HUMOURS OF SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION
It is consistent with the earnestness of the Scottish character that, so
long as the light of intelligence was but feebly diffused in the land,
there should be a strong tendency towards superstitious imagining in
the minds of the people. For superstitious notions, be it noted, have
not been wont to spring so much out of _listless_ as out of _restless_
ignorance. Each notion and theory they embrace, however wild and wide
of the mark, has been a guess at the truth. In the dim days of the
Middle Ages, ere yet the sunshine of science had lit the hilltops of our
country, whatsoever came within the living experience of the people,
and was not palpable to sense, was readily attributed to supernatural
agency, good or bad—generally the latter. Thus it was that the heavens
above, and the earth beneath, and even the waters under the earth, became
peopled with fairies, brownies, hobgoblins, waterkelpies, warlocks,
ghosts, and witches. The powers attributed to these—each monster and
spirit in its place—afforded to the popular mind an explanation of
what, in the circumstances, was otherwise inexplainable, and thus,
so long as ignorance abounded, superstition did much more abound. As
the world has grown older the people have, happily, grown wiser. The
grosser superstitions of Scotland have entirely disappeared. No living
mortal outside of Bedlam, nowadays, believes in witches’ cantrips—that
ghosts walk the earth—or that fairies dance beneath the dim light of the
moon. No; and the stories of faerie machinations, and of warlocks and
witches, which our great-grandmothers related, in the light of the “oilie
cruizie,” to the wide-mouthed horror and bewilderment of our youthful
grandfathers and grandmothers, would excite the youth of the present
generation only to laughter. While saying that the grosser superstitions
are gone, however, it must be admitted that some of the milder forms of
superstitious belief—such as “freits” and omens—still find acceptance
among us. “Marry in May, an’ ye’ll rue’t for aye,” says an old “freit”;
and an examination of the Registrar’s books, in town and country, will
reveal that, comparatively, very few have the temerity yet to defy the
ill-favoured prediction. It is an old “freit” that when children are
brought to church for baptism, if the females receive sprinkling before
the males, the latter will grow up effeminate, and the former will
develop beards; and not very long ago I witnessed myself in a city church
a rather unseemly scramble by a parent to have his boy brought to the
front in preference to a neighbour’s girl. It is not half a dozen years
since a friend of mine in the West of Scotland was advised to pass her
children through below a donkey’s belly to cure them of whooping-cough.
The night howling of a dog is still believed by many to betoken the
early demise of some person in the near neighbourhood of that in which
it occurs. “Dream o’ the dead and you’ll get news o’ the livin’,” is
a prediction one may hear vented almost any day yet. The practice of
“first-footing” at New Year time is a remnant of superstition; as is
also the practice, still adhered to in country districts, of throwing a
“bauchle” at the heels of a bride as she is quitting her father’s and
mother’s house. An old rhyme has come down embracing a number of omens,
thus—
“West wind to the bairn when gaun for its name,
Rain to the corpse carried to its lang hame;
A bonnie blue sky to welcome the bride
As she gangs to the kirk wi’ the sun on her side.”
And better confidence is inspired in many when the conditions of each
case are favourably meted out.
But to get at the broader humours of superstition, we have to go back a
hundred years or more, when the broader superstitions were in vogue; when
fortune-tellers and dealers in incantations plied a roaring trade—when
the devil—not figuratively, but really—went about like a roaring lion
seeking whom he might devour; and when—
“——guidly folks gat many a fricht
When the mune was set an’ the stars ga’e nae licht,
At the roarin’ linn in the howe o’ the nicht,
Wi’ soughs like Aiken Drum.”
One’s journey through life was fairly beset with supernatural agents,
excitements, and influences. Much, indeed, depended on what day in the
week one made his or her “first appearance on any stage,” for, as that
day was lucky or unlucky, so would their life be. Thus it was rhymed and
written:—
“Monday’s bairn is fair o’ face,
Tuesday’s bairn is fu’ o’ grace,
Wednesday’s bairn’s the child of woe,
Thursday’s bairn has far to go,
Friday’s bairn is loving and giving,
Saturday’s bairn maun work for its living,
But the bairn that’s born on the Sabbath day
Is lucky, and bonnie, and wise, and gay.”
