Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/252

228 the earth till the Day of Judgement, both because she herself had been so stubborn and because her mother had imprecated her (rinn droch guidhe dhi)." Mr. MacRury gives a stanza of a song in proof of the dislike entertained for Callum Saggart's wife by her neighbours on account of her witchcraft, which had made her imprecation effective:

The probability is that Priest Callum's putative child, if it would speak, could, like other changelings, tell an older story than Callum himself. In fact, as Mr. H. F. Feilberg tells us, we find in Denmark Will-o'-the-Wisp ascribed to "the soul of an unrighteous surveyor, or of an unbaptized, murdered child"—in fact, personages, who like the factor who prevents the gathering of the rudh, and the girl done to death by her mother, indicate a not very distant relationship with the soil in some form.