Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/366

 344 was found next morning lying under his cart with his neck broken.”

The belief in death-omens peculiar to certain families is purely Celtic, and does not, therefore, fall within the province of Border Folk-Lore. Mr. Wilkie indeed mentions the Maug or May Moulach, but calls it a spirit akin to the Killmoulis, whereas it is “the girl with the hairy left-hand” which haunts Tulloch Gorms, and gives warning of a death in the Grant family, like the Banshee in many old houses in Ireland, the Bodca-an-Dun in the family of Rothmarchas, or the spectre of the bloody hand in that of Kinchardines. Such a prophet of death was the Bodach Glas, or dark grey man, of which Sir Walter Scott makes such effective use in Waverley towards the end of Fergus Mac Ivor’s history. Its appearance foretold death in the clan of ——, and I have been informed on the most credible testimony of its appearance in our own day. The Earl of E——, a nobleman alike beloved and respected in Scotland, and whose death was truly felt as a national loss, was playing on the day of his decease on the links of St. Andrews at the national game of golf. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of a game, saying, “I can play no longer, there is the Bodach Glas. I have seen it for the third time; something fearful is going to befall me.” He died that night at M. M——, as he was handing a candlestick to a lady who was retiring to her room. The clergyman from whom I received this story endorses it as authentic, and names the gentleman to whom Lord E—— spoke.

I learn from another friend the particulars of one of the other two presages of impending doom vouchsafed to this nobleman. It was a warning of his wife’s death, and was thus given: Shortly after her confinement, which she had passed through safely, he went from home to attend a wedding, and during his absence dreamt that he read in The Times newspaper an announcement of Lady E——’s death on a day not far distant. The dream affected him a good deal, and his dejection the next day was apparent to every one. He returned home, found the Countess doing well, but soon after she caught cold from being moved