During the period of infancy—particularly, prior to receiving the
sacrament of baptism—the utmost watchfulness had to be maintained lest
the fairies should steal away a healthy child and leave a weakly infant
of their own in its stead. A fairy child, it seemed, when it fell
ill could be restored to health only by human milk. When there was a
suspicion that a substitution of the kind had been effected—and this
was jaloused if a child became extra fractious—a common and effectual
test was to hold the youngster over the fire. If it was a changeling
it would disappear up the lum with a “puff.” If not, it would remain,
perhaps to be burned, and be more fractious than before. Still there
was satisfaction if it stood the test. Various superstitious rites
were practised by the skilly wives to prevent catastrophe. The child
immediately after birth might be turned three times contrary to the
course of the sun. The bed containing the mother and child might be
drawn to the centre of the floor, where the nurse would wave an open
Bible over them three times—once for each person in the Holy Trinity—and
adjure the evil spirits, by the name of all that was sacred, to depart to
whatever place they came from. The sign of the cross made on the floor in
front of the bed, or on the husband’s nether garments laid at the foot of
it, might suffice also to keep the elves aloof.
After a birth the mother was not permitted to cross the threshold of the
door after the hour of sunset till she was “kirkit,” lest the fairies
should carry her off to nurse their children.
Baptismal customs were more ceremonious then than now. A young unmarried
woman invariably carried the child to church. In her hand she took with
her a slice of bread and cheese, wrapped up, and fastened with a pin
taken from the child’s dress, and this she presented to the first male
passer she met. This person constituted the child’s “first-foot”—it
had not previously been allowed to cross the doorstep; and if he was a
dark-haired man, there was good luck for the child; if fair, the reverse
would happen to it.
Connected with this practice, Dr. Classon tells an amusing story. An
English Duke had arrived in Glasgow on a Sunday, and was wandering in the
streets during the time of afternoon service, when a young woman came up
to him with a child in her arms, and offered him a piece of bread and
cheese. In vain he protested that he did not know what she meant—that
he had nothing to do with her or her child—that he was an entire
stranger—that he had never been in Scotland before—that he knew nothing
of the usages of the Presbyterian Kirk, being of the Church of England,
and that she should give the “piece” to somebody else. The young woman
was deaf to all his arguments, and held out authoritatively the bread
and cheese. Thinking, probably, that the lass had not given him credit
for what he had said, he told her in perfect simplicity that he was the
Duke of ⸺, and that he had just arrived at a hotel in the city, which he
named. Her answer shut his mouth—“Though ye were the king on the throne,
sir, ye maun tak’ that bread an’ cheese.”
Marriage was set about with rites and usages, some of which were
peculiarly funny. First of all, in respect to date, the fateful month
of May had to be avoided. If the “send,” or bridal party, in going to
or from the manse, met a funeral procession or a hearse on the way, it
was a bad omen. When the bride entered her house for the first time, she
had to be careful to step over the threshold, if she would be lucky. An
oaten cake, or a cake of shortbread, was broken over her head, usually
by the mother of the bridegroom, as she entered. In some instances the
bread was placed on a plate and thrown over her head. If the plate was
broken, so much the better luck. Then the links of the crook were put
round her neck, and she was led to the meal girnal and compelled to
take up a handful of meal. On the morning after marriage, in some parts
of the country, the youth of both sexes, or perhaps females, would
assemble out of doors, along with the newly-married couple. A basket
would be transmitted among them, and gradually filled with stones until
it reached the bridegroom, when it would be suspended from his neck.
On receiving some more additional load, his affectionate helpmate, to
testify her sense of the caresses he had lavished on her, would cut the
cord and relieve him of the oppressive burden. The person who declined to
comply with the latter ceremony would have come under a certain degree of
discredit.
Liable at all times to the malevolent influences of the “Evil Eye,” in
addition to the many other ills already indicated, human life in the
olden time was a serious matter. If a person died suddenly, or was laid
aside by any sickness or disease, which the doctor might not readily
comprehend the nature of, he was declared to have fallen the victim to an
evil eye. When a death occurred the corpse was dressed and laid out in
the manner still in practice, but with this addition—the friends laid on
the breast of the deceased a wooden platter containing a small quantity
of salt and earth, separate and unmixed—the earth an emblem of the
corruptible body; the salt an emblem of the immortal spirit. No fire was
allowed to be lit in a room where a corpse was kept; and it was reckoned
so ominous for a dog or a cat to pass over it, that the poor animal was
at once laid by the heels and killed without mercy. If a mourner’s tear
falls on the shroud, the spirit of the deceased might in consequence be
so disturbed that it could not rest in the grave. During the several
nights that intervened betwixt death and interment, the friends and
neighbours took their turn at “sittin’ up wi’ the corpse,” and were
provided with a candle, a Bible, and a bottle of whisky. This practice
was known as the “Lykewake,” and its main purpose was to protect the
body of the deceased person from supernatural interference. If a funeral
_cortege_ proceeded to the kirkyard in an irregular and straggling
manner, it was accepted as a portent that there would ere long be another
funeral in the same family.
