Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/271

 Ghost Lights of the West Highlands. 247

under her gown. After this, she saw a light coming down and hiding itself in the bundle. At last she reached the place where the parcel was to be delivered, and found out that what she was carrying was dead-clothes. If she had known that before, she would never have come with them across the hill in the night-time."

The question then seems to be, What is the characteristic of a dreag ?

It is that the main light shall have lesser lights more or less connected with it. In the words of an old Skye man, a thorough Gael, and a schoolmaster, the answer to the query is made quite distinctly : " In speaking of the phe- nomena of a 'dreag' I have till now overlooked the im- portance attached to its many-coloured pendicles, which, according to native interpretation, are symbolical of those following the bier from the house to the grave."

The firstghost-lightansweringthis description is described as follows by the Bernera man who saw it :

" One time I was going a good distance from home, at night, and those in the house advised me to take a fire along with me. To please them I took a live peat and carried it a considerable distance. I then threw it from me, and con- tinued my journey without it. I had not gone far, however, from where I had parted with the peat, when I saw a light a little before me. It was very bright, about the size of a man's head, and about the height of a man from the ground, with a number of smaller lights after it. I was going the same way as it was, but it went faster than I did, and was out of sight before I came up to it. I knew it was a dreug."

In Islay, "the dreug is said to appear before the death of well-to-do people." Immediately after the death of Mr. McN., a well-to-do farmer, Mrs. B. saw it. She describes it " as a ball of fire, with a tail like that of a kite, travelling in the direction of the burying ground."

" Before the death of Mr. MacT., about thirty or forty