Page:Shetland Folk-Lore - Spence - 1899.pdf/169



All persons taking water from this spring brought an offering of three stones, or it might be three coins. Hence at the head of the spring a large cairn of stones has been collected, and I remember when a boy finding old Danish coins there.

When water was brought from this well for sick folk, the journey was made between the hours of sunset and sunrise, and generally the person that bore the medicinal water obtained an inkling of the patient's chance to recover. It might be they heard a gaenfore or saw a feyness; a white mouse or a black fowl might cross their path. Water from this well must not touch the ground; hence the vessel containing it was generally set on the top of a millstone or knockin' stane.

A person likely to die was said to be fey, and a gaenfore or feyness was a prelude of death. Numerous things—both sights and sounds—were said to forebode death in a house or neighbourhood. For example, a cock crowing at an