Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/333

Rh on Allhallowmas Eve, with a new dirk, and after surrounding the tree three times sun-ways, and pronouncing a certain spell, was a sure charm against all glamour or witchery, and an infallible guard in the day of battle. A spray gathered in the same manner was placed in the cradle of infants, and thought to defend them from being changed for elf-bairns by the fairies. Finally, it was affirmed, that when the root of the oak had perished, "the grass should grow in the hearth of Errol, and a raven should sit in the falcon's nest." The two most unlucky deeds which could be done by one of the name of Hay was, to kill a white falcon, and to cut down a limb from the oak of Errol. When the old tree was destroyed I could never learn. The estate has been some time sold out of the family of Hay, and of course it is said that the fatal oak was cut down a short time before. A white rose is the badge of the Clan Stuibhard.

Thomas the Rhymer is credited with the following:

So then the fortune of the Hays was bound up with an immemorial oak. And the white falcon that haunted the spot was very possibly regarded as an ancestral spirit