This explanation was offered of how fairies may exist and yet be
invisible:--'Our Saviour became invisible though in the body; and, as
the Scriptures suggest, I suppose we are obliged to concede a similar
power of invisibility to spirits as well, good and evil ones alike.'
_Precautions against Fairies._--'I remember how an old woman pulled me
out of a fairy ring to save me from being _taken_.
'If a mother takes some bindweed and places it burnt at the ends over
her babe's cradle, the fairies have no power over the child. The
bindweed is a common roadside convolvulus.
'As a boy, I saw two old women passing a babe over red-hot coals, and
then drop some of the cinders in a cup of water and give the water to
the babe to drink, in order to cure it of a fairy stroke.'
_Fairy Fights on Halloween._--'It is a common belief now that on
Halloween the fairies, or the fairy hosts, have fights. Lichens on
rocks after there has been a frost get yellowish-red, and then when they
thaw and the moisture spreads out from them the rocks are a bright red;
and this bright red is said to be the blood of the fairies after one of
their battles.'
_Fairies and the Hump-back._--The following story by the present witness
is curious, for it is the same story of a hump-back which is so
widespread. The fact that in Scotland the hump is removed or added by
fairies as it is in Ireland, in Cornwall by pixies, and in Brittany by
_corrigans_, goes far to prove the essential identity of these three
orders of beings. The story comes from one of the remote Western
Hebrides, Benbecula:--'A man who was a hump-back once met the fairies
dancing, and danced with their queen; and he sang with them, "Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday," so well that they took off his hump, and he
returned home a straight-bodied man. Then a tailor went past the same
place, and was also admitted by the fairies to their dance. He caught
the fairy queen by the waist, and she resented his familiarity. And in
singing he added "Thursday" to their song and spoilt it. To pay the
tailor for his rudeness and ill manners, the dancers took up the hump
they had just removed from the first man and clapped it on his back, and
the conceited fellow went home a hump-back.'
_Libations to Fairies._--'An elder in my church knew a woman who was
accustomed, in milking her cows, to offer libations to the fairies.[31]
The woman was later converted to Christ and gave up the practice, and as
a result one of her cows was _taken_ by the fairies. Then she revived
the practice.
'The fairy queen who watches over cows is called _Gruagach_ in the
Islands, and she is often seen. In pouring libations to her and her
fairies various kinds of stones, usually with hollows in them, are
used.[32]
'In Lewis libations are poured to the goddess [or god] of the sea,
called _Shoney_,[33] in order to bring in seaweed. Until modern times in
Iona similar libations were poured to a god corresponding to Neptune.'
IN THE HIGHLANDS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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