Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/73

Rh "Spriolag ort!" The spriolag is the band tied about the head of a corpse.

If a person's feet feel unaccountably tired, it is a presage of having to go and invite people to a funeral. These invitations are always personal, and necessarily so where there is no written language, and where the means of communication are rudimentary. There is much ceremony observed, and to be neglected in the invitations is a serious slight. On the other hand, no one, however intimate, would attend without being asked.

Alms are given to the poor when any relative dies, for the sake of his soul.

The etiquette of mourning is somewhat elaborate. The pipes are silent for at least a year in a house where there has been a death. On one occasion when we were privileged to be present at the ceremonial of "fulling the cloth," i.e. dressing the home-made tweed, the owner of the web sat by silent, taking no part in the labour, though it concerned what she had herself spun and woven. A relative had died in the meantime.

There are some curious beliefs about drowning, a subject naturally ever present to the islanders in thought and speech.

There is a little black spot which everyone has on some part of the body. Those who have it "above the breath," i.e. above the mouth, can never be drowned. It is called the "otter spot," ball dobhrain.

In Gairloch there is a belief that no one was ever drowned while the sun was visible in the sky.

It is believed in Uist that idiots cannot be drowned, as it is the weight of brain that takes a man to the bottom. Many stories are told in support of this. Father Allan tells of an idiot, well known to him, that he was one day sent down to the shore to soak a heather rope to make it tough. He threw it out on to the surf and then went in after it, but the tide swept him off his feet and carried him out to sea in a sitting