Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/170

148 been done. A woman who assisted at such a sacrifice minutely described to me the order of procedure.” According to Dr. Mitchell this sacrifice dates from remote antiquity, and is very widely spread. The cock, a creature consecrated to Apollo, who in classic mythology was in some measure connected with the healing art, was in Egypt sacrificed to Osiris, whom we may regard as the same divinity under another title. This bird has, throughout the East, been sacrificed during the prevalence of infectious disease, and in Algeria it is still drowned in a sacred well to cure epilepsy and madness. As to the mention of the patient’s hair and nails, it is remarkable that the savages of the South Sea Islands at the present day perform most of their cures and incantations with the use of the hair, nails, and fragments left from the meals of the persons to be operated upon.

The purely Celtic superstitions have, indeed, an unmistakably heathen character about them which is almost appalling. Our author transcribes, from the old records of the Presbytery of Dingwall, extracts which show that down to A.D. 1678 bulls were sacrificed on August 25 at the little island of Innis Maree, in Loch Maree, and milk poured forth upon the hills as a libation. Several members of the Mackenzie family were cited that year before the Presbytery, “for sacrificing a bull in an heathenish manner, in the island of Saint Rufus, commonly called Ellan Moury, in Lochew, for the recovery of the health of Cirstane Mackenzie, who was formerly sick and valetudinarie,” and it appears that the rite was one frequently performed. The 25th of August is the feast day of St. Malruba, now called Mourie or Maree, the patron saint of the district; but the people of the place often call him the god Mourie, which plainly shows that the worship formerly paid to some local Celtic divinity has been transferred to the saint. When it finally disappeared we are not informed, but a similar observance has been handed on to our own day in the county of Moray. Not fifteen, years ago, a herd of cattle in that county being attacked with murrain, one of them was sacrificed by burying alive, as a propitiatory offering for the rest; and I am informed by Professor Marecco that a live ox was burned near Haltwhistle, in