Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/470

 448 Miscellanea.

then to burn it over its body. This was beHeved to be an effectual cure. I remember, as a dream, a friend of mine telling that he himself had observed a stirk of his own labouring under Aibigil pains as described above.

This cure has preserved a technical name for an animal disease, which is not to be found in any of our Gaelic dictionaries.

Healing Poivers of Certain Persons. — A seventh son born in succession was believed to have the power of healing the scrofu- lous disease called the " King's Evil," by touching the affected parts with his hands. I knew two young men in the parish of Lochs, Lewis, to whom people resorted from all the surrounding districts to be cured of Tifineus an PigA— the king's evil. The so-called doctor was quite unconscious of possessing the virtue of healing which the popular mind ascribed to him.

A young man from the mainland of Ross-shire told me quite recently that on one occasion a woman who had travelled nine miles to a seventh-son-doctor in his native district, came to his parents' house and rested there, while he himself was sent to the doctor for water, in which the latter was to put his hands. She gave him a bottle for the water, and a silver coin, as a Seannsal (handsel) for the doctor. The doctor put his hands in water, and muttered something over it, which he could not catch. He then put the water into the bottle, and handed it to the youth, saying, "See to it, that you keep this bottle from touching the ground ; if it once touches the ground its healing virtue is gone." To wash the sores with water thus consecrated was considered equivalent to the doctor's touch.

I remember, one day, when a little boy, being in the company of a reputed witch, who on seeing a Bratag (the grass caterpillar), ^ said that one could heal scalds and burns with his tongue, if he would for that purpose consecrate it, by touching the Bratag with it.

There were some who professed to cure sprains by touching the sprained member by the tongue, and muttering an eora (in- cantation) over it. My young friend from Ross-shire saw an old woman of his acquaintance curing a sprain, as above described.

' A living specimen kindly forwarded by Mr. MacPhail has been identified by Messrs. Watkins and Doncaster, naturalists. 36, Strand, as the larva of the Fox-moth, Boutbyx Rubi. — Ed.