Unlucky to look back 255 _CHAPTER IX_ Premonitions and Divination Premonitions (Meamna) 258 Trial (Deuchainn) 259 Divination (Fiosachd) 262 Shoulder-blade Reading (Slinneineachd) 263 Palmistry (Dearnadaireachd) 266 Divination by Tea, or Cup-reading (Leughadh Chupaichean) 266 _CHAPTER X_ Dreams and Prophecies Dreams (Bruadar) 268 Prophecies (Fàisneachd) 269 The Lady of Lawers 274 _CHAPTER XI_ Imprecations, Spells, and the Black Art Imprecation (Guidhe) 277 Spells (Geasan no Geasaibh) 281 The Black Art 285 _CHAPTER XII_ The Devil Card Playing 292 Red Book of Appin 292 Coming for the Dying 295 Making the Devil your Slave 296 Coming Misfortune 298 The Gaïck Catastrophe (Mort Ghàthaig) 300 The Bundle of Fern 303 The Pig in the Indigo Pot 303 Among the Tailors 304 Taghairm, or “Giving his Supper to the Devil” 304 Glas Ghairm—Power of Opening Locks 311 CHAPTER I. THE FAIRIES.[1] In any account of Gaelic superstition and popular belief, the first and most prominent place is to be assigned to the Fairy or Elfin people, or, as they are called both in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, the _sìth_ people, that is, ‘the people of peace,’ the ‘still folk,’ or ‘silently-moving’ people. The antiquity of the belief is shown by its being found among all branches of the Celtic and Teutonic families, and in countries which have not, within historical times, had any communication with each other. If it be not entirely of Celtic origin, there can be no doubt that among the Celtic races it acquired an importance and influence accorded to it nowhere else. Of all the beings, with which fear or fancy peopled the supernatural, the Fairies were the most intimately associated with men’s daily life. In the present day, when popular poetical ideas are extinguished in the universal call for “facts” and by “cold material laws,” it is hard to understand how firm a hold a belief like this had upon men in a more primitive state of society, and how unwillingly it is surrendered.