 
 cat of being an assistant at witchcraft, especially 
 if black — a colour associated with the powers of 
 evil, the devil's livery. The grimalkin of the 
 Herd of Men was a somewhat sacred animal in 
 Catholic times. There is a game called the 
 Priest's Cat played by rustics at Scottish fire- 
 sides in the gloamin'. A piece of stick was made 
 hot in the fire and handed from one to another 
 of the circle, idle by want of light, sitting around 
 the hearth. 
 
 " About wi' that, about wi' that, 
 Keep aUve the Priest's cat," 
 
 one of the party by the fireside said, and passed 
 the brand from hand to hand. When the flame 
 died the person who held the stick was liable to 
 a fine. In days of old, when the priest's cat in 
 the flesh died, there was great lamentation 
 throughout the country-side, as it was supposed 
 to turn into some supernatural being who would
 
 170 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 work mischief among the human flock, so to 
 keep the priest's hve mouse-destroyer in hfe was 
 a matter of prime importance. Still in some 
 districts people fear to let a cat die in the house, 
 however much of a domestic pet poor " pussie 
 bauldrons " may have been when well. To 
 avoid the catastrophe a bed in an outhouse was 
 made so that it might not expire under the roof 
 tree. To the cat good treatment was as a rule 
 meted out, for from the East it brought with it 
 a halo of sacredness. 
 
 With one or two exceptions, in the folk lore of 
 beast and bird we see the initial teaching of the 
 fairy tales to be kind to the lowliest of creatures, 
 for no one knows how good a turn they may be 
 able to do one. The mouse can nibble the lion's 
 bonds, the bird fly over earthly enemies' heads 
 and bring news of friends, forewamings of raids. 
 Even the plague-carrying, hated rats leave the 
 unsafe ship, telling its tale of rotten timbers to 
 those who choose to listen.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 
 
 "... Graves at my command, 
 Have waked their sleepers : oped and let them forth 
 By my so potent art. But this rough magic 
 I here abjure." 
 
 The Tempest. 
 
 Superstition, which has been accurately de- 
 fined as " beliefs and practices founded upon 
 erroneous ideas of God and Nature," clung round 
 the subtle spells, the magically-acquired powers 
 of the uncommonly wise and world - famed 
 wizards of Scotland. Of witches our land reared 
 a full harvest. Shakespeare etched for us amid 
 the storm the three weird sisters seen in lurid 
 glimpses on the blasted heath with their presages 
 and incantations. The generality of prophetic 
 hags were mostly harmless old women bowed 
 down with toil and trouble, mayhap versed in 
 cures, who were doomed to be hunted to death 
 because superstition had led kings and judges to 
 credit these feeble crones with the craft to harm 
 171
 
 172 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 with a " blink from an ill ee." But Scotland's 
 wizards, who loom forth from far-away centuries, 
 were men of thought, cultured, far in advance 
 of their time, well-dowered with property and 
 intellect. Their words have become household 
 sayings, part and parcel of our constitutional 
 credence. 
 
 It was owing to the wizard of the nineteenth 
 century, Walter Scott, that much of the old lore 
 of Scotland was in the first place hearkened to, 
 then collected and preserved. That good knight, 
 Sir Walter, the master of romance, had a pre- 
 decessor, one of his own clan, Michael Scott. 
 This scholarly necromancer, like his successor, 
 Thomas of Erceldoune, was a man of mark in 
 his own time. Their thirst for knowledge, their 
 consequent learning, made them far surpass in 
 thought and sagacity not only their contem- 
 poraries, but their era. The coming wizard, 
 Michael Scott, was born at Balwearie in Fife's 
 kingdom early in 1200. A student from his 
 youth, the Scotch laird went to Oxford and on 
 to Paris, where his skill as a mathematician 
 brought him renown, and there also this Fife 
 " lad o' parts " took his degree as a doctor of 
 divinity. Ever unsatiated in the pursuit of study.
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 173 
 
 he went from Paris to Padua and on to Toledo, 
 for Spain was then a lamp of learning to Europe. 
 There his smattering of Arabic acquired at 
 Oxford came to the fore. Reading Aristotle's 
 works in Arabic he began to translate them into 
 Latin, finishing this task in Germany. During 
 his travels he met with Dante, and the Italian 
 poet describes the Scotsman as " meagre of 
 flank," and after many wanderings the lean, 
 spare-formed Sir Michael, the scholarly ambas- 
 sador, returned to Scotland and settled down in 
 his old family home. There he lived in fame 
 and honour, pursuing his favourite studies, a 
 man who deeply impressed the imagination of 
 his countrymen. The very meagreness of flank 
 of which Dante speaks would help to foster the 
 idea that the far-travelled sage was a necro- 
 mancer. He ofttimes stood on the battlements 
 of his tower at Balwearie, silhouetted against 
 the clear sky-Hne, studying the stars, reading the 
 stories of the heavens. His neighbours, high 
 and low, viewed with awe the stately figure of 
 the venerable astrologer, believing he was com- 
 muning with the uncanny powers of the unseen 
 world, so they dubbed him wizard. He is best 
 remembered around Kirkcaldy, which is close
 
 174 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 to Balwearie, by the trick he played the devil, 
 who came to claim the recompense of long 
 service. Mr. Geddie says in his Fringes of Fife, 
 " That must have been a dull-witted member of 
 the infernal hierarchy who was sent to cope 
 with the shrewd Fife Faust, for he undertook as 
 a last labour to twine a rope out of the sand of 
 Kirkcaldy Bay. Who has waded like us through 
 the dry, loose mounds behind Linktown break- 
 water must feel sorry for the lubber fiend. He 
 laid him down wearied with his fruitless toil, and 
 Kirkcaldy, listening pitifully to his moan, ' My 
 taes are cauld,' has kept adding stone to stone 
 to its length — an allegory doubtless of the 
 triumph of human will and persistence over the 
 perverse powers of Nature. Some say the deil's 
 dead and buried in Kirkcaldy; others there are 
 who stoutly deny it to this day." 
 
 Michael Scott, in ballad story, is said to have 
 turned a monk and died in fair Melrose, where 
 he lies buried with his " mighty book." This 
 book was sought for in his tomb by his successor 
 in necromancy, Thomas Learmont of Ercel- 
 doune. A Lord Soulis was over-skilful in the 
 black art, and none could conquer or kill him, so 
 Thomas unearthed the book of Sir Michael,
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 175 
 
 followed its instructions, and the wicked Lord 
 Soulis, rolled in lead, was burned to death in a 
 cauldron, and the ninestane - rigg, where no 
 heather grows, marks the spot to-day. Lear- 
 mont of Erceldoune, commonly known as the 
 Rhymer, was, like Michael Scott, a man of wealth 
 and learning. He was a poet, and wandered 
 meditatively by Leader Haughs that looked 
 down into the valley of unrivalled Tweed. He 
 Hved, as far as documentary evidence can prove, 
 after the middle of the thirteenth century. The 
 remains of his home at Erceldoune is but a 
 remnant of masonry and stands near to the 
 village of Earlston, which won renown later for 
 the lasting qualities of the ginghams its weavers 
 wrought. Thomas Learmont, having written a 
 poetical romance, Tristram and Isetdt, be- 
 came known as the Rhymer. As he solitarily 
 paced, busy " rhyming " and thinking, there 
 grew a belief in his powers of seeing with pene- 
 trating vision what was to come to pass. There 
 was a tree on the Eildons below which he sat, 
 and from it it was believed he was borne off to 
 the fairies, where he was inconveniently endowed 
 with the tongue of truth. In Elfinland he learned 
 much of what is hidden from the ken of ordinary
 
 176 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 mortals. He might, if he came alive again now, 
 be surprised at the amount of jingling- worded 
 prophecies that are attributed to him, while the 
 poems he had wrought at are forgotten. Cer- 
 tainly his present-day fame rests on the bans or 
 blessings which he is said to have uttered. The 
 name of Haig is made perennial on Tweedside 
 by his couplet: — 
 
 " Betide, betide, whate'er betide, 
 Haig shall be Haig of Bemersyde." 
 
 We well know that prophecies bring about 
 their own fulfilment. There were none but 
 spinsters in Bemersyde last century, and it 
 seemed as if the Rhymer's ivy-mantled remnant 
 of home would have new neighbours, but the 
 truth-speaking prescient Thomas's words had 
 eternally fortified the name of Haig along with 
 the possession of Bemersyde. The ladies who 
 had near of kin on the spindle side, sought and 
 found a branch of the family who bore the name 
 of Haig and to them left the old Peel. True 
 Thomas gave voice to many malisons and deso- 
 lating prophecies. He put a " gowk whate'er 
 befa' " in a neighbouring hall to Bemersyde, 
 and in regard to his own home at Erceldoune 
 he said: —
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 177 
 
 " The hare shall kittle on the hearth stane, 
 And there never will be a Laird of Learmont again." 
 
 He made many historic forecasts, having fore- 
 seen the battles of Bannockburn, Prestonpans, 
 and Pinkie. Of the former he said : — 
 
 " The burn of Bried 
 Sail run fu' reid;" 
 
 and again of the later fights between Seton and 
 the sea : — 
 
 " Mony a man shall die that day." 
 
 According to a ballad, Thomas anticipated a 
 bloodless victory for Scotland over her bitter 
 foe. Brave Dunbar asked the seer — 
 
 " What man shall rule the isle Britain, 
 Even from the North to the Southern sea? " 
 
 He repUed : — 
 
 " A French Queen shall bear the son, 
 Shall rule all Britain from sea to sea. 
 He of the Bruce's blood shall come, 
 As near as the ninth degree. 
 
 The waters worship shall his race, 
 
 Likewise the waves of the farthest sea; 
 
 For they shall ride over the ocean wide, 
 With hempen bridles and horse of tree." 
 
