Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/44

32 the islands are more water than land), must not be used for thatching the houses, though apparently very suitable for the purpose, and freely used for making mats and baskets, horse-collars, and even chairs; but if put on the roof of house or byre, death will certainly follow. Father Allan Macdonald notes on October 16th, 1896, that he was consulted as to the danger of thatching a house with reeds, and if it were really running any risk for man or beast. It was alleged that reeds had been cursed ever since one was used at the Crucifixion of our Lord.

Branches of yew are kept in the house as a preservative against fire—it may be a survival of keeping the Palm Sunday boughs. (In Spain they are placed in balconies against lightning.)

If a child loses a tooth, it should be hidden in the earth that forms the padding of the loose walls, or he will not get another.

If a child's first tooth comes in the upper jaw he will be a bard. Others say, if he is born with a tooth he will be a bard.

It is not right to take fire out of a house where there is a child who has not got a tooth yet, otherwise it will get no teeth at all. When a child's first tooth is coming through, something that has life should be apportioned to him, a calf, or a lamb, or a cock.

It is not right to whistle on board a boat, it may call up the wind. The same informant, who is very definite on this score, says also that "no islander would put a knife into the mast for wind, though he would get Uist." One cannot wonder at the islanders showing fear of any methods of raising the wind, they have too many wild winds in their storm-beaten islands.

"A whistling woman and a crowing hen" are as little tolerated in the Hebrides as elsewhere. The cure for the hen is, to cut off part of the tail.