Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/249

Rh the flame should haunt and affect them injuriously." Much nearer home than Malabar, we are informed by Mr. Feilberg, is a ghost light dangerous, if interfered with. In Denmark, a man passing a small wood walked up to a ghostly light, and struck at it with his stick. "He was unable to proceed, and got away only with great difficulty. Even then he was marked, his mouth having been pulled away towards one of his ears, and it was a long time before he recovered." Mr. Lockhart Bogle, in the Celtic Monthly for November, 1896, gives a ghost-light story from Skye. In this the reciter says his sister "grippit a hold of me and cried, 'Leave it alone, Donal! you have no business with it, and it has no business with you; leave it alone! Donald left it alone, and it proved itself to be a teine bais of a sick girl.

The Gaelic for a witch is buitseach both in Irish and Scottish; and MacBain in his Etymological Dictionary says "from Eng. witch." This may be so, but we find in O'Clery's Glossary (Louvain, 1634), "Buitelach, i. teine mhòr, 'a great fire.' Buite, i. teine, 'fire. The Gaelic gloss to the first of these words is the Gaelic name for Will-o'-the-Wisp, and often so called, using the aspirate as O'Clery does, though grammatically it should be An teine mor, the great fire.

In the Lewis, Will-o'-the-Wisp is called "Teine Seonaid," Janet's fire, which, however, may be a mere variation of the Teine Sionnachain, a name that will be considered afterwards.

I have the following from the Rev. Niel Campbell, Kilchrenan:

McP. said (literal translation of the Gaelic): "A woman was in Uist, and she was sending her daughter for herbs to