Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/94

86 there this fondness for religious phraseology has left its traces on the native vocabulary. Take, for example, the word for 'anybody, a person, or human being', which Cregeen writes py'agh or p'agh: he rightly regards it as the colloquial pronunciation of peccagh, 'a sinner'. So, when one knocks at a Manx door and calls out. Vet p'agh sthie? he strictly speaking asks, 'Is there any sinner indoors?' The question has, however, been explained to me, with unconscious irony, as properly meaning 'Is there any Christian indoors?' and care is now taken in reading to pronounce the consonants of the word peccagh, 'sinner', so as to distinguish it from the word for 'anybody': but the identity of origin is unmistakable.

Lastly, the fact that a curse is a species of prayer, to wit, a prayer for evil to follow, is well exemplified in Manx by the same words gwee and gweeaghyn meaning both kinds of prayer. Thus I found myself stumbling several times, in reading through the Psalms in Manx, from not bearing in mind the sinister meaning of these words; for example, in Ps. xiv, 6, where we have Ta 'n becal oc lane dy ghweeaghyn as dy herriuid, which I mechanically construed to mean "Their mouth is full of praying and bitterness", instead of "cursing and bitterness"; and so in other cases, such as Ps. x, 7, and cix, 27.

It occurred to me on various occasions to make inquiries as to the attitude of religious Manxmen towards witchcraft and the charmer's vocation. Nobody, so far as I know, accuses them of favouring witchcraft in any way whatsoever; but I have heard it distinctly stated that the most religious men are they who have most confidence in charmers and their charms; and a lay preacher whom I know has been mentioned to me as now and then doing a little charming in cases of danger or pressing need. On the whole, I think the charge against religious people of