Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/248

 2IO Collectanea.

that the clergy claimed the blankets on which a person had died, we suggest, had arisen from some such misconception as that expressed by Bishop Meryk when he wrote of the Manx women that they " never went abroad but with a winding-sheet about them to mind them of their mortality," (Tain's History of the Isle of Ma?i, ii., 105), corpses doubtless being buried in the plaid which they had worn in daily life.

The same hunkering dance from Barra, the girls with their hands behind their calves and before their thighs hop about

singing —

" Cruinn, geard, sgiobalta, Cruinn, sgiobalta, gleusta, Am fac' thu Anna nighean Alasdair ? Chunnaic, 's Anna nighean Sheumais. 'Sann aig tobar nam Ban-naomh, A' ruith 's a' lasadh ri cheille. "

Round, guard, active,/Round, active, eager,/Have you seen Anna, Alexander's daughter ?/Yes, and Anna, James' daughter,/It was at the Nun's well,/Running and lusting together.

Other names of Highland dances are, Fear Dhruim a' Chairi, Dannsadh nam boc (buck dance), Figh an gun (Weave the gown), and Croit an Droigheann (Thorny croft). Some descrip- tion of these is to be found in the Grampians Desolate, by Alex- ander Campbell. (Quoted from Celtic Monthly cutting.)

Calluinn Hogmanay, the calends of January, New Year's Day.

This is among the Highlanders a high festival, one upon which they exercise considerable hospitality to those who visit them. Popularly the name for New Year " Calluinn " is connected with the word " callan," ' shout, a noise,' because the visitors, generally the young people of a country-side, go round among their friends and neighbours and call attention to their presence on that occasion by various noises, whacking the walls with their shinties, banging a dry skin, carried by one of the party, with sticks, and singing various rhymes requesting their Hogmanay gifts, of eatables principally. This is not a custom peculiar to the Gael, it existed quite recently, at any rate in Brittany, where the name Calannet was applied to the " recompense " given to the visitors. There are phallic reminiscences in the observance