Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/521

Rh into the truth of this story and asked the girl if she could give him milk, knowing well that she and her grandmother possessed no cow. She said her grandmother had taught her how to have milk at all times. She then went to the fire and proceeded to draw milk from the crook or "swee" which supported the three-legged pot. The milk came, and after a while was followed by blood. The girl, at the sight of this, exclaimed, "The minister's cows will die if I do not stop." The minister then hastened home, to find his cows almost dead of exhaustion.

(5) A widower, with a daughter, married, for the second venture, a woman whom he discovered to be a witch. Not content with exercising her evil powers by herself, she taught her step-daughter her wicked arts. The woman died, leaving her evil knowledge in the possession of the step-daughter. After her death, the man, a widower for the second time, and his daughter were standing on the seashore. Out at sea they saw some ships. "I can sink these ships and drown the people in them," said the girl. "How can you do that?" asked her father. "By turning a limpet shell upside down in a tub so that it cannot right itself, was the answer." "Do so, then," said the man, and his daughter complied, with the desired result. The two then went on, when the man, overcome with wrath and horror, stabbed his daughter, and, according to an old law about witches, allowed her to bleed to death. I have no knowledge of this law further than this reference to it, but it may be known to others.

(6) A young man and woman, accompanied by many friends, walked to Kensaleyre with the purpose of being married by the minister of Snizort. After the ceremony had been performed the party returned to Portree. On the way back the bridegroom dropped down dead. One man of the party went for assistance, probably for a doctor. At the same place, in crossing a stream, this man also dropped dead. Then the wedding party remembered that on the way to Kensaleyre they had been met by a cast-off sweetheart of the bridegroom, with her head muffled in a shawl. During the night after these tragic occurrences the dead bridegroom appeared to his mother, and bade her look at his shirt and she would find a black spot, by means