Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/244

220 A man lived about Coull, on the west side of Islay. In his young days he got the credit of being rather a loose liver; but having undergone a change, he became a respectable man. After he had become a somewhat old man he went out one night to a neighbouring place to buy tobacco. Returning, he was met by some acquaintance, who saw a light on each of his shoulders. This turned out to be a saobhadh of his death, which took place shortly thereafter.

When the passing away of light from a house is so serious a matter, it is not hard to understand the significance of the following:

"One time H. M. went on an errand to C., and while he was sitting in the house an old woman, a neighbour, came in for a kindling for her fire. She got a shovelful of live peats away with her. So soon as she was gone, the mistress of the house took two live peats off the fire, one after the other, and drowned them in a pail of water. The lad wondered why she had done this, but heard afterwards that it was for the purpose of preventing the old woman who had come for the kindling taking anything out of the house by witchcraft."

Of course, H. M.'s experience is not of an occurrence peculiar to any district; precautions against damage by witchcraft after anything has been taken from a house, more especially on particular occasions, are very common.

The relative proportion of marsh-gas, imagination, and after-therefore-caused-by reasoning, which go to form the equivalent, to use a chemist's expression, of these phenomena believed in by the reciters, all respectable and presumably trustworthy persons, it is not proposed to attempt to settle here. Let us pass on to that phenomenon generally ascribed from a scientific point of view solely to the presence of marsh gas—Will-o'-the-Wisp.

Here is a West Highland version of the peculiarities of the tricky sprite, recited in Islay: "Will-o'-the-Wisp is not