 So it came to pass. Mary, Queen of Scots, who 
 was also Queen of France, bore that son, and his 
 representative was recently, from pier and shore 
 
 M
 
 178 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLx\ND 
 
 of Leith declared to be not only King of Great 
 Britain and Ireland, Emperor of India, but 
 ruler also of the British Dominions beyond the 
 seas. 
 
 Thomas the Rhymer, perhaps depressed with 
 the sad mechanic exercise of verse-making, 
 seems by his prognostications to have felt his 
 native land had much war and sorrow to wade 
 through before " our auld enemies " the English 
 became Scotsmen's peaceful fellow-subjects. He 
 mentioned on what day such a storm would 
 burst on Scotland that the effects thereof would 
 last for generations. The day dawned fair, but 
 before midnight the false step of a horse on the 
 brow of a cliff at Kinghorn changed the course 
 of our nation's history. Scotland tasted to the 
 dregs of that cup of bitterness Solomon speaks 
 of, " Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is 
 a child." The hapless Stuarts succeeded one 
 another with fated swiftness. None of the 
 gallant Jameses lived beyond the earliest chapter 
 of middle age, and each left for their successor 
 a child. Alexander the Third's granddaughter 
 and heiress was the Maid of Norroway. Sir 
 Michael Scott had been one of the ambassadors 
 chosen to sail to Norroway to bring the little
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 179 
 
 Margaret, the future Queen of Scots, to her 
 motherland. She sickened on the voyage and 
 died in Orkney. It needed no occult power to 
 foresee, as did Michael the Wizard, gazing on the 
 dead face of the eight-year-old princess, that dark 
 and troubled days were in store for Scotland. 
 Alexander III. was old, and as his descen- 
 dants were gone before him when his horse 
 fatally stumbled and left his realm kingless, the 
 storm burst on unruled Scotland with full fury. 
 
 Prophecies are usually couched in ambiguous 
 language, such as Thomas saying that " the 
 teeth of the sheep shall lay the plough on the 
 shelf." Sure enough they did, and another 
 four-footed people, the deer, whom the chiefs 
 have fostered for sake of sport and money have 
 ousted the befieeced flocks from the hills. Folk 
 lore has it that Thomas the Rhymer never died 
 but sleeps in the Eildons, and that the hour will 
 bring forth the man. Since his disappearance 
 from the earth he has steadily collected horses 
 and men. He and they will awake from slumber 
 and come forth to aid his country in its direst 
 need, when foes invade our shores. Arthurian 
 legends cling to the grassy sides of the triple- 
 headed Eildons. Merlin is said to rest there too.
 
 i8o FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 There is a spot called Merlin's grave beside a 
 thorn by the Pawsail close to the kirkyard of 
 Drumelzier. This Merlin, Sir Thomas Dick 
 Lauder suggests, might be some local sooth- 
 sayer skilled in magic, to whom the name of the 
 Welsh wizard was given. A well-known prog- 
 nostication attributed to True Thomas says: — 
 
 " When Tweed and Pawsail meet at Merlin's grave, 
 Scotland and England shall one Monarch have." 
 
 An unprecedented flood took place on the day 
 James VL was crowned at Westminster, and 
 the Tweed overflowed and met the smaller stream 
 sure enough by Merlin's grave. Many of 
 Thomas's prophecies have yet to be realised ; one 
 of a bloody battle on an " after day " when a 
 three-thumbed wight shall hold three kings' 
 horses, and where for three days, three streamlets 
 shall run red with the blood from those who fall 
 therein. Near by Threeburn Grange in Ber- 
 wickshire a child was born at Coldingham with 
 three thumbs, and as Napoleon then shadowed 
 the land with fear of invasion, it was beheved 
 the holder of the kings' horses had come, and the 
 " bloody fray " would follow. 
 There was a wizard who dwelt at Yester,
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS i8i 
 
 Adam de Gifford, about the thirteenth century. 
 A gift of his made by his magic unperishable, 
 still remains to testify to his powers. A neigh- 
 bouring youth, a Broun of Coalstoun, courted 
 his daughter. The lover sought his future 
 father-in-law to inquire into his bride's dower. 
 He found the old gentleman ruminating in his 
 garden. The " braw wooer," hoping doubtless 
 for a farm which lay temptingly near to his own 
 property, broached the subject. Adam Gifford 
 paused in his meditative stroll and pulled a pear. 
 " This," he said, " is my daughter's dower. As 
 long as it is preserved your lands, which will go 
 to her descendants, will remain intact." Young 
 Coalstoun had to be content with his economi- 
 cally-dowered lass. Centuries later an inquisi- 
 tive bride of the Brouns tried to bite a piece out 
 of the patriarchal pear to see how it tasted. She 
 left marks of her teeth on the fruity heirloom, 
 and soon after a bit of land had to be sold, so 
 the magician's now mummified dower was placed 
 for safe keeping in the bank, and there this 
 Methuselah among fruits remains to-day. These 
 wizards mentioned were all men of property and 
 influence whose scholarship and wisdom made 
 them all the more notable in the dark ages of
 
 1 82 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 ignorance, so their untutored neighbours sur- 
 rounded them with a halo of mystery. 
 
 Poorer-born warlocks, seers and witches fared 
 badly at the hands of a populace fearful of magic. 
 The gipsies, the reputed wandering tribe from 
 Egypt, have been famed since they came from 
 out the East for their occult powers. Their 
 women could give warning of coming evil or call 
 down malisons at will. Scott drew his Meg 
 Merrilies from authentic tales. Gipsies were 
 ever useful in fact and fiction for their super- 
 natural knowledge, their craftiness, their be- 
 guilements. No feat of daring was too hard for 
 them to attempt and to accomplish. Gipsies 
 had an inherited art of glamour. The Countess 
 of Cassilis, who was a daughter of the Earl of 
 Haddington, when her gipsy lover Faa and his 
 comrades came to the gates of the earl's castle 
 by the Doon and sang " sae sweetly," came 
 tripping down the stairs, and they " cuist the 
 glaumourie owre her." So she left her three 
 bairns and her earl and went off with Johnny 
 Faa, but he and his band were caught and 
 " fifteen well-faured men " hung on the dule 
 tree at the castle door. The " one fair wanton 
 lady " whom they had lured forth was im-
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 183 
 
 prisoned till the end of her wrecked life in May- 
 bole, whose walls during her long confinement, 
 when Charles I. was king, she covered with 
 tapestry. It was mostly the gipsy women with 
 their supposed knowledge of palmistry that 
 brought them within the reach of law and under 
 the ban of witchcraft. There was a very wonder- 
 ful warlock, an uneducated man gifted with 
 second sight whose prophecies north of Tay rival 
 True Thomas's. He is known as the Brahan 
 Seer. This Kenneth Mackenzie divined what 
 was to be in a pebble his mother bequeathed to 
 him, having received it from a dead Norse 
 princess who was buried in Scotland. When 
 the graves gave up their dead for an hour at 
 midnight she had far to journey overseas to 
 revisit her native land. Mrs. Mackenzie, watch- 
 ing her flocks one night, saw the emptied kirk- 
 yard refill, but the one who came in the track of 
 the Norland wind was delayed, and being a 
 brave woman, Kenneth's mother laid the staff, 
 which she had been herding the cattle with, 
 across the grave. The spirit could not enter, 
 and desired the woman to remove the hindering 
 stick, promising her as a reward a stone for 
 her son Kenneth in which the future would be
 
 i84 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 reflected. She told his mother, how she, a 
 daughter of the King of Norway, was drowned 
 while bathing, and that her body had drifted to 
 Scottish shores and was there buried. It was 
 thus, so tradition avers, that Kenneth Mackenzie, 
 who lived in the seventeenth century, became 
 possessed of the stone which gave him the power 
 of divination. He was only a day labourer, but 
 he was sought after by the gentry throughout 
 the length and breadth of the land, and no 
 special assembly was complete unless the shrewd- 
 witted Kenneth was there. He foresaw ships, 
 full-rigged, sailing eastward and westward 
 through the land, or as another Gaelic version 
 of the coming Caledonian Canal puts it, " The 
 day will come when English mares with hempen 
 bridles shall be led round the back of Tomna- 
 hurich." A gentleman who was writing down 
 the seer's prophecies, when he gave tongue to 
 this, flung them all in the fire, as he deemed this 
 was too absurd. " The day will come when the 
 hills of Ross will be strewed with ribbons," 
 Kenneth had told him, and any one of us who 
 has climbed an eminence in the Highlands and 
 looked down sees below the Brahan Seer's 
 " ribbons," the white roads among the heather.
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 185 
 
