Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/273

 Ghost Lights of the West Highlands. 249

rare, but at one time very common, is the dreag. It was once in a lifetime the narrator came across this pheno- menon. There it was sure enough one April afternoon late, just at the parting of the lights, as a group of us finished our day's labour in the croft, with all its paraphernalia, tails, tassels, and serpentine wreaths attached to the dragon- shaped head, moving slowly but steadily westward, about half-way from Portree to Dunvegan, the patrimony and burying place of MacLeod of MacLeod, and there, as sure, followed the hearse and cortege conveying the remains of the present chiefs mother."

This is doubtless a highly didactic description, but the writer says : " Despite modern pulpit-denunciation and affectation of theology, I do not hesitate to say, any explana- tion I have yet seen (of these supernatural lights), meteoro- logical or otherwise, is not satisfactory, and cannot be accepted from science itself."

The next is described by Mrs. MacD., of a public school in one of the islands :

" I was working in the scullery off the kitchen, which is situated on that side of my house further from the road and facing the hill to the back, when the whole place was illu- minated from the window. Looking up I saw the dreag stretched as if on the air moving steadily from the house, as if it came round the corner of the north end, in line with the window where I stood, and now slanting off from the wall in a line, forming an angle of about 30 degrees with it. In appearance it resembled a little girl's nightdress spread and suspended in the air, as near as I could judge, the height of a telegraph-pole from the ground. The hindmost end was smaller than the rest. It was pure white, but not very brilliant ; I lost sight of it in the shadow of the planta- tion about 300 yards off. The time was between 9 and 10 p.m., and the night was quiet and starry. This won- derful vision was about six years ago, and exactly a year after I saw it, my sweet little girl was suddenly taken away