Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/422

 386 Miscellanea.

were to occur shortly in that neighbourhood, and so it happened our legend tells.

VIII. — Hoiv the Straw Hillocks got their Name.

There are two hillocks well known to the writer — in South Shawbost, Lewis — called " Da Chnoc na connlaich," i.e. the two straw hillocks. In ancient legend it is told that a person who happened to be passing between these two knolls, carrying a bundle of straw, late at night, heard when he was exactly be- tween them a fairy from one of them calling him by his local name, thus : " Mhic Dhomhnuill Ghlais nach fag thu 'Chonn- lach," i.e. Son of Donald Gray, will you not leave the straw ? Before, however, he had time to consider what to do he heard a fairy from the opposite hillock saying : " Mhic Dhomhnuill Ghlais cha'n fhag thu Chonnlach co fada 'as a bhios uirread leat agus a tha 'na d' aghaidh'agus duine bharrachd;" i.e. Son of Donald Gray, don't leave the straw so long as there are as many for you as there are against you and a man more.

These hillocks derived their name, so the legend tells us, from this well-known incident of the fairies of one hillock taking the part of a benighted pedestrian of the Adamic race against their neighbour fairies.

Malcolm MacPhail.

Some Country Remedies and their Uses.

The following are some remedies used by country folk in Eng- land, but mainly in Ireland, which (or the majority of which) have not, so far as I am aware, been published yet. They have all come under my own notice or been procured by me from trust- worthy sources.

Scarlet flannel, in E. Riding, Yorks., is the remedy for scarlet fever and other diseases where the idea of red is concerned. The moor-folk use it.

In Tipperary, an old woman wiJl cure warts in a week by taking two straws from the thatch of a nouse, crossing and laying them on