Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/247

Rh attention, till a man distinguished from the others, by wearing whitish trousers, stepped out of the ranks, and ran across the grass in front of the house as if to speak to him. Then the figure vanished, and my friend went to bed. Next day, at twelve o'clock, a funeral did pass Mr. _____'s door. This was not strange; but it is a fact, and a curious one, that a man in whitish trousers, a friend from a distant part of the county, did leave the procession, and walking quickly across the grass, shook hands with G., and asked after his health and family. — (Graham, Cuthil.) X. came to ask a tenant of ours to cross the ferry with him, and to go to Tain, for the fair held there. The man refused, because he had been warned of God in a dream that many would be drowned by the capsizing of the boat. X. laughed at him, went to Tain, and was among the eighty-eight persons drowned the following day. This happened on 16th August, 1809.

iii. — A miller, of the name of Munro (a tenant and clansman of Mr. Munro of Novar), added to his calling the lawful one of carpenter and the unlawful one of distiller of whisky. One Saturday evening late he was drying and preparing some malt in the mill. His wife had gone to bed, but had left, as he found when his work was finished, a good fire in the room (not the kitchen) from which their bed-closet opened. To his horror he found a corpse, or its similitude, lying, as X. says, in linens, below the window. He looked at it for some lime, feeling very sad (he had often had board-rattling and warnings of coffins required in the neighbourhood) : he did not like to pass it, but, going by the other side of the fire, slipped into the little room where his wife slept. He undressed, but looked out again to see if the horrid occupant of his house was still there, which it was, stiff, and white, and still. In the morning of course it had vanished; but it had a great effect on Munro, and when X. met him eight days after he thought him looking grave and unwell. Six days later word came to X. to come quickly to Mrs. Munro, for the mill-stone had broken suddenly, and her husband and a lad who worked with him had both been killed by the fragments. X. made what arrangements he could, but being a