Many other remarkable cures are resorted to, such as healing sore eyes by putting gold rings in the ears, by rubbing them with jewels of pure gold, and by repeating certain rhymes. Warts are removed by washing them in rain-water or swine’s blood. Serpents’ heads are preserved for years to heal their own sting wounds. If a man, cow, or any animal be stung by a serpent, let the dried serpent’s head be cast into water, let the wound be washed in it, and it soon heals. Fried mice are a specific for small-pox. Whooping-cough is cured by whatever is recommended by a person riding a piebald horse. A spider put into a goose-quill, well sealed, and put round a child’s neck, will cure it of the thrush. In the Island of Soa, near Skye, it was customary when the head of the family died to have a large lock of hair cut off his head and nailed fast to the door-lintel to keep off the fairies. Sailors are sometimes very superstitious. They greatly dread the stormy petrel, or Mother Carey’s chickens, as they flutter at night around their masts and yards. These birds are regarded as objects of superstitious fear, believing that they are possessed of supernatural agency in creating danger for the poor, hard-toiled mariner. At one time, a horse-shoe nailed to the mast of the vessel was great security against all evil agencies, such as witches, petrels, fairies, and evil eyes. To recapitulate all such superstitious frets would be an endless task. There are many similar fanciful notions in regard to births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths, but it is impossible to enlarge much upon them. It was once prevalent when a child was baptised, that the infant was neither washed nor bathed that night, for fear of washing off the baptismal water before it had slept under it. Frequently too, the water used in baptism was bottled up as an effectual recipe for various disorders. Parents took all possible care lest their female infants should be baptised with the same water used for male children, for if they should, the females would grow up with beards! A few years ago, I was baptising two or three children at the same time, in a village near by, when the first presented was a boy, and the next a girl. After the water had been sprinkled on the face of the boy, and when I was about to do the same to the girl, an old worthy granny present hastily snatched away the bowl containing the water, poured it out, and filled it afresh, muttering aloud, “Na leigeadh Ni Math gum biodh feusag air mo chaileig” (Goodness forbid that my lassie should have a beard). It is reckoned very unlucky in some parts of the country to have a child left unbaptised beyond the year in which it was born. For example, should a child come into the world on the 30th December, 1877, the parents would feel very uncomfortable, and consider it a neglect of duty, if they did not get the infant baptised either on that or next day.