 He also foretold that a white house would be on 
 every hillock, and schools and shooting lodges 
 verify this statement. " Big sheep," vowed 
 Mackenzie, " will overrun the country until they 
 strike the Northern Sea," and whether it is deer 
 or improved flocks he meant we wot not, for we 
 have driven the clansman from his " lone shiel- 
 ing on the misty isle " to seek new homes in the 
 British Dominions over the ocean. The humble 
 seer, Kenneth, was doomed to die a cruel death. 
 He was at a gathering at Brahan Castle, and in- 
 furiated by his keen insight in regard to those 
 present Lady Seaforth ordered him to be seized. 
 He fled, and before his capture he prophesied ill 
 of the Seaforths and then flung his magic pebble 
 into a cow's footprint, where it disappeared. 
 He was hurried off there and then and burned 
 in a tar barrel, and his curses came home to roost. 
 Dumb and deaf people seemed to be dowered 
 with a knowledge of impending events. Many 
 tales are told up to recent times how some sense- 
 deprived " warlock " saw the shroud creeping 
 up on one present or saw three women standing 
 beside a man and enlightened him as to the 
 names of his future spouses. These foreseers, 
 like Kenneth Mackenzie, even as they are now,
 
 i86 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 were sought for by those who are anxiously in- 
 quisitive to Hft the veil from what is to come. 
 Dante, in his Vision of Hell, Purgatory and 
 Paradise represents those who on earth pretended 
 to foretell the future going along weeping with 
 their faces turned backwards for evermore as a 
 punishment for their presumption in looking 
 ahead. Among those so condemned was the 
 " lean of flank " Michael Scott of Balwearie. 
 But as a rule, those who divined what was to 
 come to pass seldom fell under the ban of the 
 law for their uncanny presages. But those who 
 were suspected of witchcraft had a grim time of 
 it, especially under the rule of James VL Help- 
 less old crones, with that economical housemate, 
 a cat (for its foraging propensities made it in- 
 dependent of bite and sup) for their only com- 
 panion, were credited with being in league with 
 the powers of darkness. If the aged bodies' 
 knowledge of the world, gained through their 
 long pilgrimage therein, led them to hint that 
 they knew aught beyond ordinary ken, woe 
 betide the soothsayers. Maybe, an old wife 
 would remark a sick child would not recover, a 
 marriage turn out ill, and their words were 
 remembered. A man is either a fool or a physi-
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 187 
 
 cian at forty, the proverb says, and lifelong 
 experience had taught many an ancient, solitary 
 dame how to cure sickness by concocting medi- 
 cines from the herbs around. These " simples " 
 were as a rule innocuous or healing, but when 
 they failed and the patient grew worse the pre- 
 scribing sybil paid a deadly debt. Two witches, 
 in 1576, who suffered for their skill in doctoring, 
 said they were instructed by spirits what to 
 order. Bessie Dunlop lived in Dairy, Ayrshire, 
 in the sixteenth century. She said the spirit of 
 a Thomas Reid, who had tried to lure her to 
 Elfinland, told her of herbal medicines, with 
 which she healed many. The same was the case 
 with Alison Pearson, who lived about the same 
 period, and whose cousin was truly her spiritual 
 adviser, one William Sympson. These two 
 supernaturally-inspired doctoring women do not 
 seem to have killed the twelve which an able 
 medical man to-day says every student who 
 takes an M.D. degree on an average does extin- 
 guish in his novitiate, either by stupidity or over- 
 zeal. We speak of the credulousness and ignor- 
 ance of the Middle Ages, but there are more 
 things in earth and heaven than are dreamt of in 
 our philosophy, and now in the twentieth centuiy
 
 i88 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 spiritualists, as they are now called, prescribe 
 for ailments in that hub of the universe, London. 
 They say they are directed by doctors who have 
 gone hence but thirst to continue their heahng 
 art in this sphere. Their agent practises safely 
 now in our Edwardian era, but gruesomely pain- 
 ful deaths befell the women who attempted to 
 do so in Elizabeth's or James's time. An infirm 
 crone, bent with age, hobbling along to her 
 solitary hearth, mumbling to herself as she, staff 
 in hand, stopped to peer at some passer-by, was 
 noted. It was seen how her cat [probably some 
 forlorn waif) greeted her return home. An in- 
 quisitive wayfarer looking into her cottage would 
 spy her crouching over her fire talking to the 
 incriminating black grimalkin. Some impudent 
 teasing lads and lasses who had followed her she 
 would turn on some day, exasperated by their 
 stones and jibes. If one of these fell ill, the poor 
 old body was seized and sentenced. According 
 to popular credence cats and hares and witches 
 consorted together. There was never a lack of 
 people to swear they saw the woman change into 
 a hare which scudded across a field. Witnesses 
 against them were often children, seemingly 
 devil possessed.
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 189 
 
 In Victoria's reign, to show how belief in 
 witches still dwelt in Scotland (and this is but 
 one authentic illustration among many), a woman 
 was out early one morning. So was a farmer. 
 He fired at what he thought was a hare which 
 was making its way over a field and lamed it. 
 Pursuing it, it disappeared, and he found the 
 woman busy on the other side of the hedge 
 bandaging her leg. Being entreated he promised 
 not to tell, and she went ever after on a crutch, 
 and he firmly believed he had shot her. This 
 same woman cursed a boy who called her names. 
 He died within the year, and she should have 
 rejoiced she did not Hve in a century earher, for 
 her sentence would have assuredly been convicta 
 et combusta. To catch a witch, to keep her from 
 escaping from her own room or prevent her fly- 
 ing down some one else's chimney, divots of grass 
 full of nails were placed on the chimney-tops, 
 and this was done very recently. In past times 
 the persecution, the torture, and the cruel death 
 of those suspected of witchcraft forms a sorry 
 and ghastly record. In the centre of Edinburgh, 
 where now the trains speed through the gardened 
 valley, the witches were tried and drowned in a 
 pool in the then Nor' Loch. An old tree on the
 
 igo FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 water edge was lately cut down, and in its wooden 
 heart were found nails and an iron ring to which 
 hags awaiting trial had been fastened. If they 
 floated (and their hooped petticoats buoyed them 
 up) they were decreed to be guilty, taken out, 
 tortured to confess, then burned. If they sank 
 they were thought to be innocent. Political 
 vengeance, private spite, made many be arrested 
 for dabbling with the forbidden craft. The Earl 
 of Mar, brother of James III., was suspected of 
 consulting " witches and sorcerers " so as to leam 
 how to compass the king's end. He bled to 
 death for this supposed conspiracy, and a dozen 
 witches and some four warlocks were burnt at 
 the same time to give a colour to the earl's guilt. 
 In 1537 a Lady Glamis became a victim under a 
 similar charge, and ladies of high degree as well 
 as their poorer sisters were brought to trial for 
 practising witchcraft. A Lady Foulis {nee 
 Katherine Ross of Balnagowan) had a step- 
 mother's quarrel with one of her husband's, 
 Baron Foulis, children, Robert. She was. re- 
 ported to have brewed poison for him, and Sir 
 Walter Scott says Lady Foulis in 1580 was 
 suspected of making use of " the artillery of Elf- 
 land in order to destroy her stepson and sister-
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 191 
 
 in-law." She is said to have fired fairy arrows 
 at the pictures of her intended victims. 
 
 We need not smugly pride ourselves that we live 
 in a less barbaric age. In John Bull's other island, 
 not long ago, some Irish were sure a woman near 
 them was a witch, and she was done to death. 
 Space does not allow of us to enter into details of 
 the lengthy death-roll of the witches. Through- 
 out the country and in the towns the dread 
 sentence, convicta et combusta, was delivered, 
 and the populace who stood in fear of a blink 
 from an evil eye stood by and gloated as they 
 burned. 
 
 There were various ways of evading the curses 
 of witches and warlocks — principally, to score the 
 utterer " aboon the breath." My father, who 
 was a leading light in his profession, a man in 
 advance of his time in prophesying scientific 
 discoveries which are yet to be, and aiding 
 advance by tongue and pen, used to tell how 
 his grandfather, eighteen miles from Edinburgh, 
 angrily ordered a beggar away from his door. 
 The beggar cursed before he departed. Alex- 
 ander Simpson bethought it was bad for his 
 homestead and crops to be under a malediction, 
 and pursued the tramp and branded him on the
 
 192 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 forehead to annul the ban. Another method by 
 which those who were sorcerers harmed their 
 enemies was by making images hke unto the 
 persons they dishked. They tortured these 
 waxen figures by piercing them with pins till 
 their human representatives dwined and died. 
 This superstition is referred to by Allan Ramsay 
 in his Gentle Shepherd. Of Mausie, he says: — 
 
 " Pictures oft she makes, 
 Of folks she hates, and gaur expire 
 Wi' slow and racking pain before the fire. 
 Stuck fu' o' preens, the devilish picture melt. 
 The pain by folk they represent is felt." 
 
 Some pigmy, waxen, coffined effigies were found 
 in a niche in the stony crown of the Sahsbury 
 Crags facing Edinburgh's spires and gables. Some 
 sorcerer had modelled these images long ago and 
 wished the people they represented to be im- 
 mured. The hair of the dog that bit you has 
 curative powers, and it was believed if you could 
 obtain a piece of dress from the person who ill- 
 wished you, it would annul the evil spell. Mr. 
 Napier, in his book of folk lore, speaks of a bride, 
 last century, on whom the evil eye was cast. 
 The woman suspected of malignant intent was 
 asked to the house, and while her attention was 
 directed elsewhere, a piece of her dress was cut
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 193 
 
 off and burned, and the bride recovered. The 
 antidote to bewitchment grows at our feet in the 
 shape of the four-leaved clover. That is the 
 reason we see people searching on the green 
 carpet of grass. But in a less witch-ridden age 
 the many-leaved clover is just thought lucky, no 
 longer a protection from sorcery. For the bene- 
 fit of those who, for good fortune's sake, hunt for 
 this herb of grace, it might be well to quote an 
 American's view: — 
 
 " While one will search the season over 
 To find the magic four-leaved clover. 
 Another, with not half the trouble, 
 Will plant a crop to bear him double." 
 
