The meaning of this tale seems to be that the man had been listening the night before to tales of witchcraft, had fallen asleep in the boat on the beach, and had a troublous dream.
DELAYING THE BIRTH OF A CHILD.
This infernal cantrip was played by means of a ball of black worsted thread in a black bag, kept at the foot of the witch’s weaving loom, where it might not be detected. If the ball was taken away the plot fell through. In proof of this, there is a story told that a child was once kept twenty-two years in its mother’s womb by means of witches, and when born it had hair, beard, and teeth, like a person of that age.
The mother of a celebrated West Highland freebooter, ‘Allan of the Faggots’ (Ailein nan sop), was a servant maid who became pregnant by a married man. The man’s wife, when she heard of the scandal, got a bone from a witch, which, she was assured, would, as long as it was kept, delay the birth of the child. Allan of the Faggots was thus kept in his mother’s womb for fifteen months beyond the usual time. The husband got word of his wife’s doings, and took a plan to defeat her. He made his Fool one day come home, pretending to be very drunk, staggering about, and smashing the furniture. On being called to task, the Fool said he had been in a house down yonder (that of the servant-maid), where a child had at last been born, and had got a dram, which went into his head. The wife, on hearing this, thought the witch had deceived her, and threw the bone into the fire. It disappeared in blue smoke, and knocked down the chimney! Allan was then born, with large teeth.
In other tales to the same effect, the trick usually is played on a married woman, by the mother of a maid who had been slighted on her account.
CLAY CORPSE.
The greatest evil that witches can do is to make, for a person whose death they desire, a clay body or image (corp creadha), into which pins are stuck, to produce a slow and painful disease, terminating in dissolution. Waxen figures for the same purpose, and melted by exposure to a slow fire, were known to Lowland superstition. In the Highlands wax was not accessible to poor bodies, and they had to make clay serve the turn. It is said that when a person wants a limb he cannot be destroyed by witches in this manner.
MacIain Ghiarr, the Ardnamurchan thief, stole so many cattle from MacLean of Dowart that he made that chief his deadly enemy. On one of his roving expeditions he was passing at midnight the chapel or burying-ground of Pennygown (caibeal Peighinn-a-ghobhan), on the Sound of Mull. Seeing a light in the chapel, he entered, and found three witches sticking pins in a clay body (corp creadha) intended to represent MacLean of Dowart. As each pin was stuck in, MacLean was seized with a stitch in the corresponding part of his body. Only the last pin remained to be stuck in. It was to be in the heart, and to cause death. MacIain Ghiarr scattered the witches, took with him the clay corpse, and made his way to MacLean, whom he found at death’s door. He took out in his presence the pins one by one, and when the last was taken out MacLean jumped up a hale man, and remained ever after the warm friend of MacIain Ghiarr.
MacGilvray, a former minister of Strathfillan, in Perthshire, was seized with burning pains all over his body, and was slowly wasting away by some malady, of which the nature could not be understood. He lived at Clachan in that strath, and one morning early a woman from the opposite side of the river, on her way to call and ask for him, saw another woman going along before her, who had the reputation of being a witch. Wondering what her neighbour was about at that early hour, she kept well behind and watched. The foremost woman, on coming to a hollow, stooped down, buried something in the ground, and then walked on towards the minister’s house. The other came and dug up what had been buried. It proved to be a piece of wood stuck all over with pins. She took it with her to the manse, and produced it, to the confusion of the witch. On the pins being withdrawn the minister was freed from his pains and got quite well again.
Ross-shire witches could not destroy ‘Donald of the Ear’ (Do’uill na Cluaise), of whom they had made a clay figure, from being unable to put on the ear. Donald had lost the ear in battle. Similarly a corp creadha made for Lord Macdonald by Raonaid a Chreagain failed, because the witches never could put the arm on.
Witches could also produce disease in other ways. Thus, a young man in Perthshire—the tailor Cumming in Drimachastle, Rannoch—fell into a decline. He accounted himself for the loss of health, decay, and sweats at night by witches coming at night when he was in Badenoch (a district at the time celebrated for witchcraft), and converting him into a horse, on which they rode through the air to Edinburgh and other places to spend the night carousing in well-stored cellars. He now saw them often passing in different shapes and in eggshells, etc. The poor young man did not understand the sweats of consumption, and his imagination was disordered by the many tales of witchcraft he had heard.
The same tale, of converting men into horses, is with slight variations common. In Lorn, a woman came night after night and shook a bridle at the son of a neighbouring farmer. He immediately became a horse, on which she rode to London, etc. A younger brother exchanged beds with him, and when the witches were carousing, secured the magic bridle, converted the witch herself into a horse, rode home, and before taking off the bridle took his horse to a smithy, and put on four shoes. Next day an old woman of the neighbourhood was found with her feet and hands horribly mangled.
SILVER SIXPENCE.
As already said, silver fired from a gun will wound a witch, and force her to assume her proper shape. An English sportsman, according to a Perthshire version of an old story, was sitting surrounded by his dogs, in a mountain bothy at the dead hour of night. A cat came in, but the dogs did not move. It sat with its back to the fire, and swelled till it was as large as a yearling calf. The Englishman took a silver button off his clothes, and putting it in the gun, fired at the cat. The brute scampered out at the door. On going to the strath next day, the sportsman being a doctor, was sent for to see a farmer’s wife, who had got suddenly ill. He went, and extracted his own silver button from her right breast.
SAVING HORSES.
In Uist, a band of horses wandered on to a ledge in the face of a steep precipice. It was impossible to