A "Blessed Thaw" after a Severe Frost--Longevity in Lochaber--A
ready "Saline draught--A probatum est Recipe for Catarrh and
Colds--Egg-shell Superstition--Curious old Gaelic Poem.
How intense was the recent frost [January 1875], and how hyperborean
all our surroundings, may be judged of from the fact that on coming out
of church yesterday, one of our people, a greyheaded, pious old man,
spoke of the happy change to open weather and "westlan' breezes" very
solemnly as "the blessed thaw"--an t'aiteamh beannaichte. Before any
one else north or south of the Tweed made any reference to the coming
winter, our readers may remember that we did, and that we inculcated
on every one the wisdom of keeping themselves warm and comfortable, by
means of good fires and otherwise, as the best way of being jolly in
the best and truest sense of that much misapprehended and frequently
misapplied term. It was, in truth, a trying season; but sensibly and
thickly clad in many a fold of honest home-spun cùrain, or plaiding,
our people for the most part got over it without any very serious
ailments. Influenzas, catarrhs, and colds in every form were of course
common, and, for a time, one was met on every side by an uncomfortable
and sometimes disagreeable amount of coughing, expectoration,
sniftering, sneezing, and nose-blowing; but now all this has almost
or altogether passed away, and people are again going about as usual,
clad no otherwise than ordinarily, and as becometh the inhabitants
of a temperate zone: plaids, comforters, double-ply mittens, and
"bosom-friends," having been laid aside as unnecessary incumbrances in
weather that is now actually warm and spring-like, as compared with
that dreadful month or six weeks of Baffin's Bay-like temperature,
that, when it got fairly at you, and off your guard, seemed capable of
making the very blood freeze in one's veins, even as it froze the water
in our subterranean and best guarded lead pipes. Nothing, perhaps,
could more pointedly illustrate the healthy vigour and vitality of
our people generally than the fact that, although we have amongst us
many who have arrived at extreme old age, and some who have been more
or less valetudinarian for years, there has not been a single death
in the district--a district which, as we look around us, contains
some two or three thousand inhabitants--since the beginning of last
December; a fact which, considering the inclemency of the weather,
and the high death-rate everywhere else, is something surely worthy
chronicling. We are probably correct in believing that the worst at
least of winter is already past, but much cold and stormy weather
may be still in store for us, and as colds and coughs may return,
we beg to make friendly offer of the following probatum est recipe,
quite a popular cure in this part of the country for every form of
winter influenza. Cure or no cure, the recipe has at all events the
merit of being extremely simple, and to thousands of our readers very
readily available at any time. Take a pint--say a tumblerful--of sea
water that has been heated to the boiling-point, without having been
allowed actually to boil. Sprinkle over it some pepper, rather more
plentifully than you do in your soup; drink this as hot as you can
bear it as you step into bed at night. Next day your cold and cough
will have disappeared like an unpleasant dream. You may be weak,
but you will, upon the whole, be well! We cannot personally vouch
for the efficacy of this draught, but we find that many people here
invariably resort to it as a ready and popular cure for their colds,
and they speak highly of its virtues, and, contrary to what one would
expect, of its comparative pleasantness and palatability as well. A
sensible old man whom we questioned on the subject a few days ago,
and a firm believer in the efficacy of this "saline" draught, told
us in confidence that the rationale of the thing consisted in the
fact that it immediately acted as a powerful sudorific; and that to
this, he thought, was to be attributed the thoroughness as well as the
rapidity of the cure. Probably he was right. It is a simple, cheap, and
readily available remedy at all events, and dwellers by the sea-side
might do worse than give it a trial at a pinch, when more orthodox
remedies have failed, or are not ready to hand. One grand thing about
it is the certainty that, if it does no good, it cannot possibly do
harm. Another old man in our neighbourhood, still hale and active,
though in his eighty-fourth year, told us lately that he never took
a dose, not a ha'penny's worth, of medicine, druggist's or doctor's
stuff in his life. "Whenever I felt out of sorts," he continued,
"I just went down to the sea and drank a good large draught of salt
water; that was always my medicine, and it never once failed to do me
good." So that there may be more virtue in sea water as a curative
agent in bronchial and stomachic ailments than the world generally
wots. And if so, how consoling the thought that this druggist's shop
is never shut; the supply is exhaustless, and no charge!