 Other modes to avoid the craft of witches 
 lingers with us. We bang a hole in the empty 
 egg shell, so it will not make into a boat for an 
 evil spirit to sail in. We also put a poker up 
 against the bars of a grate when a fire refuses to 
 burn. The poker, so placed, with the bar of the 
 grate, forms the all-protective cross. Witches 
 eschewed church. As servants of the arch fiend 
 the emblem of Christianity was gall to them, as 
 it rendered their incantations useless. Fashion- 
 able soothsayers of to-day, along with gipsy 
 fortune-tellers, are at times prosecuted, for, under
 
 194 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 the old statutes, presaging the future by crystal- 
 gazing, palmistry, or tea leaves in a cup is 
 forbidden. Fines are paid by the fashionable 
 charlatan or imprisonment endured by the poorer 
 gipsy clairvoyant, and the richer resume work 
 under new mystic-sounding names. The High- 
 landers are still credited with a double vision of 
 things that are yet to be and what is yet to befall. 
 People to-day, as of yore, are as inquisitively 
 eager to know what these gifted with this second 
 sight may behold. Looking back from our en- 
 lightened heights we, knowing of telepathy, 
 surmise that men like Sir Michael Scott and 
 Thomas the Rhymer were shrewd observers, 
 readers of human documents as well as students 
 of Nature and her laws. Like Duke Prospero in 
 The Tempest they had by knowledge acquired a 
 potent art which reached forward to the things 
 which were to come and which in the eyes of their 
 contemporaries endowed them with magic power. 
 What in their day would have been thought of a 
 Marconi who could communicate with the ships 
 on the ocean and send messages from land to 
 land! Milton speaks of — 
 
 " The airy tongues that syllable men's names 
 On shores, in desert sands, and wildernesses."
 
 WITCHES AND WIZARDS 195 
 
 And so it has come to pass. Horseless carriages 
 seemed to be a ridiculous idea, and now through 
 the Highlands, along the " ribbons " the poor 
 Brahan Seer saw, they speed and boom. It is 
 well for those who have made the forces of Nature 
 to work for man's good, or who by study and the 
 skill thereby obtained can use their knowledge 
 to help scientific research, that they did not live 
 and show their learning in the days of the first 
 king who ruled all Britain from sea to sea. For 
 all his boasted wisdom, his reign is marked by the 
 bloodstains left on its annals by the war he waged 
 against warlocks and witches.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 
 
 ' Funerals and weddings and all such things as make 
 life a delightful pageant when people go through it in 
 large groups, dancing or mourning, but always holding 
 hard by each others' hands." — Miss Lilly Dougall. 
 
 In this restless age when people travel to and 
 fro over the earth, when excursion tickets bridge 
 distance even for the poor among us, we forget 
 that in olden times a funeral, a marriage, or a 
 christening was an occasion for a people long 
 parted assembhng together. The rarity of these 
 meetings helped in a great measure to the heredi- 
 tary ceremonies appertaining to these gatherings 
 being stringently adhered to. The reformation 
 which put an end to much merry-making as 
 popish could not altogether eradicate dancing 
 and music from the more jovial of these meet- 
 ings. Stern, however, were the decrees of its 
 ministers. In some Scottish reminiscences 
 lately published, the author speaks of a man very 
 196
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 197 
 
 recently dead, who was master of a violin and 
 describes how attached he was to its dulcet notes. 
 The minister pointed to him from the pulpit and 
 said: "Thou art there behind the door, thou 
 miserable man with the grey hair, playing thine 
 old fiddle with the cold hand without and the 
 devil's fire within." His family implored him 
 to burn this viohn made by a pupil of Stradi- 
 varius. The instrument with the sweet tone was 
 sold for ten shillings, and the aged, bereft musi- 
 cian told how it grieved him so sorely to part 
 with it — told how in his youth he had given the 
 best cow in the byre for the coveted fiddle — how 
 it spoke to him and how he loved it. He never 
 had heart for aught again after he thus was 
 forced to sell his friend. A minister in a neigh- 
 bouring isle related how, on religious grounds, he 
 had broken the only fiddle in his parish. 
 
 The people, despite preachers' admonitions, 
 would not give up melody and dancing — indeed, 
 they held to the ways of their fathers the more 
 rigidly when conviviaUty was part of it, and not 
 all the stern denunciations of the Reformation 
 made the music mute. Rustic merry-makings 
 could not be suppressed. There was Candlemas 
 in the spring, Baal's fire in midsummer, much
 
 igS FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 music and dancing at the kirnings held when the 
 harvest was under thatch and rope, and on the 
 heels of the rejoicings over garnering summer's 
 green into sheaves, came the eerie, cheery festival 
 of Hallowe'en. These feasts brought the people 
 together, and they exchanged the gossip of their 
 parishes. News travelled surely, if slowly, in 
 the times before newspapers. However remote 
 or isolated a neighbourhood might be, informa- 
 tion siltered there by means of those who paid 
 house-to-house visitations in a leisurely age. 
 The beggars portioned themselves out districts 
 sure of a dole from hut or hall. These mendi- 
 cants were not drawn from the unemployable 
 class, who, able-bodied and idle, are a menace on 
 the by-roads, and to the unprotected cottager 
 to-day. It was a simpler, kindlier age than this, 
 and the vagrants of yore were the maimed or 
 those enfeebled by years. They were wellnigh 
 sure of a " piece " from every door at which they 
 knocked. Like the monks of Buddha in Burmah, 
 with their wallet in place of the yellow-robed 
 priests' bowl, they afforded every one a chance 
 to give or share with the needy and be accord- 
 ingly blessed for their liberaUty. There is no 
 household in Burmah but can spare some rice —
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 199 
 
 no Scottish cottage but could contribute a bit of 
 oaten cake, for, says Henry Hall Fielding, who 
 has laid bare The Soul of a People, " think not a 
 great gift is more acceptable than a little one. 
 You must judge by the giver's heart." Beside 
 the beggars who circulated news from cottage 
 and castle, there were also the scalds and bards 
 who brought tidings as well as music with them. 
 These musical strollers earned their food and a 
 seat by the inglenook with the song history they 
 told. They had for generations kept a chronicle 
 of the events that affected our ancestors and 
 our country. They told of deeds of war, of 
 love, of revenge. " Inconsequent, fascinating, 
 high-handed, impossible, picturesque, these old 
 ballads have come to us from the childhood of 
 the world and still speak to the child heart in us 
 all," writes an American authoress, prefacing 
 some of these versified annals of this island's 
 story. The minstrel infirm and old, or the boy 
 harper, doled out anecdotes of romance and 
 reality which stirred the countryside as well as 
 their repertoire of ballad chronicles. Towns 
 could not easily as now be reached for shopping, 
 so also tradesfolk in search of custom travelled. 
 There was a tailor who. however manv ward-
 
 200 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 robes he had to fashion or mend, had at com- 
 mand a new story to narrate every day. This 
 limber-lipped man was always in request from 
 the art he had cultivated of embroidering a plain 
 tale. These stories told by the itinerant work- 
 men beguiled the hours of toil, and the country 
 customers flocked to help and hearken. Not 
 only was it the tailors and weavers who fashioned 
 and made up the homespun woollen garments 
 who sought work, or bootmakers, but craftsmen, 
 whose skilful hands could shape brooches and 
 rings and other decorations, went around seeking 
 occupation. When a wedding was spoken of, or 
 a christening, and gifts were wanted, they ap- 
 peared. In Perthshire there was a special family 
 whose well-designed brooches, inlaid by some 
 peculiar method, cannot be reproduced by the 
 artificers of to-day with all their skill and finished 
 tools. The cunning of the art is lost except by 
 one family in the North of Russia, which suggests 
 that the Scotsmen who executed this work had 
 learned it, or inherited the knowledge from some 
 common foreign ancestry. Scotland had from 
 primordial times been famed for its knack of 
 inlaying and shaping of metals into ornaments. 
 The bracelets the Picts left in their " brochs "
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 201 
 
 are specimens of this to testify to their skill, and 
 the Romans learned from these savage inhabi- 
 tants of our northland some of their methods of 
 work. In the Middle Ages we can imagine what 
 tales these travelling workmen would carry from 
 one merry-making to another — tales of the gifts 
 given to bride or babe. Then again the tailors 
 and weavers would describe the funeral clothes 
 they fashioned, and perhaps hint that for all the 
 symbols of woe my lady ordered she would be 
 taking, when a bare year had fled, another mate, 
 and the jewellers would be sent for to fashion 
 brooches for her delight. Every vague rumour 
 of coming festivity, every detail of the glad or 
 sad gathering was conned over in these news- 
 paperless days, so beggars and bards were sure 
 of a welcome, and in exchange for food and fire- 
 light retailed hearsay. 
 
 Funerals and feasts seem to us a curious com- 
 bination, especially when we have shorn weddings 
 of their " breakfast," and in lieu have but " a 
 cake and wine " banquet, but in the era before 
 railways, when roads were so rough and wheeled 
 carriages were few, when people gathered to- 
 gether there was much brewing and baking 
 for the entertainment of friends, whether the
 
 202 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 occasion of meeting was for funeral or marriage. 
 " Whaur hae ye been, ye drunken auld deevil." a 
 Scotsman was asked by his better half, and he 
 replied: " I'm no sure if it was a wedding or a 
 burial, but it was a right fine affair." The 
 comings and the goings from this world were 
 alike marked by feasting and drinking. To 
 ward off the machinations of the fairies, when a 
 babe was born the mother was never left alone 
 till able to guard her child herself. It was 
 thought well that the first time the child left the 
 room it should go upstairs. Where no stairs 
 were available the nurse ascended a ladder or a 
 chair. On a baby's initial walk there were cakes 
 carried and given from the infant to the first 
 person encountered. Augury was drawn as to 
 the infant's future by the manner in which the 
 bairn's bread offering was received, and it was 
 well for the child when its " first foot " turned 
 and walked a few steps back with the nursling 
 or blessed the babe. In the folk tales we read 
 how at christenings fairies bad and good came to 
 ban or endow the child. In the Borders, where 
 the coming man had to live by raiding and fight- 
 ing, his right hand was exempt from baptism, so, 
 unhampered by Christian forbearance, he might.
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 203 ' 
 
 with unhallowed ferocity when he wished, re- 
 venge his losses. His cradle lullaby was a song, 
 the accompaniment to which suggested the ring 
 of foraying hoofs, for the mother in the Border- 
 land, while she rocked her child with his un- 
 baptised hand, crooned of his future. " If ye 
 live ye'll steal a naggie," she assured him as she 
 called down blessing on his downy pate. She 
 pictured to him how he would — 
 
 " Ride the country through and through, 
 And bring hame mony a Carlisle coo; 
 Through the Lowdens o'er the border, 
 Weel, my baby, may ye further, 
 Harry the loons of the low countree, 
 Syne to the border hame to me." 
 
