Anything may be twisted into stupid or incredible shapes. When affairs did not prosper among the Footdee folk, it was attributed to an evil foot, an “ill fit.” Prior to setting out upon any expedition or enterprise, they were careful and particular about the first “fit” they met in the morning. The Scum of the Well was an object of rivalry every New Year’s Day morning, Old Style. As the midnight hour approached, and the last moments of the year came on, the women assembled in a solemn group, around the large old draw-well, and scolded and scuffled to decide whose pan or bucket should carry off the first fraught (or first freight). The superstition of the first foot may afford some explanation of the phrase Putting his foot into it. Prior to commencing anything, is it not well to note carefully who may be taking the initiative for evil in it? Is not the first evil foot astir in it a serious thing for any enterprise? As for the scum of the well, is not the energetic housewife who obtains the first supply of the first necessary of life,--water--likely to surpass all rivals in providing for her household? I opine it is only a sort of piety due to our forefathers to guess they were shrewder fellows than we might suppose from our views of their superstition, witchcraft, and sorcery. Indeed there is something small in the minds which study superstitions only to find in them occasions for indulging the sudden elation of self-glory which Hobbes says is the cause of laughter. Our forefathers inherited a spirit-world of personifications; and we have inherited a mass of philosophical abstractions. Our forefathers inherited a poetical and popular nomenclature, and we express our scientific generalisations in crack-jaw words of Greek and Latin derivation. Ghosts, wraiths, witches, fairies, mermaids and water-kelpies, are personifications which have been covered with ridicule, and undoubtedly there have been an abundance of ridiculous stories told respecting them; but I suspect there is philosophy in them after all. The minds of Coast Folk are peopled from early childhood with spectres belonging to the land, sea, and sky; and no wonder, since, during long centuries, catastrophes have desolated the homes of Coast Folk which have issued mysteriously and terribly from land, sea, and sky. Seven miles from Aberdeen there is a fishing-village which was buried in a sand-storm in one night. Almost every soul of the inhabitants was smothered in the sand-drift, and for many years the spire of the village church alone marked the spot in the hollow treacherous sand-hills. When a boy I was warned by words and looks of horror from approaching the fatal locality where it was thought the wrath of the Almighty had displayed itself so awfully. Several instances have occurred in which all the men of a village have gone to sea, and perished in one night. A boat or a corpse heard of as having been cast ashore on a distant beach, was sometimes