Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/83

 Rh (b) If a child is born during the time the tide is "flowwin" (rising), the saying is, that "the warlde (world) flowws on't" (Pennan).

(c) When a new-born child is being washed, if a boy, he is rubbed gently to make him good-tempered. A girl is rubbed more roughly to make her firm (Portessie). If the child cries much when born, its wrist is at times scratched to draw blood, so that the "ill-natured" blood might escape. This was done not many years ago by a midwife in Rosehearty, and she said that unless she did so, the child would be ill-tempered.

(d) In nursing their babies, the mothers or nurses often dandle them in a way to imitate the rocking of a beat on the sea (Portessie, Macduff, Rosehearty). Here is a nursing rhyme—

This rhyme was repeated to the child, as the mother or nurse sat in front of a fire, from which a good deal of smoke was rising.

Does the rhyme refer to the custom of the trial by fire? When a child was "dwinin", it was suspected that the real child had been stolen by the fairies, and one of their own left in its room. It was tried by fire. A large fire of peat was heaped on the hearth, the child put into a basket, which was hung in the "crook" over the fire. If the "dwinin" child was one of fairy origin, it made its escape by the "lum" (chimney), and the true child was restored.

(e) A necklace of amber beads ("lamer") was worn round the child's neck to keep off ill-luck (Rosehearty).

(f) The belief in the influence of the planets on human life was at one time not uncommon. An old woman, that lately lived in Pennan, had an expression she used when she was nursing a child much given to crying: "Ye've been born aneth an ill planet", or "an unlucky planet".