 Thus the mosstrooper's boy grew up imbued 
 with the idea that his life's work vvas to acquire 
 neighbouring cattle and to fight his way home 
 from bloody forays. When in course of time he 
 settled down with a wife, hostages to fortune 
 only made him all the more anxious to add to 
 his store, so when the Michaelmas moon shone 
 mellow, with his eye upon " hf table kine " — 
 
 " He buckled the bridle on sorrel or grey. 
 Set foot to the stirrup, and up and away." 
 
 He heartened his comrades with the assurance
 
 204 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 that " every fat steer on the haughs of the Rule 
 shall be dower for a daughter you've left on the 
 Tweed." 
 
 The unbaptised hand spared not any antagon- 
 istic man, or left a marketable beast in a byre on 
 the wrong side of the marches. If by some mis- 
 chance he died in his bed, great were the prepara- 
 tions made to prepare the funeral-baked meats, 
 whether the rover lived in peel, tower, or farm. 
 Mourning used, indeed, to use a Scotticism, be 
 veritably " the Blacks." The Highlander wore 
 his insignia of sorrow on his sleeve, as he could 
 not alter his uniform of tartan. In the lowlands, 
 when there was " dule and woe on the Border," 
 not only did the rich and well-to-do families 
 when bereft drape themselves in the garb of 
 sorrow, but the very hangings of the furniture 
 were also swathed in jetty darkness. In inven- 
 tories of a few centuries ago " ane blake bed " 
 was a certain part of the furnishings of a well-to- 
 do house, and its coverlet was also of pitchy hue. 
 In some memoirs recently published, it was 
 mentioned that a young widow — a lass still in 
 her teens — had been so indecorous as to com- 
 plain of the sombre coverlet and hangings of the 
 four-poster in her room, and she shocked her late
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 
 
 20 = 
 
 husband's relatives when she begged she might 
 at least have a white counterpane. 
 
 If a man died not by the will of God but by 
 the hand of man, it was firmly believed that the 
 corpse bled if touched by the person who had 
 done the deed. When murder was suspected, 
 each neighbour as they came to the burial put 
 his finger on the dead man, and so strongly was 
 this test beheved in that there are many cases 
 recorded in which people have been summoned 
 to stand their trial because of the dead thus 
 bearing witness, and the fact was used as evidence 
 against them. 
 
 We all know the Heart of Midlothian and its 
 heroine, Efhe Deans. Her prototype was a west 
 country lass, Isobel Walker. A flood on the 
 river Cluden three days before Hallowe'en left on 
 a sandbank the body of a dead child. Supposi- 
 tions pointed to the fact that this gruesome piece 
 of jetsom was the baby of the unfortunate Isobel. 
 It was laid on her knee to see if it would reveal 
 the tale of its brief hfe and bleed at her touch. 
 It is a painfully grim picture this of the young, 
 guilty girl and the unwelcome child she had 
 strangled and thrown into the river, face to face 
 once more.
 
 2o6 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 With the Protestant era the Catholic manner 
 of watching the corpse till burial did not become, 
 as a rule, obsolete. Neighbours were always 
 ready to sit by the dead when relatives were 
 weary, and this usage resulted in the fostering 
 of many superstitions and ghostly stories. All 
 domestic animals were put out of the house on a 
 death occurring, for it was believed if a dog or 
 cat leapt over the corpse it might absorb his 
 spirit and become an uncanny companion to the 
 living, a drawback to the ascension of the soul of 
 the dead. The mirror in the room was covered, 
 the clock stopped and a plate of salt laid on the 
 breast, ostensibly to prevent the body swelling, 
 but oftener as a preventive against the devil 
 disturbing the unburied. In some districts sin- 
 eaters came and ate the plate of salt and of bread 
 placed on the corpse, and so relieved the dead of 
 sins which were hovering round, retarding the 
 spirit from reaching the higher plane. Omens 
 were drawn as to coming deaths from the manner 
 the funeral party left the house, whether they 
 straggled or walked all too quickly. It was long 
 beheved the spirit of the last person buried in a 
 churchyard had to wait there to guard against 
 unchristened babes or suicides being laid in the
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS. AND FUNERALS 207 
 
 " God's acre." Friends, to save their dead being 
 the one thus ordained to watch the consecrated 
 precincts, when there were to be two funerals on 
 one day, made an unseemly rush to be first, 
 leaving no time for the party to add stones to the 
 cairns where the coffin rested on its last journey. 
 A bride's first duty when she settled in her new 
 home was to spin her own and her gudeman's 
 grave-clothes — a fashion which brought vividly 
 before her the fact that amid diversions and 
 rejoicings it was well to be prepared for the 
 inevitable end. 
 
 Of course there were a heap of traditionary 
 usages lingering and surrounding a wedding. 
 The bride studied the weather, anxious for fair 
 skies and sunshine, for they were held to be 
 tokens of happiness. She feared when cooking 
 her last meal in her old home lest a clot of soot 
 should fall, for that foretold ill, and cautiously 
 she dried the dishes on her marriage morning, 
 for if she broke one it also was a bad augury. 
 In the brave days of old, ladies married when 
 their parents bade them. It not unfrequently 
 happened that many a lover knew the lass pre- 
 ferred him to the one chosen by father or mother, 
 so they copied Jock o' Hazeldean, or Ronald
 
 2o§ FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 Macdonald who persuaded Leezie Lindsay to 
 kilt her coats of green satin and fly with him 
 to the Highlands. A rejected but adventuring 
 swain who had trusty men and horses at his back 
 could waylay the party and carry off the bride, 
 like Lochinvar, ere the church was reached. 
 The bride's mother, waiting at home to receive 
 the newly-married pair on their return, in these 
 times of bold riders was never sure who her son- 
 in-law was till the knot was tied. Thus it became 
 a habit for the fleet of foot among the grooms- 
 men to race from the church and tell the news. 
 This was called " running the brooze or braise." 
 The rewarding brose became whisky wherewith 
 the swift runner or rider returned, proud of his 
 prowess, to toast as " first foot " the arriving 
 procession. According to a custom which the 
 Romans taught us, the bride was lifted over the 
 threshold of her new home, and over her head 
 was broken a cake. On fragments of this cake 
 the bridesmaids dreamed of their coming help- 
 mate. The tongs and poker used to be handed 
 to the bride as a symbol she was to keep the 
 hearth aglow. In Berwickshire, especially by 
 the coast where the fishermen keep in a conser- 
 vative manner to inherited use and wont, they
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 209 
 
 " creel " the bridegroom. As he enters his 
 house with his new-made wife a creel heavily 
 weighted is bound on to his shoulders in such a 
 manner he cannot rid himself of it. His friends 
 add to his burden by heaping it with more 
 stones till he is staggering with the weight. 
 Then a knife is given to his wife and she, amid 
 cheers, relieves him of his cumbersome load. 
 This is emblematic of the assistance that a true 
 help-mate renders and a readiness to share one 
 another's burdens in their way through life. 
 
 Scotland was famed for and fled to by eloping 
 pairs because of the easygoingness of its laws in 
 regard to marriage. A simple declaration before 
 a witness bound a couple in the bonds of matri- 
 mony as securely as red tape did in England. A 
 blacksmith was as efficient as a minister. The 
 disregard of the church as the place to make their 
 vows in may have arisen in Scotland from a 
 unique usage called handfasting, or hand in the 
 fist marriages. This vogue arose in early Catholic 
 times when travelling was dangerous and diffi- 
 cult, and visits from priests in outlying districts 
 rare. A fair was held annually in the dale where 
 the Black and White Esk met, and there flocked 
 the unmarried of both sexes who sought a com- 
 
 o
 
 210 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 panion. When they found one to their mind 
 they were handfasted till the following year. 
 Then if they mutually approved of one another, 
 a priest in course of time when he came by gave 
 them the Church's blessing. These peripatetic 
 monks were called " book-in-the-bosom " priests, 
 as they carried a breviary and a rough register 
 in their robes of approved and church-sanctioned 
 handf asters. This " on trial " marriage system 
 seems to have been the fashion with ladies of 
 high degree as well as with the Eskdale lasses 
 and lads. Lindsay says " That James, sixth 
 Earl of Murray, had a son by Isabel Innes, 
 daughter of the Laird of Innes, Alexander Dun- 
 bar, a man of singular wit and courage. This 
 Isabel was but handfasted to him and deceased 
 before the marriage." Mr. Guthrie, in Old 
 Scottish Customs, says, " If either of the parties 
 insisted on a separation and a child was born 
 during the year of trial, it was to be taken care 
 of by the father only, and to be ranked among 
 his lawful children next after his heirs. The off- 
 spring was not treated as illegitimate, because 
 the custom was justified being such and in- 
 stituted with a view of making way for a happy, 
 peaceful marriage. Such was also the power of
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 211 
 
 custom, that the apprenticeship for matrimony 
 brought no reproach on the separated lad}-, and 
 if her character was good she was entitled to an 
 equal match as though nothing had happened." 
 It is said that a desperate feud ensued between 
 the clans Macdonald of Sleat and Macleod of 
 Dunvegan, owing to the former chief having 
 availed himself of this licence to send back the 
 sister or daughter of the latter. Macleod resent- 
 ing the indignity observed, " That since there 
 was no wedding bonfire there should be one to 
 solemnise the divorce," and he accordingly laid 
 waste to the territories of the Macdonalds, and 
 they kindled "sic a lowe " cottages and strong 
 castles were " smoored in the dark reek." Gretna 
 Green on the south border, Lamberton Toll 
 three miles north of Tweed, just without the 
 boundary of the changeable town of Berwick, 
 and Coldstream, were raced to by eloping couples, 
 and hard by the toll bar in each case dwelt a 
 blacksmith. His legitimate work of shoeing 
 horses kept him on the spot, so the mighty 
 man of the hammer and forge became the re- 
 cipient of the elopers' declaration. The registers 
 of the Lamberton Toll runaway marriages were 
 sent to the county town of Greenlaw, but as
 
 212 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 " Duns dings a' " and it has now succeeded 
 Greenlaw, there the registers abide, records of 
 hasty marriages of long ago suggesting flight and 
 followers, and often doubtless there was repent- 
 ance at leisure, in many cases life-long repent- 
 ance as the days of handfasting were over. 
 