A curious bit of popular superstition is the following, which a
gentleman in a neighbouring district was good enough to bring recently
under our notice. After breakfast, at which, among other good things,
we had some excellent fresh eggs, he suggested that we should go into
the kitchen to smoke, "and watch," he said, "what my housekeeper will
do with the empty egg-shells as the breakfast things are brought
up from the parlour." We went and stood and watched accordingly,
and this is what we saw, chatting with our host the while, that the
housekeeper might not suspect that we took any particular interest
in her doings. We noticed that when the girl came into the kitchen
and laid the tray upon the table, the housekeeper, a staid and
respectable-looking woman, well advanced in years, walked over and
took the egg-shells--there were four or five of them--and, placing
them one after another into an egg-cup, she took a small knife, and
passed it with a smart tap through the bottoms or hitherto unbroken
ends of the lot, and then turned away to some other employment. This
was all, for our host immediately suggested that we should visit the
stables. We were a good deal puzzled, having seen so little, where
we expected to have seen a great deal, and that little so seemingly
without meaning and purposeless. When we got to the stables, our host
asked if we understood the meaning of the old lady's manner of dealing
with the egg-shells. We confessed our profound ignorance, having never
seen--never, at least, seen so as seriously to notice--anything of this
kind before. "My housekeeper, you must know," continued our friend,
"is a most excellent woman, but much given to little superstitious
observances and harmless giosragan. She will not allow a single
egg-shell to go out of her sight without first making a hole through
it, knocking out its bottom in short, in case, as she has more than
once seriously told me, a witch should get hold of it and use it
as a boat, in which to set to sea in order to raise violent storms,
in which the ablest seamanship could not possibly save hundreds of
vessels from being miserably wrecked!" "You may smile," he went on,
"for it is supremely absurd, to be sure, that an otherwise sensible
woman should give credence to such nonsense; but, after all, if you
make inquiry, you will find that the superstition in question is quite
a common one. Few middle-aged women, brought up in the Highlands,
but will act as you saw my housekeeper act with the empty egg-shells,
knocking a hole through their unbroken ends before throwing them aside,
or frequently even more effectually providing against the possibility
of their being used as witched life-boats, by crushing the whole
shell into a crumpled mass bodily in the hand." We haven't as yet had
many opportunities of making inquiry into the matter, but from all we
can gather from some old women in our neighbourhood, we believe empty
egg-shells are, or perhaps we should say were, frequently treated after
the fashion stated, and for the reason assigned. Some of our readers
in the north-west Highlands and Hebrides may perhaps know something
more about a very odd and curious superstition to be met with in the
latter half of the nineteenth century. For obvious reasons, it is a
superstition more likely to be prevalent among islanders and dwellers
by the sea-shore than in the more inland parts of the country.
The following fragment of a curious old poem we picked up about
ten days ago from the recitation of Alexander Maclachlan, shepherd,
Dalness. It is unfortunately but a fragment, as we have said, but
we give it here in the hope that some of our friends of the Gaelic
Society, or of our many readers throughout the Hebrides, may be able
to supply more or less of the remainder. Maclachlan heard the entire
poem from a Glenetive forester, a very old man, some years ago, but
this man is now unfortunately dead, and the reciter could not direct us
to any one likely to be able to repeat the poem at length. Perhaps our
friend Mr. J. F. Campbell of Islay, so indefatigable and marvellously
successful in his search after Celtic song and story, "all of the olden
time," may have met with it in a more or less complete form; if so,
he would very much oblige us all in the north by giving us a version
of it and its history, as far as he knows it. We may state that it does
not appear in Leabhar-na-Feinne, which we have searched for it, though
unquestionably a production of considerable antiquity. Maclachlan
told us that the old forester, in reciting it, called it Conaltradh
nan Ian, or The Parliament of Birds. The following were evidently the
opening lines of the poem, and likeliest to be remembered by one who
only heard it repeated once or twice:--
Conaltradh nan Ian--(Fragment).
"Nuair 'bha Gaelig aig na h'eoin,
'Sa 'thuigeadh iad glòir nan dàn,
Bu tric an comhradh anns a choill
Air iomad pong, ma's fhior na Bàird.
Thainig piàid luath na gleadhraich,
'S shuidh i air grod mheur còsach fearna,
Ma choinneamh cò'chaig a ghuib chruinn,
'Sa caog-shuil dhonn na ceann mar àirnaig.
'N so dh'èirich a phiaid gu grad,
'S thubhairt i 's i 's tailceadh a bonn,
'An tusa sin a'd mheall air stop
Nuair a bhi's do cheod-cheann trom?
Am bi do theanga 'ghnath fo ghlais
'S tu gun luaidh air reach na ùi,
'S tu cho duinte ri cloich bhric
'Bhi's air meall a chnaip gun bhri."
"Bu treis dhaibh mar so a còmhstri,
Gearradh, 'bearradh glòir a cheile,
Ach gus an d'leum a nois an glas-eun;
'S rinn esan gach cùis a rèiteach,
'S crog a phiaid air a ceann
'S dh-fhag e i gu fuar, fann,
'N sin bh'èirich firèun nan gléus
A shinbhlas an spèur ga luath."
[Cætera desunt.]
This curious poem seems to have been throughout of a dramatic
form. Maclachlan says that, as he heard it repeated, almost all our
better known wild-birds were introduced, and had appropriate speeches
and parts assigned to them. He particularly referred to a very funny
speech by the wren, who finally quarrels with the wagtail, by whom
he had been insulted, and gives him a good licking. The end of it
all is that the eagle is unanimously elected king of birds, with
the glas-eun or falcon-kite as his lieutenant. The throstle cock is
elected bard of birds, and the dipper admiral and commander-in-chief
of the wild-bird fleet. Any one recovering the whole poem would be
conferring no small boon on Gaelic literature.