Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/191

 Rh xxvi.—.

(Told on a New Year's Eve thirty-six years ago, to D. M., in Gaelic.)

In the good old times the New Year's festivities were kept up for eleven days together. A long time ago a funeral took place in the churchyard of Dornoch, on a New Year's day. In the churchyard it was, therefore, that on this occasion invitations were given and received. It happened that they were so by all the men attending the funeral, with the exception of one, who was left, when the others moved off, standing alone and crest-fallen among the green graves of his forbears. His attention was attracted to a human skull, lying blackening on the surface of "the strangers' burying-ground." He went up to it, and, hitting it with his staff, addressed it thus:—"Thou seemest to be forsaken and uncared for, like myself. I have been hidden by none, neither have I invited any—I now invite thee." The poor man then walked home, where he arrived as the long mid-winter's night closed in, and found his wife on the look-out for him and for any guests he might have brought with him. Soon after they had sat down to dinner, a venerable old man, dressed in greyish clothes, entered the room in the most perfect silence, took his seat at the table and his share of the viands under which it groaned; indeed, it was amply spread with the food used in the good old times,—mutton, venison, kippered salmon, and oat-bannocks, which had been baked on a red-hot flag-stone, and mixed with eggs, caraway seeds, &c., made from barley-malt. After the meal, the old man, rising, departed without having spoken a word. In the same way he repeated his visits for six nights. At last the host became alarmed and uneasy; as he had been indeed from the beginning convinced that the stranger belonged to the other world. He accordingly asked the priest's advice as to how he was to get rid of the unwelcome guest. The reverend father bade him, in laying the bannocks in the basket for the seventh day's supper, reverse the last-baked one. This, he assured him, would induce the old man to speak.

That night the old grey man perceived it on entering. He did not sit down, as usual, but said as follows:—"I now see, oh, friend I that o2