 Fairs of all kinds were the centre of meetings 
 and merry-makings. In the Borders also there 
 were the Riding of the Marches to declare the 
 free rights of the town, such as the Common 
 Riding at Hawdck, Selkirk, the boundaries of 
 Berwick, etc. These ridings, on a specified day, 
 are still extant, shorn of their former glory but 
 even now maintained to uphold the peculiar 
 tenures and charters of liberty attached to the 
 ceremony; and we see paragraphs from time to 
 time in the evening papers telling of them, with 
 bands and flags and holiday sightseers. The 
 border Scots were fond of sports, with the results 
 that many an unpremeditated feud followed on 
 the heels of some peaceful gathering for games. 
 Boasts as to their prowess led to wagers or 
 jealousies, and the gauntlet was thrown down. 
 The " stout Erie of Northumberland " vowed 
 he'd " ding the dun deer down " on Scottish soil, 
 and went forth with his train to what proved to
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 213 
 
 be the " woeful hunting " of Chevy Chase, where 
 a Percy and a Douglas died, and of twenty 
 hundred Scottish spears scarce " fifty-five did 
 fly," and of fifteen hundred Enghsh men went 
 home but fifty-three — 
 
 " The rest in Chevey Chase were slaine, 
 Under the greenwood tree." 
 
 Many another hunt with bows and arrows 
 handy led to fierce frays. Even a footbaU match, 
 with the victors triumphant, the losers sore at 
 heart, was a pretext for mischief being brewed 
 and feuds fought to the death, as in the case of 
 the warden of the Middle Marches in 1600, one 
 Sir John Carmichael, who was murdered on 
 returning from a football match. L'^nder the 
 guise of a ba' playing the men mustered in 
 strength, and when the play was played they 
 indulged in a raid over the border. In the 
 ballad of the Bonnie Earl of Moray he not only 
 tilted at the glove, but " he played at the ba' " 
 and whether that ba' belonged to golf, rackets, 
 or football, we know not. Likely enough he who 
 " was fit to be a king " was good at all three. 
 Scotland is the cradle of the most popular of ball 
 games — golf — which, like the thistle that it also 
 reared, has taken root and spread over the world.
 
 214 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 Golf was played on Scottish links before Columbus 
 discovered America, and statutes were made 
 when the centuries were barely in their teens in 
 regard to the " royal game," to stem its popu- 
 larity, for men were more keen in contesting a 
 match with club and ball than learning to aim 
 swift and sure with weapons of war. The links 
 lured the men from practising at the bow butts, 
 and the law insisted that whether the Scots 
 were soldiers of the king or not, they were to be 
 ready, aye ready, to withstand against their 
 auld enemies the Enghsh. There were wapen- 
 shaws regularly held. This show of weapons was 
 to prove that the implements of death were in 
 order and the men competent to wield them. 
 Edinburgh as the capital took the lead. It had 
 a blue blanket for a banner, which was the first 
 to flutter over volunteers. When it was waved 
 shopkeepers, artificers, and craftsmen had to lay 
 down the yard measure, the hammer and tools of 
 trade, and swarm forth equipped at a moment's 
 notice to man the walls and bend the bow. Such 
 good service did these counter-jumpers and 
 workmen do that James III. gave them a new 
 blue banner; but the old one is still extant to 
 show how Edinburgh merchantmen were a weU-
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 215 
 
 trained volunteer band, trained in times of peace 
 and ready to rally around their provost or con- 
 vener. Tradition says this standard was origin- 
 ally unfurled in the cause of the Holy Wars by a 
 crusading body of citizens of Edinburgh, and 
 that their blue banner was the first to be planted 
 on the walls of Jerusalem when that city was 
 stormed by the Christian army under the famous 
 Godfrey de Bouillon. James III., having been 
 held captive by his rebellious nobles for nine 
 months in the Castle of Edinburgh, was freed by 
 the citizens of " High Dunedin," who raised the 
 Blue Blanket, assaulted, surprised, and captured 
 the castle. Out of gratitude for their seasonable 
 loyalty the king, besides granting them certain 
 privileges, presented them with a new ensign of 
 blue silk, with authority to display the same in 
 defence of their king, country, and their own 
 rights when these were assailed. To keep these 
 volunteers who mustered under the Blue Blanket 
 in shooting trim, golf and other games of " ba' " 
 were only permitted after a stipulated amount of 
 archery had been practised. 
 
 The love of football is still strong in rural dis- 
 tricts. In the village of Coldingham in Berwick- 
 shire there used to be an annual match played on
 
 2i6 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 the moor, bachelors versus the married men. A 
 hole in the earth was the benedicts' boundary, 
 and latterly a barn door of a farm erected on the 
 site was aimed at by them instead. At a neigh- 
 bouring village of Foulden a football match was 
 played on Fasten' E'en between the men of the 
 village and their neighbouring county men. The 
 goals were a mill happer and the pulpit of the 
 kirk. 
 
 Another Scottish game which has gone over- 
 seas to the Great Lone land is curling. It is a 
 social game. The laird and the mason frozen out 
 of work meet on the rink on a level. The skip is 
 the best man, be he earl or convicted poacher. 
 Curling has so much of a language of its own and 
 that broad Scotch, it is not Hkely to be so cosmo- 
 politan a game as " gowff." 
 
 Old ways rooted on some fact or olden usage 
 linger on indelible. The children of St. Andrews 
 had a game peculiar to their grey city by the sea, 
 which they played, singing to it a rhyme which 
 told its origin — 
 
 " Marry, maidens, marry, maidens, marry, maidens, now. 
 For stickit is your cardnal and sauted like a sow." 
 
 Thus in this jingle is recalled the murder of 
 Cardinal Beaton — his body was preserved in
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 217 
 
 salt by the conspirators during the time they 
 held the castle against the government forces. 
 Children are conservative in their games and in 
 their unshakable preference for rhymes and 
 plays whose origin is traceable to some historic 
 event, or lost in the mist of fable. Generations 
 of boys and girls through the centuries have 
 danced and sung to the old rune. King and Queen 
 of Cantelon. 
 
 " How many miles to Babylon? " children in 
 pairs ask, and two others as gate-keepers whose 
 arms bar the way reply, " Three score and ten." 
 
 " Will we get there by candlelight? " ask the 
 would-be travellers. 
 
 " Yes and back again," assert those who act as 
 toll-keepers. 
 
 " Open your gates and let us through," com- 
 mand the intending voyagers; but this peremp- 
 tory order is not obeyed. The young rovers 
 must be polite, for they are forbidden to proceed 
 until they " beck or bow," and so the expectant 
 pilgrims curtsey and bow. 
 
 " There's a beck— and there's a boo," they 
 cry, " open your gates and let us through," and 
 they gaily are off to visit the king and queen, and 
 reach Babylon, for the small explorers all of an
 
 2i8 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 afternoon are many of " the thousand things 
 that children are " to reach the East and be back 
 by candlehght is quite an easy feat for the quick- 
 witted small people. 
 
 One who did not forget his childhood or the old 
 refrain, speaking of such expeditions says — 
 
 " Our phantom voices haunt the air 
 As we were still at play, 
 And I say hear them call and say, 
 How far is it to Babylon ? 
 On we rode, the others and I, 
 Over the mountains blue and high! 
 A thousand miles we galloped fast, 
 And down the witches' lane we passed. 
 And from our steeds alighted down 
 Before the gates of Babylon." 
 
 The well-known lilt and its words come back 
 after we have wandered many a weary foot in 
 life's journey. With a rush of recollection of 
 the golden days of childhood we hear the 
 youngsters inquiring the way to the ancient city. 
 Who the King and Queen of Cantelon were no 
 one stops to ask. Children from age to age go off 
 to visit them singing the same words and the 
 same melody — they hke them for old sake's sake. 
 That has been one of the rhyming tales that has 
 come down from the dim pagan past for ever,
 
 FAIRS, FESTIVALS, AND FUNERALS 219 
 
 like Merry-ma-tanzie, to tinkle in our memories. 
 We know from whence sprang — 
 
 " Willie, Willie Wastle. 
 Stand on my castle; 
 And a' the dogs o' your town 
 Will no drive ^^'illie Wastle down." 
 
 On sandhill, or hearthrug doing duty for a 
 mound, a boy awaits the attack of the others on 
 his castle, and fine sport invaders and defiant 
 custodian have till Wilhe Willie Wastle is hurled 
 from his castle. This " game " began in the big 
 game of war — no child-play — when in 165 1 one 
 John Cockburn was governor of the Castle of 
 Hume on its high knoll, and refused to yield to 
 Cromwell. The defiant words children sing when 
 in possession, the original Willie Willie Wastle 
 wrote in reply to the order of the king-killer so 
 austerely championing freedom, to surrender, 
 but alack! a breach by the Ironsides' artillery 
 was made in the wall, and Cockburn was dinged 
 down. Little do the lads and lasses think with 
 what a sore heart John Cockburn, the author of 
 Willie Wastle, stepped from his high-seated castle, 
 which overlooked such a fertile track of countr\'. 
 
