Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/119

Rh one morning, as Gillies was passing through a big wood some way from his home, on his way to work, he heard his wife calling him. Following the sound of her voice he came to a large hazel bush, but, as he could see no one, he was turning away when from the middle of the bush came again his wife's voice. He felt very frightened, for he thought it must be her ghost, but he asked what she wanted. "I am tired," replied his wife, "and want to come home, but I am naked and cannot get quit of the fairies until I am clothed. Fetch me a smock to-morrow morning, and hang it on this bush just when the sun rises, but you must not try to see me, or the fairies will hide me so that I can never find my way back." The next morning at sunrise Gillies hung the smock on the bush, and, as he was turning away from the place, his wife called out to him to bring her another garment, and each morning she asked for something more until he had brought everything she needed. The last thing he brought was his wife's "mutch" (white cap), and, when he was turning to leave the wood, she called to him to go straight home at once, to speak to no one on the way, and not to turn his head either to the right or to the left. If he did as she told him, he would find her at home when he got there. Hugh always declared that his father ran nearly all the way home, and, when he reached the house, his wife was seated by the fire with the children round her, brushing the baby's hair and talking to them as if she had never been away at all. From that day she remained at home as other people did, but she would never tell anyone anything of how she had lived during those two months or of what she had seen or done while she lived with the "wee folk," and to the day of her death she was always looked upon as being "fey."

In Castle-Douglas, it is believed that if two plants of cock's head are put by a happy lover under a stone, and flower thereafter, he or she will be married; if not, not. An old woman of