In a village in Aberdeenshire, we read in the _Statistical Account_,
where it was believed that the ghost of the person last buried kept the
gate of the churchyard till relieved by the next victim of death, a
singular scene frequently occurred when two burials were to take place
in one churchyard on the same day. Both parties hurried forward as fast
as possible to consign their respective friend in the first place to the
dust. If they met at the gate, the dead were thrown down till the living
decided by blows whose ghost should be condemned to porter it. Suicides
were denied the right of Christian burial, and were interred either
within the crossing of two public roads, with a stake driven through the
body to hold it down, or were deposited in the march or ditch dividing
two lairds’ lands—as in the case of “Jenny Nettles,” the heroine of the
old song—and had a huge cairn of stones raised over the spot for the same
purpose of protection.
Ghosts, of course, were numerous enough, and there was little need to
make reckless additions to their number. The floating ballads were
studded with them, and each district had its tales of ghostly horror.
Among the ghosts of national celebrity there was “Pearlin’ Jean,” of whom
the traditional catch runs—
“O Pearlin’ Jean! O Pearlin’ Jean!
She haunts the house, she haunts the green,
And glowers on us a’ wi’ her wul’-cat een.”
“In my youth,” says Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, “Pearlin’ Jean was
the most remarkable ghost in Scotland, and my terror when a child. Our
old nurse, Jenny Blackadder, had been a servant at Allanbank, and often
heard her rustling in silks up and down stairs and along the passages.
She never saw her, but her husband did. She was a French woman, whom the
first Baronet of Allanbank, then Mr. Stuart, met with at Paris during his
tour to finish his education as a gentleman. Some people said she was a
nun; in which case she must have been a Sister of Charity, as she appears
not to have been confined to a cloister. After some time young Stuart
either became faithless to the lady, or was suddenly recalled to Scotland
by his parents, and had got into his carriage, at the door of his hotel,
when his Dido unexpectedly made her appearance, and, stepping on the
fore-wheel of the coach to address her lover, he ordered the postillion
to drive on, the consequence of which was that the lady fell, and one of
the wheels going over her forehead, killed her.
“In a dusky autumnal evening, when Mr. Stuart drove under the arched
gateway of Allanbank, he perceived Pearlin’ Jean sitting on the top, her
head and shoulders covered with blood. After this, for many years, the
house was haunted—doors shut and opened with great noise at midnight;
the rustling of silks and pattering of high-heeled shoes were heard in
bedrooms and passages. Nurse Jenny said there were seven ministers called
in together at one time to lay the spirit; ‘but they didna muckle good,
my dear.’ The picture of the ghost was hung up between those of the lover
and his lady, and kept her comparatively quiet; but when taken away she
became worse-natured than ever.”
Another was “Thrummy Cap,” a kindly ghost, celebrated in popular verse
by John Burness, the cousin-german of the national poet. Then there
were “Lady Greensleeves,” who haunted the castle of Huntingtower, in
Perthshire; the “Ghost o’ Mause,” a Blairgowrie spectre, who revisited
the glimpses of the moon in the shape of a fox; but such a fox as had
the power of speech, and to which no farmer’s dog in the parish would
be induced to give chase—and many besides. One of “Lady Greensleeves’”
appearances was mercifully opportune. In a lone house on the estate of
Huntingtower there lived an old man, the sole occupant of the building,
and reputed to have hidden riches in some secret place in his dwelling.
One night a number of masked villains broke in upon him and demanded, on
pain of death, that he should show them where his money was concealed.
