Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/117

Rh formed a new centre of crystallization to the people of Upper Deeside.

Fifty years ago the Braemar Highlanders made the circuit of their fields with lighted torches at Hallowe'en to ensure their fertility in the coming year. At that date the custom was as follows: Every member of the family (in those days households were larger than they are now) was provided with a bundle of fir "can'les" with which to go the round. The father and mother stood at the hearth and lit the splints in the peat fire, which they passed to the children and servants, who trooped out one after the other, and proceeded to tread the bounds of their little property, going slowly round at equal distances apart, and invariably with the sun. To go "withershins" seems to have been reserved for cursing and excommunication. When the fields had thus been circumambulated the remaining spills were thrown together in a heap and allowed to burn out. The chant used as they marched I have been unable to recover. In this way the "faulds" were purged of evil spirits.

A curious "freit," which was duly performed by the mother of one of my informants at the birth of every animal, was to place a burning peat between the door of the stable or cow-house and the young animal and mother, and to leave it there to smoulder.

The funeral customs of the people have completely changed within the period under consideration. There are no more burials of unbaptised children after sundown. Infants whether christened or not are now accorded an honourable interment. The English method of reading a service at the grave (in addition to the Scotch practice of performing that rite in the house of the departed) is rapidly coming into use. The long procession over the hills, in which the corpse was borne on "spokes" (a bier) by relays of men, has given place to the modern hearse, with its following of solemn friends in mourning. The unseemly habit of partaking to excess in strong drink has likewise departed, leaving none to mourn its loss. When our grandfathers were young it was nothing to see quite a number of intoxicated men assisting at a funeral, and many tales are current about unseemly behaviour, quarrels, and pathetic mistakes