 Curious remnants of plays have come down to 
 us in the children's perennial runes. Strange
 
 220 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 fragments of folk song the little people have thus 
 preserved like Janet Jo, which is still sung by 
 children in city alley or village street. Janet 
 Jo, whose lover comes to " court " her, saw him 
 not. Her parents turn him away as she was 
 washing. When he returns she is always bleach- 
 ing, drying, etc., and then he is told " Janet Jo 
 is dead and gone." A funeral follows and a wail 
 for Janet Jo. It is a remnant of some mayhap 
 " owre true tale," which laid hold of the popular 
 imagination, and which the children treasured as 
 you ofttimes see them treasure little bits of 
 broken china which their seniors have cast forth, 
 and which they have set up as the chief orna- 
 ment of their play-house. No new gewgaw 
 bought at a fashionable toyshop can oust the 
 effete fragment from favour, and in course of 
 time the small people's conservative taste wins 
 the day, for their elders come to admire even 
 the scrap of what had once been an treasured.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 ADAGES AND OMENS 
 
 " From the barred visor of Antiquity, 
 Reflected shines the eternal light of Truth 
 As from a mirror. . . . 
 
 Even thus transformed, 
 Rude popular traditions and old tales 
 Shine as immortal poems." 
 
 Longfellow. 
 
 Though the origin of many of our everyday 
 uses and wonts are hidden in the well of years, 
 some still float on the surface, for it is odd how 
 certain scraps of folk lore take deep root in the 
 popular fancy and never die out. " God bless 
 you," we say when a friend sneezes. According 
 to Sir Frederick Treves, sneezing repels the in- 
 vading microbes of cold. Long ago in Greece, 
 when the plague was prevalent, the threatened 
 victims at the crisis of the disease averted the 
 fatal catastrophe by allowing nature's artillery 
 of sneezing to oust the enemy, so the benedic- 
 tion was spoken by friends, and that prayerful 
 aspiration despite the flight of centuries is offered 
 
 221
 
 222 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 by us to-day. Wise saws in regard to weather 
 and the gales of life are still evergreen — rhymes 
 of people and places are indelibly printed in our 
 minds. The Lightsome Lindsays as well as the 
 Gordons are named in the ballad on the Battle 
 of Otterbourne. The former flew — 
 
 "... like fire about 
 Till a' the fray was done." 
 
 The latter are described as the Gordons guid, 
 but " gay " is the word usually applied to them. 
 In a well-known song, of all the twenty-four 
 nobles who sat in the king's hall, Glenlogie 
 (prosaically George Gordon) is the " flower of 
 them a'," and he is one of the Gay Gordons. 
 These — the Lightsome Lindsays and Gay Gordons 
 — flash through history in times past and present 
 with " gallant Grahams," the " gentle Johnstons," 
 and Setons tall and proud. A Border rhyme 
 includes many men of the Merse : — 
 
 " The haughty Humes, 
 The saucy Scotts, 
 The cappet Kers, 
 The bauld Rutherfords." 
 
 There are a host of Scottish families with an 
 aUiterative or descriptive title before their names, 
 gleaned from friends, enemies, and more often
 
 ADAGES AND OMENS 223 
 
 from some " sabre cut of Saxon speech," some 
 truesome word in the ballads which has stuck to 
 them and given them the distinctive character 
 they are known by the world over. Some of 
 these territorial families also own heirlooms 
 which have come to them legend guarded. We 
 have spoken of the Coalstoun pear, of the fairy 
 banner of Dunvegan, and other fetiches are 
 scattered over Scotland. For instance, there is 
 " Barb reek's bone " in the Antiquarian Museum 
 — an important healing relic. It is a slice of ivory, 
 and belonged to the Barbrecks in Argyleshire. 
 It was believed to be useful in curing insanity, 
 and a bond of ;^ioo was required when it was 
 loaned. These relics were dipped in water which 
 the patient drank. The Lee penny of the Lock- 
 harts, famed for its medicinal powers, was hired 
 to Newcastle when in Charles the First's reign 
 the plague was rife there, and /6000 was the 
 money pledged for its safe return. The Robert- 
 sons of Struan had a famous stone, potent in 
 healing, and also from time immemorial the 
 Stewarts of Ardvoirlich had one, the " Clach 
 Dearg." There is also the charm stone of the 
 Bairds of Auchmeddan, in appearance more like 
 a bone than a stone, a round putty-coloured ball.
 
 224 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 It was said to have come from the Holy Land. 
 It may have been some sacred bone gotten there 
 by a crusader. Alongside this relic there is kept 
 in a safe by a descendant of the Bairds a bear's 
 paw. The bear, in the days of William the Lion, 
 attacked the king, and the progenitor of the 
 Bairds stepped forward, slew the beast, and there 
 to this day, in Edinburgh, is treasured the dried 
 paw of the four-footed, might-have-been regicide 
 who disputed the right of entry to the woods 
 with Scotland's king. Within hearing of the 
 time gun of Edinburgh are two estates whose 
 tenure, according to history fostered by folk lore, 
 is simple and romantic, going back to the heroic 
 age of Scotland's Jameses. The Clerks of Peni- 
 cuik were granted their estate " free for a blast." 
 They hold themselves bound to sit on a rock 
 called the Buckstone and blow three times upon 
 a horn when royalty comes to hunt upon the 
 Borough Muir, where the troops assembled before 
 fatal Flodden. The family who bear the motto, 
 " Free for a Blast," are saved by builders and 
 the encroachments of the city from ever seeing 
 a king hunt again on what once was a moor, now 
 a suburb crowded with flats and villas lying 
 between the city and the Pentlands.
 
 ADAGES AND OMENS 225 
 
 At Cramond Brig, five miles from Edinburgh, 
 there is the farm of Braehead where, in James 
 the Fifth's days, dwelt Jock Howieson, who 
 saved the king from some gipsies and afterwards 
 dressed his wounds. James had been masquerad- 
 ing as the Gudeman of Ballengeich when he fell 
 foul of the nomads. As the kindly farmer washed 
 his unknown guest's wounds he told him of his 
 desire to own his farm, and the " gudeman " 
 trysted him to meet him at Holyrood and lay his 
 plaint before James. Here honest Jock found 
 the stranger he had entertained (who beside his 
 simple self, at the Court, alone wore his hat) was 
 the king, and he was gifted with his farm on 
 condition he, or the holders thereof, came laden 
 with basin and towel to the sovereign of Scot- 
 land when they crossed Cramond Brig. George 
 IV. was thus greeted by the holder of Braehead. 
 
 The Lockharts of Carnforth held their land by 
 instituting a race at the annual fair for a pair of 
 red hose, and when the prize was won the laird 
 had a mounted messenger in readiness to speed 
 with the news to the Lord Advocate. 
 
 Round places there remained a halo of ancient 
 prophecies. Thomas the Rhymer marked many 
 spots, and local folk lore in popular jangles
 
 226 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 marked many more. Robert Chambers tells of 
 an old man of seventy-two, who, in 1825, told 
 how he had heard the following prophetic couplet 
 when a boy, and in his childhood. Remember 
 Edinburgh then was enclosed within its ancient 
 walls, and there was then no talk of the Lang 
 Gait turning into Princes Street: — 
 
 " York was, London is, and Edinburgh will be 
 The biggest of the three." 
 
 There are other prognostications which were 
 made centuries ago, and by the wear and tear of 
 winds and waves, or the encroachments of the 
 ocean, seem to be coming true, and on their ful- 
 filment the prophet foretells the world is nearing 
 its end: — 
 
 " When the Yowes o' Gowrie come to land, 
 The day of judgment's near at hand." 
 
 These stony " yowes " are close to Invergowrie 
 — two blocks of rock which were once out in the 
 sea. The estuary has silted up and the country 
 people say the land gains an inch a year. On 
 Sunday afternoon it was a custom to go to see 
 what progress the yowes were making. 
 
 " When Finhaven Castle runs to sand. 
 The world's end is near at hand," 
 
 says a Forfar rhyme. Once solid Finhaven is a
 
 ADAGES AND OMENS 227 
 
 ruin, and it is highly probable time will crumble 
 its remaining walls into sand. 
 
 The people of districts from song and story 
 have been named mostly hke those relating to 
 families with an alliterative word. Berwick- 
 shire boasts of the Men of the Merse, and there 
 are gay lads o' Gala water. The shoemakers — the 
 Souters of Selkirk — made themselves a name, and 
 Scotland itself, with oaten cakes and its women 
 bakers of toothsome bread, is known the world 
 over as the Land o' Cakes. 
 
 " Glasgow is famed for bells, 
 Lithgow for wells, 
 Carrick for a man, 
 Kyle for a cow, 
 
 Cunningham for corn and bere. 
 And Galloway for woo'," 
 
 are well-known rhymes specifying places. 
 
 The borrowing days of March from April are 
 well known : — 
 
 " March borrows frae April 
 Three days and they are ill. 
 The first of them is wind and weet. 
 The second it is snow and sleet, 
 The third of them is peel-a-bane 
 And freezes the wee birds' nebs tae the stane." 
 
 There is a time-proven proverb bearing in 
 mind March's extremes, changing as it ofttimes
 
 228 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 does from a lion to a lamb. Whether the weather 
 be fair or foul on St. Swithin's is to-day studied 
 as in bygone times. If fine, it insures six weeks' 
 spell of clear skies; if wet, rain daily. The 
 freakish uncertainty of our climate, the decep- 
 tiveness of spring, when the sun shines gaily one 
 day and the next may be as cold again as winter, 
 has made wise ones warn the coming genera- 
 tion to — 
 
 " Ne'er cast a clout 
 Till May be out." 
 
 When snow falls, the Scotch child is told it is 
 Norroway witches shaking their feathers; and 
 when rain splashes down it seems to be well to 
 advise it to go to Spain, whether in resentment, 
 or that it is needed there, we know not. 
 
