Читать книгу Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland - John Gregorson Campbell - Страница 34

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The great protection against the Elfin race (and this is perhaps the most noticeable point in the whole superstition) is Iron, or preferably steel (Cruaidh). The metal in any form—a sword, a knife, a pair of scissors, a needle, a nail, a ring, a bar, a piece of reaping-hook, a gun-barrel, a fish-hook (and tales will be given illustrative of all these)—is all-powerful. On entering a Fairy dwelling, a piece of steel, a knife, needle, or fish-hook, stuck in the door, takes from the Elves the power of closing it till the intruder comes out again. A knife stuck in a deer carried home at night keeps them from laying their weight on the animal. A knife or nail in one’s pocket prevents his being ‘lifted’ at night. Nails in the front bench of the bed keep Elves from women ‘in the straw,’ and their babes. As additional safe-guards, the smoothing-iron should be put below the bed, and the reaping-hook in the window. A nail in the carcase of a bull that fell over a rock was believed to preserve its flesh from them. Playing the Jew’s harp (tromb) kept the Elfin women at a distance from the hunter, because the tongue of the instrument is of steel. So also a shoemaker’s awl in the door-post of his bothy kept a Glaistig from entering.

Fire thrown into water in which the feet have been washed takes away the power of the water to admit the Fairies into the house at night; a burning peat put in sowens to hasten their fermenting (greasadh gortachadh) kept the substance in them till ready to boil. Martin (West Isl.) says fire was carried round lying-in women, and round about children before they were christened, to keep mother and infant from the power of evil spirits. When the Fairies were seen coming in at the door burning embers thrown towards them drove them away.

Another safe-guard is oatmeal. When it is sprinkled on one’s clothes or carried in the pocket no Fairy will venture near, and it was usual with people going on journeys after nightfall to adopt the precaution of taking some with them. In Mull and Tiree the pockets of boys going any distance after nightfall were filled with oatmeal by their anxious mothers, and old men are remembered who sprinkled themselves with it when going on a night journey. In Skye, oatmeal was not looked upon as proper Fairy food, and it was said if a person wanted to see the Fairies he should not take oatmeal with him; if he did he would not be able to see them. When ‘the folk’ take a loan of meal they do not appear to have any objections to oatmeal. The meal returned, however, was always barleymeal.

Oatmeal, taken out of the house after dark, was sprinkled with salt, and unless this was done, the Fairies might through its instrumentality take the substance out of the farmer’s whole grain. To keep them from getting the benefit of meal itself, housewives, when baking oatmeal bannocks, made a little thick cake with the last of the meal, between their palms (not kneading it like the rest of the bannocks), for the youngsters to put a hole through it with the forefinger. This palm bannock (bonnach boise) is not to be toasted on the gridiron, but placed to the fire leaning against a stone (leac nam bonnach), well-known where a ‘griddle’ is not available. Once the Fairies were overtaken carrying with them the benefit (toradh) of the farm in a large thick cake, with the handle of the quern (sgonnan na brà) stuck through it, and forming a pole on which it was carried. This cannot occur when the last bannock baked (Bonnach fallaid) is a little cake with a hole in it (Bonnach beag ’s toll ann).13

Maistir, or stale urine, kept for the scouring of blankets and other cloth, when sprinkled on the cattle and on the door-posts and walls of the house, kept the Fairies, and indeed every mischief, at a distance. This sprinkling was done regularly on the last evening of every quarter of the year (h-uile latha ceann ràidhe).

Plants of great power were the Mòthan (Sagina procumbens, trailing pearlwort) and Achlasan Challum-chille (Hypericum pulcrum, St. John’s wort). The former protected its possessor from fire and the attacks of the Fairy women. The latter warded off fevers, and kept the Fairies from taking people away in their sleep. There are rhymes which must be said when these plants are pulled.

Stories representing the Bible as a protection must be of a recent date. It is not so long since a copy of the Bible was not available in the Highlands for that or any other purpose. When the Book did become accessible, it is not surprising that, as in other places, a blind unmeaning reverence should accumulate round it.

Such are the main features of the superstition of the Sìthchean, the still-folk, the noiseless people, as it existed, and in some degree still exists, in the Highlands, and particularly in the Islands of Scotland. There is a clear line of demarcation between it and every other Highland superstition, though the distinction has not always been observed by writers on the subject. The following Fairy characteristics deserve to be particularly noticed.

It was peculiar to the Fairy women to assume the shape of deer; while witches became mice, hares, cats, gulls, or black sheep, and the devil a he-goat or gentleman with a horse’s or pig’s foot. A running stream could not be crossed by evil spirits, ghosts, and apparitions, but made no difference to the Fairies. If all tales be true, they could give a dip in the passing to those they were carrying away; and the stone, on which the “Washing Woman” folded the shirts of the doomed, was in the middle of water. Witches took the milk from cows; the Fairies had cattle of their own; and when they attacked the farmer’s dairy, it was to take away the cows themselves, i.e. the cow in appearance remained, but its benefit (the real cow) was gone. The Elves have even the impertinence at times to drive back the cow at night to pasture on the corn of the person from whom they have stolen it. The phrenzy with which Fairy women afflicted men was only a wandering madness (φοιταλεα μανια), which made them roam about restlessly, without knowing what they were doing, or leave home at night to hold appointments with the Elfin women themselves; by druidism (druidheachd) men were driven from their kindred, and made to imagine themselves undergoing marvellous adventures and changing shape. Dogs crouched, or leapt at their master’s throat, in the presence of evil spirits, but they gave chase to the Fairies. Night alone was frequented by the powers of darkness, and they fled at the cock-crowing; the Fairies were encountered in the day-time as well. There was no intermarriage between men and the other beings of superstition, but women were courted and taken away by Fairy men, and men courted Fairy women (or rather were courted by them), married, and took them to their houses. A well-marked characteristic is the tinge of the ludicrous that pervades the creed. The Fairy is an object of contempt as well as of fear, and, though the latter be the prevailing feeling, there is observably a desire to make the Elves contemptible and ridiculous. A person should not unnecessarily provoke the anger of those who cannot retaliate, much less of a race so ready to take offence and so sure to retaliate as the Fairies. In revenge for this species of terror, the imagination loves to depict the Elves in positions and doing actions that provoke a smile. The part of the belief which relates to the Banshi is comparatively free from this feeling, but the ‘little people’ and changelings come in for a full share of it. Perhaps this part of the superstition is not entirely to be explained as the recoil of the mind from the oppression of a belief in invisible beings that may be cognizant of men’s affairs and only wait for an opportunity to exert an evil influence over them, but its existence is striking.