Page:Shetland Folk-Lore - Spence - 1899.pdf/154

 hoarse in the throat, and altogether so changed that even the mother cannot recognise her once thriving child. At last an old woman is brought to the house, and she declares that the bairn is “hurted frae da grund.”

A bucket of salt water is fetched out of the breaking sea, and three small ebb-stanes. A large fire is put on the hearth and the stones are placed in it. The sea water is poured into the meat kettle, and the stones when red hot are thrown into it. Meg is stripped and placed in this bath. She is turned round in the kettle, three times with the sun and thrice in the opposite direction.

The child is now placed on a wet blanket, and passed through the flame of the peat fire three times. She is then swathed in this sheet and put to bed, after which she is burned in effigy. The mother is further instructed to “tig the nine mothers' maet” for the bairn's restoration—i.e., nine mothers whose first born