Whitsuntide is a very fatal and unlucky time. Especially beware of
water then, for there is an evil spirit in it, and no one should
venture to bathe, nor to sail in a boat for fear of being drowned; nor
to go a journey where water has to be crossed. And everything in the
house must be sprinkled with holy water at Whitsuntide to keep away the
fairies, who at that season are very active and malicious, and bewitch
the cattle, and carry off the young children, and come up from the sea
to hold strange midnight revels, when they kill with their fairy darts
the unhappy mortal who crosses their path and pries at their mysteries.