In vain did he protest that he had no money in the house, save a few
shillings, to which he made them welcome. Laying hands on him, dragging
him to the floor, and brandishing their drawn knives over his hoary head,
they swore that he must die for the lie which he had told them. As the
oath was on their lips their intended victim uttered a wild shriek, and
stretched out his hands imploringly towards a small two-paned window in
the wall of the house. To that window the ruffians turned their eyes
keenly, when lo! through the under pane a female face, pale as death,
but with eyes sparkling like diamonds, stared in on them. “Oh, Lady
Greensleeves,” cried the old man, “winna ye come an’ help me?” The name
was as terror-striking as was the weird face at the window, and throwing
down their knives, the robbers rushed from the house, and fled through
the darkness, as if all the rogue-catchers of the shire had been at their
heels.
Belief in the supernatural, it is worth noting, has not been confined
exclusively to the ignorant classes. Lord Byron was sensitively
superstitious. Sir David Brewster admitted it to have a certain power
over him. James Thomson, the author of the “Seasons,” had a great horror
of the supernatural; and his fear of ghosts and goblins afforded much
amusement to his fellow-collegians at Edinburgh. His bedfellow, knowing
that he was afraid to remain alone in the dark, quietly slipped away
from him one night when he was asleep. On waking, he rushed out of the
room like a frightened child, and called loudly on his landlady for
assistance. Dr. Somerville, who relates this anecdote upon the authority
of Mr. Cranston, late minister of Ancrum, who lodged in the same room
with the poet at Edinburgh, attributes his weakness on this subject to
the following circumstance:—
“The belief in ghosts, witches, fairies, etc., was so exceedingly
prevalent at the beginning of this century that it would have been deemed
heretical in any clergyman to have called in question their existence,
or even their palpable interposition. One of the last appearances of
these tremendous agents happened (I am speaking in the language of the
vulgar) at Woolie, in the parish of Southdean, where Mr. Thomson was
minister. Ever since I entered into life, it was necessary to speak
guardedly upon the subject of the Woolie Ghost, as I myself have more
than once given offence by my silence on the subject. The sequel of the
story I heard, not at second-hand, but from the lips of a person, and
that of rank and education, above the vulgar. Mr. Thomson, the father
of the poet, in a fatal hour, was prevailed upon to attempt laying the
evil spirit. He appointed his diet of catechising at Woolie, the scene
of the ghost’s exploits, and behold, when he had just begun to pray, a
ball of fire strikes him on the head. Overwhelmed with consternation, he
could not utter another word, or make a second attempt to pray. He was
carried home to his house, where he languished under the oppression of
diabolic malignity, and at length expired. Only think what an impression
this story—I do not say fact, I say this story, for of it there can be
no doubt—must necessarily have made upon the vigorous imagination of the
young poet.”
The ghost stories of Scotland would fill a large volume. Pennant
tells of a poor visionary in Breadalbane who had been working in his
cabbage garden, and imagined that he was suddenly raised into the air
and conveyed over the fence into a corn field, where he found himself
surrounded by a crowd of men and women, many of whom he knew to be dead.
On his uttering the name of God they all vanished, except a female
sprite, who obliged him to promise an assignation at the very same hour
of the same day next week. Being left, he found his hair tied in double
knots, and that he had almost lost the use of speech. However, he kept
his appointment with the spectre, whom he soon saw coming floating
through the air towards him; but she pretended to be in a hurry, bade
him go on his way, and no harm should befall him. Such was the dreamer’s
account of the matter. But it is incredible, adds the narrator, what
mischief this story did in the neighbourhood. The friends and relatives
of the deceased, whom the old dotard had named, were in the utmost
distress in finding them in such bad company in the other world; and the
almost extinct belief in ghosts and apparitions seemed for a time to be
revived.
Next to ghosts, witches ranked as objects of preternatural dread; and
“for ways that were dark, and tricks that were vain,” the witches,
no doubt, were peculiar. And yet, surely most of the poor wretches
who suffered and died at the stake because of the suspicion that they
practised the forms of diablerie popularly attributed to warlocks and
witches, were more sinned against than sinning.
