Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/158

150 various kinds which they lay beside the body, and afterwards themselves consume.

In the Scottish Lowlands a curious, and apparently meaningless, ceremony used to take place about a hundred years ago on the occasion of a death. It is thus described:

"When a body has been washed and laid out, one of the oldest women present must light a candle, and wave it three times around the corpse. Then she must measure three handfuls of common salt into an earthenware plate, and lay it on the breast. Lastly, she arranges three 'toom' or empty dishes on the hearth, as near as possible to the fire; and all the attendants going out of the room return into it backwards, repeating this 'rhyme of saining':

This rite is called Dishaloof Sometimes, as is named in the verses, a sieve is placed between the dishes, and she who is so fortunate as to place her hand in it is held to do most for the soul. If all miss the sieve, it augurs ill for the departed. Meanwhile all the windows in the house are opened, in order to give the soul free egress In some of the western counties, however, the dishes are set upon a table or 'bunker' (as they call a long chest) close to the death-bed; and it is actually said that while the attendants sit with their hands in the dishes they 'spae' or tell fortunes, sing songs or repeat rhymes, in the middle of which