Читать книгу Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland - John Gregorson Campbell - Страница 30

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At times the Fairy woman (Bean shìth) is seen in lonely places, beside a pool or stream, washing the linen of those soon to die, and folding and beating it with her hands on a stone in the middle of the water. She is then known as the Bean-nighe, or washing woman; and her being seen is a sure sign that death is near.

In Mull and Tiree she is said to have praeternaturally long breasts, which are in the way as she stoops at her washing. She throws them over her shoulders, and they hang down her back. Whoever sees her must not turn away, but steal up behind and endeavour to approach her unawares. When he is near enough he is to catch one of her breasts, and, putting it to his mouth, call herself to witness that she is his first nursing or foster-mother (muime cìche). She answers that he has need of that being the case, and will then communicate whatever knowledge he desires. If she says the shirt she is washing is that of an enemy he allows the washing to go on, and that man’s death follows; if it be that of her captor or any of his friends, she is put a stop to.

In Skye the Bean-nighe is said to be squat in figure (tiughiosal), or not unlike a ‘small pitiful child’ (paisde beag brònach). If a person caught her she told all that would befall him in after life. She answered all his questions, but he must answer hers. Men did not like to tell what she said. Women dying in childbed were looked upon as dying prematurely, and it was believed that unless all the clothes left by them were washed they would have to wash them themselves till the natural period of their death. It was women ‘dreeing this weird’ who were the washing women. If the person hearing them at work beating their clothes (slacartaich) caught them before being observed, he could not be heard by them; but if they saw him first, he lost the power of his limbs (lùgh).

In the highlands of Perthshire the washing woman is represented as small and round, and dressed in pretty green. She spreads by moonlight the linen winding sheets of those soon to die, and is caught by getting between her and the stream.

She can also be caught and mastered and made to communicate her information at the point of the sword. Oscar, son of the poet Ossian, met her on his way to the Cairbre’s feast, at which the dispute arose which led to his death. She was encountered by Hugh of the Little Head on the evening before his last battle, and left him as her parting gift (fàgail), that he should become the frightful apparition he did after death, the most celebrated in the West Highlands.