The burning of witches—based, no doubt, on the command given in the
twenty-second chapter of Exodus, namely—“Thou shall not suffer a witch to
live”—forms a black chapter in the history of Scotland, and one in which
we look in vain for the discovery of much humour. In the powers popularly
assigned to these “withered beldams, auld and droll,” there was, however,
a world of humour. They were accused of having intercourse with Satan,
and making bargains with the Evil One to serve him—of attending meetings
of witches—of raising storms at sea—of taking away milk—of blasting the
corn—of spoiling the success of the fishing—of curing diseases, and of
inflicting diseases, and of receiving money in payment for the one and
the other. Among the warlocks and witches who danced to satanic strains
in “Alloway’s auld haunted kirk,” the poet was careful to note—
“There was ae winsome wench and walie,
That night enlisted in the core,
Lang after kenn’d on Carrick shore:
For mony a beast to dead she shot,
And perish’d mony a bonnie boat,
And shook baith meikle corn and bear,
And kept the country-side in fear.”
“It is astonishing,” says one, “that the _Reformed_ clergy could have
believed that his sable majesty, to whom they ascribed so much cunning,
should have employed only ignorant, old, and decrepit women as his
instruments in carrying out his war against mankind.” It is equally
matter for astonishment, surely, that many of these ignorant, old, and
decrepit women themselves believed that they possessed the powers of
diablerie popularly attributed to them. Isobel Gowdie, who was burned
as a witch in 1662, gives the following as the charm which had to be
repeated when she resolved to change into a hare—
“I sall go intill a hare,
With sorrow, sigh, and muckle care;
And I sall go in the devil’s name,
Ay while I come back again.”
This from her Confessions, as reported in the Appendix to Pitcairn’s
_Criminal Trials_, is of interest:—“He (the devil) would send me now
and then to Auldern on some errands to my neighbours, in the shape of a
hare, and Patrick Papley’s servants, in Kilhill, being going to their
labouring, his hounds being with them, ran after me, being in the shape
of a hare. I ran very long, but was forced, being weary, at last to take
to my own house. The door being left open I ran in behind a chest, and
the hounds followed in; but they went to the other side of the chest, and
I was forced to run forth again, and ran into another house, and there
took leisure to say—
‘Hare, hare, God send thee care;
I am in a hare’s likeness now,
But I sall be a woman e’en now;
Hare, hare, God send thee care,’
and so I returned to my own shape, as I am at this instant, again. The
dogs will sometimes get some bites of us when we are in hares, but will
not get us killed. When we turn out of a hare’s likeness to our own
shape we will have the bites and rives and scratches on our bodies. When
we would be in the shape of cats we did nothing but cry and wraw, and
riving, and, as it were, worrying one another; and when we come to our
shapes again we will find the scratches and rives on our skin very sore.
When one of us, or more, are in the shape of cats, and meet with any
others, our neighbours, we will say—
‘Devil speed thee,
Go thou with me!’
and immediately they will turn into the shape of a cat and go with us.
When we will be in the shape of crows we will be larger than ordinary
crows, and will sit upon branches of trees.”
The spells, incantations, and cantrips, employed by witches when working
out their diableries were quaint and curious enough. Students of
Shakespeare are familiar with the
“Toil and trouble, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble,”
of the witches in the play of _Macbeth_, as well as the request of the
first witch, to
“Pour in sow’s blood, that hath eaten
Her nine farrow; grease that’s sweaten
From the murderer’s gibbet throw
Into the flame,”
making an uncouth mixture. But think of the following—one of two snatches
of cantrip rhymes quoted by M’Taggart in the _Scottish Gallovidian
Encyclopedia_—
“In the pingle or the pan,
Or the haurnpan o’ man,
Boil the heart’s blude o’ the tade,
Wi’ the tallow o’ the gled;
Hawcket kail, and hen dirt,
Chow’d cheese, and chicken-wort;
Yellow paddocks champit sma’,
Spiders ten, and gelloch’s twa;
Sclaters twall, frae foggy dyke,
Bumbees twenty, frae their byke;
Asks frae stinkin’ lochens blue,
Aye will mak’ a better stew;
Bachelors maun hae a charm,
Hearts hae they a’ fu’ o’ harm,
Aye the aulder, aye the caulder,
Aye the caulder, aye the baulder.
Taps snaw white, and tails green,
Snappin’ maiden’s o’ fifteen,
Mingle, mingle, in the pingle,
Join the cantrip wi’ the jingle;
Now we see, and now we see,
Plots o’ poachin’ ane, twa, three.”