 There are many prophecies in regard to 
 weather from local signs — hills which wear a 
 cowl and bring rain to the plains. 
 
 " When Falkland Hill puts on his cap. 
 The Howe o'Fife will get a drap," 
 
 say the folk of Fife, and in Annandale they have 
 noted — 
 
 " When Criffel wears a hap, 
 Skiddaw wats full well o' that." 
 
 " Many haws, many snaws," the old folks say.
 
 ADAGES AND OMENS 229 
 
 when they see the thorn white with blossom, 
 beheving that a foreseeing Providence will supply 
 more food if a hard winter is to set in. Simple 
 signs and portents were read often aright in 
 what we would call unlettered days, and old- 
 world quaint saws are still taught. The early 
 poems of romance are full of haggard sugges- 
 tions, for the songs of a younger world were oft- 
 whiles sad songs. They held the popular imagina- 
 tion longer in thrall. The rattle and shallow 
 catchiness of modern music hall verses a primi- 
 tive people, burdened with the difficulty of 
 fighting for existence, would have naught of. It 
 is a proven fact that the saddest story ever 
 maketh the sweetest song, and in the old ballads, 
 where lies enshrined much folk lore, the ower- 
 words in them has a plaintive note, but also a 
 note so full of force it retains its hold on all those 
 who hearken to it — 
 
 " For every stroke goes o'er thy harp 
 
 It stoninls my heart within." 
 
 Many superstitions which were credited by 
 the people appear in the ballads. A ring burst- 
 ing on the finger was held to presage evil, as in 
 " Lammlain " —
 
 230 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 " The Lord sat in England, 
 A-drinking the wine. 
 I wish a' may be weel 
 \Vi' my lady at hame; 
 For the rings of my fingers 
 They're now burst in twain." 
 
 Hynde Horn alludes to change of colour in 
 diamonds as betokening ill. When he returned, 
 after being seven years at sea, he begged of his 
 should-have-been bride in the guise of a beggar, 
 and in the empty cup let fall the ring saying — 
 
 " Now that the diamonds are changed in their hue, 
 I know that my love has to me proved untrue." 
 
 Precious stones in the East are said to have 
 properties which suit only with certain tempera- 
 ments, and these stones belong to people born in 
 certain months and are their lucky mascots. 
 Opals, despite their beauty, are as a rule avoided 
 for an engagement ring, being beheved, perhaps 
 because of their changeableness, to be unstable. 
 Amber from ancient times is held to have special 
 properties — lammer is the Scottish word for it. 
 It was potent in blindness, and a charm against 
 evil spirits. Amber necklaces were worn as a 
 charm against evil. Betty Davidson, to whose 
 tales Burns listened when he was a glowing-eyed 
 boy, had a string of " lammer beads " which
 
 ADAGES AND OMENS 231 
 
 enabled her to speak of bogles and witches and 
 Old Hornie himself without fear. From the pro- 
 tection the amber gave her, her nimble tongue 
 had full licence to describe the ghouls she knew 
 of, and to her we maybe owe Bums's descrip- 
 tion of the pranks of the witches in " Tam o' 
 Shanter." In the ruins of a Pict's stronghold on 
 a Border stream recently was found an amber 
 bead, treasured by its owner unnumbered cen- 
 turies ago, and sorely missed when it rolled away 
 and hid itself from human sight, to be upheaved 
 by the plough along with the elf arrows the Pict 
 fashioned. 
 
 A picture falling or a mirror being broken are 
 omens of ill we still attach importance to The 
 crown tottered when placed on James II.'s head 
 at Westminster, and a courtier had to steady it; 
 his family, he said, had often before supported 
 the crown. It was a portent which was noted 
 at the time, and its prophecy was not long of 
 fulfilment. 
 
 The Stone of Destiny is the largest " precious 
 stone " in this country. Whether it be the one, 
 as tradition sayeth, on which Jacob rested his 
 head when he dreamed, and through many a 
 weary pilgrimage was carried by his descendants
 
 232 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 as a talisman, here it was coveted, for the Lia 
 Fail was ordained to be the throne seat of the 
 monarch who would rule the earth. Edward L 
 of England bore it away, but destiny sent kings 
 from Scotland to be crowned upon it. When Sir 
 Walter Scott was escorting Mungo Park across 
 the hills to Yarrow before the explorer set out on 
 his last travels. Park's horse stumbled and 
 nearly fell. " A bad omen," said the Shirra. 
 " Freits (omens) follow those who look for 
 freits," replied Park, thinking of the words of 
 the old ballad, " Edom o' Gordon " — 
 
 " Them look to freits, my master dear. 
 Then freits will follow them." 
 
 Prophecies truly bring about their own fulfil- 
 ment. Take, for instance, the case of the Haigs of 
 Bemersyde, and looking back over ages of folk 
 lore we may shudder, or smile, at the supersti- 
 tious dread our ancestors had of what we call the 
 forces of nature — thunder, shrieking winds, dark- 
 ness, etc. They were a people dwelling in close 
 communion with the earth and sky. Living in 
 so austere and simple a manner they saw and 
 heard with senses unblunted by the requirements 
 of civilisation, sharpened indeed by their rude 
 hand-to-hand encounter with the beasts of the
 
 ADAGES AND OMENS 233 
 
 forest for a livelihood. We see in all the oral 
 traditions they left us how they believed in elves 
 and hobgoblins, ourisks, etc. " O sweet and far 
 from cliff and scar," says Tennyson, " the horns 
 of Elfland faintly blowing." Instead of their 
 musical trumpets sounding through the hills and 
 adown the dales, we of this advanced age only 
 hear the horns of motors coming to smother the 
 sauntering wayfarer in dust, and frightening 
 even the idea of fairies out of mind. This peace- 
 loving era has tried to put Satan behind it, to 
 banish the prince of darkness from our creed. 
 The very names by which he was mentioned, 
 Auld Clootie, Hornie, etc., are sinking into 
 oblivion — names invented, while he reigned, by 
 terror, to evade mentioning him, so that none 
 should be heard by his emissaries " speaking ill 
 of the deil." However, the pendulum swings. 
 Spiritualism is now the fashion. The denizens of 
 Elfinland, the good neighbours of old, are sup- 
 posed no longer to cast their glamour over us, 
 but as astral spirits enliven seances. Ghosts 
 still walk and talk to some of us, but even this 
 material age cannot deprive us of the romance 
 that superstition and fairies have left in our 
 minds and in the best of our literature. The
 
 234 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 old, old stories of folk lore still dwell evergreen in 
 our memories. All the time-tried, imperishable 
 favourites — Puss in Boots, Red Riding-hood, 
 Cinderella (Rushie coat, in Scotland), Blue- 
 beard, Jack and the Bean Stalk, etc. — folk lore 
 has saved to us, showing the oneness in speech 
 of the Teutonic races. " Amid curious rubbish 
 you will find sound sense if you look for it. You 
 will find the creed of the people as shown in their 
 stories. You will find perseverance, frugahty, 
 and filial piety rewarded, pride, greed, and lazi- 
 ness punished. Men in this century have raised 
 up a pastime for children, fit to be a study for 
 the energies of grown men, to all the dignity of a 
 science. It is held by those who have studied 
 the subject that the stories we all know, the very 
 games children play and the refrains they sing to 
 them, came from the East. The problem in each 
 case was to trace the nursery tale to the legend, 
 and the legend to the myth, and the myth to the 
 earliest germ, and as far as possible to indicate 
 the foreign interpolations when they occurred, 
 and account for the local corrections. In this 
 way the history of a story, like the history of a 
 word, was frequently more interesting, more in- 
 structive than the history of a campaign." So
 
 ADAGES AND OMENS 235 
 
 says one student of folk lore, and another that: 
 " The record of these customs is more than a 
 matter of antiquarian curiosity, for it may help 
 to throw hght upon the Hfe and the literature of 
 Scotland in bygone days, and surely everything 
 that enables us to understand our forefathers 
 better is to be commended and ought to be 
 regarded as highly instructive." 
 
 Every step we take on Scottish soil we tread 
 on history, as Cicero said men at Athens did, and 
 also in our ears when we walk in the lowlands 
 ring the superstitions which by traditions have 
 come to us from the rawest beginnings of our 
 islands' races. We treasure now all antique 
 things, including the " ancient haunts of men." 
 From a few bones those skilled in their study 
 can reconstruct the type to which they belonged. 
 So from the circle of monoliths, from antiquarian 
 odds and ends, flint arrowheads, bronze and 
 gold ornaments, the plough, or the pick-axe 
 digging tunnels for railroads, brings to the light 
 of our day, place names which speak of an 
 obsolete people, we, who for the present are in 
 the forefront of time, from these fragments left, 
 surmise how our forefathers lived and worshipped. 
 Their " distant footsteps echo through the
 
 236 FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND 
 
 corridors of time." We have tried, we trust not 
 in vain, to read the cypher of their myths and 
 remains aright. The ancient customs and beliefs 
 of antiquity cHng to us and colour our fancies. 
 The ancientness, the romance of the unfathomed, 
 attracts us. Some superstitions are enshrouded 
 in a pre-historic mist, but the very doubtfulness 
 of their outline looming in the background 
 haunts us in the same way that an unascended 
 mountain overshadowing an alpine climber en- 
 tices and beckons him to ascend, invade, and 
 learn the secrets of its heights and solitudes. 
 
 The unread carvings on the cromlechs, the 
 traditions of ages past, are elements in the life of 
 our nation which it is well to foster, if they only 
 show us from what level we have ascended to 
 the dignity of reasoning beings. 
 
 (b 
 
 -^1 
 
 THE TEMPLE PRESS, PRINTERS, LETCHWORTH
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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