Banachag is the Hebridean form of the Banarach of the mainland, and Banachogach or Banacach is the Hebridean term for the smallpox. You will observe the close resemblance between the Gaelic word for a dairymaid and that for the smallpox. I think the explanation is obvious. Dairymaids were wont to get the cow-pox, and people confounded the cow-pox with the smallpox. Hence, in the Highlands old people will tell you that effects of the cow-pox were known long before Jenner's celebrated discovery. Hence, also, you will rarely meet with a woman in the Highlands disfigured from the effects of smallpox. Not so the men, however. In England, again, in the rural parishes, the case is reversed. There you will see women pox-marked, but seldom men. The reason I take it to be is this:--In the Highlands it is the woman who milk the cattle, and in doing so they get the cow-pox off the cows in milking them. A Highlander would consider it unmanly to milk a cow. I have never seen or heard of one who could or would do this, except a young man in Lismore. Three or four young men, brothers, had a small farm among them. Their mother died and their two sisters married, and probably remembering Calum-Cille's celebrated saying-- 'Far am bi bò bith'dh bean, S' far am bi bean bithidh buaireadh.' (Where there is a cow there will be a woman, And where there is a woman there will be mischief.) They resolved to do without a woman in their house at all; and they succeeded for a time, but not for long, for-- 'Man, the hermit, sighed, till woman smiled.' One of them ultimately brought home a wife, who soon became a cause of discord and ill-will among the previously happy and affectionate brothers. But this is digressing. In England it is the men who milk the cows. Most men in rural parishes can milk, and but few women. Consequently in the agricultural districts of England you hardly ever see an elderly man disfigured by the smallpox, but you can see many women so disfigured. These suggestions are simply the results of my own observations in England and in the Highlands. They may be to the purpose or not, I don't know." We think they are to the purpose, and we are very much obliged to our correspondent for his many interesting contributions from the Outer Hebrides to our stock of "auld-world" folk-lore. CHAPTER XXXVII. The Delights of Beltane Tide--Bishop Gawin Douglas--His Translation of the Æneid--The Fat of Deer--"Light and Shade" from the Gaelic--Mackworth Praed--Discovery of an old Flint Manufactory in the Moss of Ballachulish. In the poetry and proverbs of our country you constantly meet with references which go to prove that alternations of sunshine and shower [April 1873] have for ages been held to be the meteorological characteristics of an April day throughout the British Islands, and most of all, perhaps, in Scotland. To go no further, you will remember Scott's concluding lines in Rokeby--