Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/240

216 the parish of Kilmuir, in Skye, beside which, ghost lights are said to have been frequently seen before funerals passed, and after the funerals had passed the lights disappeared."

The frequency of the connection of these lights with bridges is noteworthy.

The following is from a native of Lochaber: "There was, not very long ago, a family residing near Fort William. One night the father and one of the sons, when on their way home from the town, saw a light on the river which passed not far from their house. When they first noticed the light, it was at a bridge that was on the river, and it went down the stream some distance, and disappeared quite suddenly. This was in the time of harvest; and a few days after, the father, the same son, and another younger were going for brackens, and had to cross the bridge at which they first saw the light. The father and the younger son crossed the bridge, but the other lingered to gather nuts from the hazel-bushes growing at the end of the bridge. He overbalanced himself, fell into the river, which was then in spate, and was carried down and disappeared in a pool at a spot where he and his father had seen the light disappear." Further, the whole family, father, mother, and several sons and daughters, respectable and reliable persons, assert that during that season, for a good while before the drowning accident, they over and over again heard rapping at the door, not one, but all of them; and when they went to the door, no one was to be seen.

The bridge at Port Charlotte (Islay) is said to have been haunted ever since a murder was committed at the spot many years ago. says that "he was crossing the bridge in the dark on one occasion. Suddenly he saw a light moving down the glen in a fluttering manner. He kept his eye on it till it reached the bridge, when it went under it and was no more seen by him. He felt quite convinced that it was something supernatural he had seen."