On the birth of a child--to begin at the beginning--we read that both mother and offspring were “sained,” a lighted fir-candle being carried three times round the bed, and a Bible, with a bannock or bread and cheese being placed under the pillow, while a kind of blessing was indistinctly uttered. Sometimes a fir-candle was set on the bed to keep off fairies. If the new-born showed any symptoms of fractiousness, it was supposed to be a changeling; and to test the truth of the supposition, the child was placed suddenly before a peat-fire, when, if really a changeling, it made its escape by the “lum,” throwing back words of scorn as it disappeared. Great was the eagerness to get the babe baptised, lest it should be stolen by the fairies. If it died unchristened, it wandered in woods and solitary places, bewailing its miserable fate. In Ramsay’s “Gentle Shepherd,” Bauldy, describing Manse the witch, says of her:-- “At midnight hours o’er the kirkyard she raves, And howks unchristened weans out of their graves.” It was considered “unlucky” to mention the name of an “unchristened wean;” and even at baptism the name was commonly written on a slip of paper, which was handed to the officiating minister. What care was taken that the consecrated water should not enter the child’s eyes! For if such a mishap occurred, his future life, wherever he went and whatever he did, would be constantly marred by the presence of wraiths and phantoms. If the babe remained quiet at the font, it was supposed to be destined to a brief career; and hence, to extort a cry, the woman who received it from the father would handle it roughly or even pinch it. If a boy and girl were baptised together, much anxiety was evinced lest the girl should first receive the rite. And why? In the “Statistical Account of Scotland,” the minister of an Orcadian parish says: “Within these last seven years the minister has been twice interrupted in administering baptism to a female child before the male child, who was baptised immediately after. When the service was over, he was gravely told he had done very wrong, for, if the female child was first baptised, she would, on her coming to the years of discretion, most certainly have a strong beard, and the boy would have none.”