Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/469

 Miscellanea. 447

pulling, the tying and knotting were symbolical : the one, that it — the uvula — was to return to its normal condition ; and the other, that it was to remain there. There is an old woman in my neigh- bourhood to whom old-fashioned patients still resort for a cure of the uvula. I have not yet learned whether or not she uses an incantation when performing the cure. After pulling and tying the hair, pepper is applied to the uvula.

Am Faomadh-cinn (the falling backwards), was a complaint incident to children when they began to walk. If a child fell backwards, and its head happened to strike violently against a hard substance, it was believed that such a fall displaced a bone in the roof of the mouth. The symptoms of the complaint were feverishness and looseness of the bowels. The quack-doctor performed his cure by placing his middle finger in the child's mouth, on the bone that was believed to be displaced, and placing his or her other hand against the back of the child's head and lifting it three times from the ground, its whole weight resting on the quack's finger in its mouth, and on his other hand against the back of its head. He then took the child in his arms, one arm below its neck and the other below its feet, the child lying on its back. With the child thus in his arms he went round the fire- place Deiseil (sunwise) — the fire had been previously removed from the hearth, and the hearth-stone swept — and touched the back of the child's head against the hearth-stone, and walked to the door. He repeated this performance also three times, and a cure was believed to be effected.

When a cow or sheep, or any other animal used as food, was found dead on the hill, its carcass must not be taken home, or utilised in any way, until one first went round it, Deiseil, sun- ways, with fire. The fire so used was called Teifie-Naomh — Holy Fire. It is not more than ninety years since this custom was given up in some districts of the island of Lewis. My informant, a man about seventy years of age, told me — twenty-four years ago — that his own mother was among the first to discontinue this and similar customs.

To cure the Aibigil, or colic in animals, the first person who observed the animal labouring under the painful convulsions of this disease was to make a left-handed rope — a rope made by his left hand— of grass or straw, whichever came most conveniently to hand ; he was to put the rope round the animal's body, and