Читать книгу Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland - John Gregorson Campbell - Страница 25

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Most frequently it was women, not yet risen from childbed, and their babes that the Fairies abducted. On every occasion of a birth, therefore, the utmost anxiety prevailed to guard the mother and child from their attacks. It is said that the Fairy women are unable to suckle their own children, and hence their desire to secure a human wet-nurse. This, however, does not explain why they want the children, nor indeed is it universally a part of the creed.

The first care was not to leave a woman alone during her confinement. A house full of women gathered and watched for three days, in some places for eight. Various additional precautions against the Fairies were taken in various localities. A row of iron nails were driven into the front board of the bed; the smoothing iron or a reaping hook was placed under it and in the window; an old shoe was put in the fire; the door posts were sprinkled with maistir, urine kept for washing purposes—a liquid extremely offensive to the Fairies; the Bible was opened, and the breath blown across it in the face of the woman in childbed; mystic words of threads were placed about the bed; and, when leaving at the end of the three days, the midwife left a little cake of oatmeal with a hole in it in the front of the bed. The father’s shirt wrapped round the new-born babe was esteemed a preservative, and if the marriage gown was thrown over the wife she could be recovered if, notwithstanding, or from neglect of these precautions, she were taken away. The name of the Deity solemnly pronounced over the child in baptism was an additional protection. If the Fairies were seen, water in which an ember was extinguished, or the burning peats themselves, thrown at them, drove them away. Even quick wit and readiness of reply in the mother has sent them off.12

It is not to be supposed that these precautions were universally known or practised. In that case such a thing as an elf-struck child would be unknown. The gathering of women and the placing of iron about the bed seem to have been common, but the burning of old shoes was confined to the Western Isles. If it existed elsewhere, its memory has been forgotten. That it is an old part of the creed is evident from the dislike of the Fairies to strong smells, being also part of the Teutonic creed. The blowing of the breath across the Bible existed in Sunart, part of the west of Inverness-shire.