By tugging at a hair-rope, in the usual manner of milking a cow—said rope
being made up of tufts of hair drawn from cows’ tails, and having on it a
knot for each cow—and chanting the following, or a similar charm—
“Cow’s milk, and mare’s milk,
And every beast that bears milk,
Between St. Johnstone’s and Dundee,
Come a’ to me, come a’ to me,”
it was vulgarly believed, as late as the beginning of the century,
that a witch could draw away every drop of milk from the cattle in her
neighbourhood. Only a horse-shoe nailed to the byre door, and sprigs
of rowan-tree tied with red thread to the cow’s tail, was a certain
protection here; for
“Rowan-tree and red thread
Gar the witches tyne their speed.”
Where such protection was neglected, to discover the witch, the gudeman’s
breeks might be put upon the horns of the cow—a leg upon each horn—when,
for certain, crummie being let loose, would run straight to the door of
the guilty party.
When the late Reverend Dr. Andrew A. Bonar as a young man laboured in
the position of assistant minister in Collace parish, less than half
a century ago, I have been told, he found the practice of wearing
horse-shoes on byre doors so prevalent there that he tried to reason the
people out of the absurdity. He so far succeeded, but no further than
this, that they took them off the _outsides_ of the door and fastened
them upon the insides—where, I believe, some are to be seen even to this
day and hour.
“Scoring abune the breath” (executing with a rusty nail, to the effusion
of blood, the sign of the Cross, on the upper parts of the face of
a suspected witch) was another means of protection. Whoso performed
this ceremony was henceforth secure against personal attack from the
particular witch, or witches, he may have “scored.” An old joiner, or
“wricht,” in a Perthshire village, with whom I was well acquainted in my
boyhood, had a belief in witches which no human argument could dissolve.
He suspected a neighbour’s wife of witchcraft, and lived in terror of
her until, one day, finding a favourable opportunity of performing the
operation, he “scored” her “abune the breath” with a rusty nail, which he
carried with him concealed for the purpose; and, this done, he started
back, and shaking his clenched fist in her face, bragged her to “do her
warst noo.”
In Hogg’s tale of “The Witch of Fife,” is to be found the pleasantest
stories of witches’ “ongauns” to be met with anywhere. Hogg had no peer
in the delineation of the mysterious and uncanny, and the students of
fairy mythology will ever esteem his picture of “Kilmeny,” as one of the
most beautiful and perfect of its kind.
“Bonnie Kilmeny gaed up the glen,
But it wasna to meet Duneira’s men.”
Like many another, before and since, she was taken possession of by the
fairies, and led to a land where
“The emerald fields were of dazzling glow,
And the flowers of everlasting blow.”
Fairies were popularly believed to inhabit certain round grassy
eminences, where they celebrated their nocturnal festivities by the light
of the moon. It was believed that if, on Hallowe’en, any person should
go round one of these hillocks nine times, contrary to the course of the
sun, a door would open, by which he would be admitted into the realms of
fairyland. Many, it has been said, of mortal race have been entertained
in their secret recesses, there to have been received into the most
splendid apartments, and regaled with the most sumptuous banquets and
delicious wines. Their females surpassed the daughters of men in beauty,
and fairy life was one eternal round of festivity and dancing. Unhappy
was the mortal, however, who dared to join in the joys, or ventured to
partake of their dainties, as, by this indulgence, he forfeited for ever
the society of men, and was bound down irrevocably to the conditions of a
_Shi ich_, or “man of peace.”
There is a Highland tradition to the effect that a woman, in days of
yore, was conveyed into the secret recesses of the _Daoine Shi_, or
men of peace. There she was recognised by one who had formerly been an
ordinary mortal, but who had, by some fatality, became associated with
the fairies. This acquaintance, still retaining some portion of human
benevolence, warned her of her danger, and counselled her, as she valued
her liberty, to abstain from eating and drinking with them for a certain
space of time. She complied with the counsel of her friend; and when the
period assigned was elapsed, she found herself again upon earth, restored
to the society of mortals. It is added, that when she examined the viands
which had been presented to her, and which had appeared so tempting
to the eye, they were found, now that the enchantment was removed, to
consist only of the refuse of the earth.
