Oatmeal, taken out of the house after dark, was sprinkled with salt, and unless this was done, the Fairies might through its instrumentality take the substance out of the farmer’s whole grain. To keep them from getting the benefit of meal itself, housewives, when baking oatmeal bannocks, made a little thick cake with the last of the meal, between their palms (not kneading it like the rest of the bannocks), for the youngsters to put a hole through it with the forefinger. This palm bannock (_bonnach boise_) is not to be toasted on the gridiron, but placed to the fire leaning against a stone (_leac nam bonnach_), well-known where a ‘griddle’ is not available. Once the Fairies were overtaken carrying with them the benefit (_toradh_) of the farm in a large thick cake, with the handle of the quern (_sgonnan na brà_) stuck through it, and forming a pole on which it was carried. This cannot occur when the last bannock baked (_Bonnach fallaid_) is a little cake with a hole in it (_Bonnach beag ’s toll ann_).[13] _Maistir_, or stale urine, kept for the scouring of blankets and other cloth, when sprinkled on the cattle and on the door-posts and walls of the house, kept the Fairies, and indeed every mischief, at a distance. This sprinkling was done regularly on the last evening of every quarter of the year (_h-uile latha ceann ràidhe_). Plants of great power were the _Mòthan_ (_Sagina procumbens_, trailing pearlwort) and _Achlasan Challum-chille_ (_Hypericum pulcrum_, St. John’s wort). The former protected its possessor from fire and the attacks of the Fairy women. The latter warded off fevers, and kept the Fairies from taking people away in their sleep. There are rhymes which must be said when these plants are pulled. Stories representing the Bible as a protection must be of a recent date. It is not so long since a copy of the Bible was not available in the Highlands for that or any other purpose. When the Book did become accessible, it is not surprising that, as in other places, a blind unmeaning reverence should accumulate round it. Such are the main features of the superstition of the _Sìthchean_, the still-folk, the noiseless people, as it existed, and in some degree still exists, in the Highlands, and particularly in the Islands of Scotland. There is a clear line of demarcation between it and every other Highland superstition, though the distinction has not always been observed by writers on the subject. The following Fairy characteristics deserve to be particularly noticed.