Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/465

 Miscellanea. 443

hour " in high feather," on the fantastic toe. He ventured to go in, and to say : " Thdn t-mi dhuit sguir a dhannsa. Chd'ti eil cho fad sin on' thoisich mi ars' easan " (It is high time for you to stop dancing). He replied: "It is not so very long since I began." So pleased had he been with his employment that a whole year of it seemed to him, even with his burden on his back, less than no time.

Fairy Changelings. — When an infant did not happen to be thriving in the ordinary way, it was believed that the child was "in the knolls." {Theireadh iad gu'n robh e anus na cnuic.) That is to say, it was believed that the fairies had taken away the real child, and left one of their own in its place.

To get quit of the fairy-infant and to get their own restored, the parents or guardians placed the feeble, squealing child exactly in the march between two townships, uttering as they did so the euphem- istical or magical formula, " Gii'n togadh Muinntir Fhionlaidh thu" (May the Finlay people take you away) ; and then went out of sight for a little. In a short time they returned, but in the interval they believed the fairies had returned the proper child, and had taken away their own. It is not more than a hundred years since such a ceremony was gone through in the island of Lewis. A very intelligent man of indisputable worth, then aged about seventy, who gave me this legend twenty-three years ago, told me that it had been performed in the days of his own father, in his immediate neighbourhood.

The following expressions are still in daily use among the Lewis people, though most of those who use them know nothing of their origin, viz.: — " Tha thu anns na cnuic" (Thou art in the knolls), "/i' tu tha anns na cnuic" {lit It is thou that art in the knolls), applied to a young person who is thin and stunted. The magic formula, slightly altered thus : " Togail Muinntir Fhionlaidh ort " (May you get the lifting or taking away of the Finlay people), is now used as a malediction. The common Lewis proverb, " Cho lionmhor ri Muimitir Fhionlaidh " (As numerous as the Finlay people), has already been referred to.

A certain mother, tradition says, was nursing a fairy instead of her own child : " Ach cha robh ire no piseach a' tighinn air, agus cha robh ran «' dol as a' cheann " (But there was neither growth nor progress, and it never ceased crying). As it was ceaselessly crying one day, the supposed mother said to it : "Is mi tha seachd