“It is the common opinion,” says Sir Walter Scott, “that persons
falling under the power of the fairies, were only allowed to revisit
the haunts of men after seven years had expired. At the end of seven
years more, they again disappeared, after which they were seldom seen
among mortals. The accounts they gave of their situation differ in
some particulars. Sometimes they were represented as leading a life of
constant restlessness, and wandering by moonlight. According to others,
they inhabited a pleasant region, where, however, their situation was
rendered horrible by the sacrifice of one or more individuals to the
devil every seventh year. This circumstance is mentioned in Alison
Pearson’s indictment, and in the ‘Tale of the Young Tamlane,’ where it is
termed ‘The paying the kane to hell’; or, according to some recitations,
‘the teind,’ or tenth. This is the popular reason assigned for the desire
of the fairies to abstract young children as substitutes for themselves
in this dreadful tribute. Concerning the mode of winning or recovering
persons abstracted by the fairies, tradition differs; but the popular
opinion supposes that the recovery must be effected within a year and a
day, to be held legal in the Fairy Court. This feat, which was reckoned
an enterprise of equal difficulty and danger, could only be accomplished
at Hallowe’en at the great annual procession of the Fairy Court.” Burns
refers to this fairy pageant in the opening lines of his “Hallowe’en,”
thus—
“Upon that night, when fairies light,
On Cassilis Downan’s dance,
Or ower the lays, in splendid blaze,
On sprightly coursers prance.”
It was at Miles Cross, on Hallowe’en, that fair Janet succeeded in the
rescue of her lover, “The Young Tamlane”:—
“She pu’d him frae the milk-white steed,
And loot the bridle fa’;
And up there raise an eldritch cry,
‘He’s won among us a’!’
“They shaped him in fair Janet’s arms
An ask, but and an adder:
She held him fast in every shape—
To be her bairn’s father.
“They shaped him in her arms at last
A mother-naked man;
She wrapped him in her green mantle,
And sae her true love wan.”
Hallowe’en as it is popularly observed in Scotland nowadays, is a “merry
meeting,” and nothing more; but in the times from which Burns drew his
inimitable picture of it, it was a festival pregnant with superstitious
significance and prophetic awe, and some of the olden time customs are
worth recounting:—The first ceremony of Hallowe’en was, pulling each a
stock or plant of kail. The parties went out hand in hand with eyes shut,
and pulled the first they met with. Its being big or little, straight
or crooked, was prophetic of the size and shape of the grand object of
all their spells—the husband or wife. If any yird or earth stuck to the
root, that meant tocher or fortune, and the taste of the custock—that is
the heart of the stem—indicated the temper or disposition. The “runts”
were placed over the doorway; and the christian names of the people whom
chance brought into the house, were, according to priority of placing the
“runts,” the names in question. When burning the nuts, they named the
lad and lass to each particular nut, as they laid them in the fire, and,
according as they burned quietly together, or started from beside one
another, the course and issue of the courtship would be. Among various
other charms to be practised were those:—To take a candle and go alone to
the looking-glass, and eat an apple before it—combing your hair all the
time—when the face of your conjugal companion would be seen in the glass
as if peering over your shoulder. To steal out, unobserved, and sow a
handful of hemp seed, harrowing it with anything you could conveniently
draw after you—a grape or a rake or the like—repeating now and again—
“Hemp seed I saw thee, hemp seed I saw thee,
Whaever’s to be my true-love, come after me and maw thee,”
and, on looking over your shoulder, you would see the appearance of the
person invoked, in the attitude of reaping hemp. To take the opportunity
of going unnoticed to a bean-stack, and in fathoming it three times round
with both arms, in the last fathom of the last round you would embrace
the appearance of your future yoke-fellow. To go to a south-running
spring or rivulet, where “three lairds’ lands meet,” and dip your
left shirt-sleeve. Go to bed in sight of a fire, before which you had
previously hung the wet sleeve to dry. Lie awake, and about midnight an
apparition having the exact figure of the grand object in question, would
come and turn the sleeve, as if to dry the other side of it. Take three
dishes: put clean water into one, foul water into another; leave the
third empty. Blindfold a person (say a male) and lead him to the hearth
where the dishes are ranged. If he dips the left hand by chance into
clean water, his future wife will come to the bar of matrimony a maid; if
into the empty dish, he will have no marriage at all; if into the foul,
he will marry a widow. This charm had to be repeated three times, and
every time the arrangement of the dishes had to be altered.
There are other decayed and rapidly decaying forms of popular
superstition—such as those relating to animals and places, the
characteristics of the Brownies, and the various, vast, and extravagant
ideas which have been entertained concerning the personality and
behaviour of that much abused party known as “Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick,
or Clootie”—but these must suffice here.