Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/60

 48 More Folklore from the Hebrides.

May the Son of Mary, who is the King of the Elements, Enlighten each thing of this. With His grace before me.' '

" It is not always what you would like to see that you will see," continued our informant. " A man coming to- wards you, or a cock or a foal looking towards you, would be good, but if one were to see a beast lying down he might go and get the funeral feast ready. I have seen it happen so always. If while you are making the frith you should see a woman, you should bless yourself at once, it is always bad, and will mean death or something equally bad. There is a little bird, too, which is not lucky, but it is blessed, the glaissean^' and another bird with a white collar about the size of a lapwing that will call two or three times about the end of the house. It is at the evening twilight that he will come, and I never saw him coming that death was not after him."

Many other things she told us, and putting them into some sort of sequence we were able to classify them after the following fashion.

All women are not equally unlucky ; one passing or returning is not so bad, it is standing that she is fatal. One with red hair is worst, ^ but black hair is fairly lucky, and dun-

' The following variant is used in Benbecula : " I going forth

On thy path, O God. God before me ! God after me ! And God in my step ! The charm that Mary made for her Son. Brighid breathed strongly through her palm. Knowledge of truth [ = true knowledge] Without knowledge of falsehood [not false knowledge] As she obtained ;

May I see the semblance Of the thing that I myself am seeking." ■ Said by some to be the hedge-sparrow (see supra, p. 36). ' This unfortunate being is also disastrous to fish. One is inclined to speculate as to the possibility of the connection between this augury and the Highland antipathy to the sandy Scot.