I. “La Calluinn” and “Oidhche Challuinn” (New-Year’s Day and New-Year’s Night). Besides the “first-footing,” which is a common practice still, the Highlanders observed many in-door and out-door ceremonies. On New-Year’s Eve, they surrounded each other’s houses, carrying dried cow-hides, and beating them with sticks, thrashing the walls with clubs, all the time crying, shouting, and repeating rhymes. This is supposed to operate as a charm against fairies, demons, and spirits of every order. They provide themselves with the flap, or hanging part of the hide on the cow’s neck, which they called “caisean-uchd,” and which they singed in the fire and presented to the inmates of the family, one after another, to smell, as a charm against all injuries from fairies and spirits. A specimen of the rhymes repeated, with loud chorus, is as follows:— Mor-phiseach air an tigh, Piseach air an teaghlach, Piseach air gach cabar, Is air gach ni saoghalt’ ann. Piseach air eich a’s crodh, Piseach air na caoraich, Piseach air na h-uile ni, ’S piseach air ar maoin uil’. Piseach air beann an tighe, Piseach air na paistean, Piseach air gach caraide, Mor-phiseach agus slaint dhuibh. Great good luck to the house, Good luck to the family, Good luck to every rafter of it, And to every worldly thing in it. Good luck to horses and cattle, Good luck to the sheep, Good luck to every thing, And good luck to all your means. Luck to the good-wife, Good luck to the children, Good luck to every friend, Great fortune and health to all. II. “Di-domhnuich-caisg” (Easter Sunday). This period is observed in the Highlands by preparing and eating certain kinds of pan-cakes made of eggs, milk, meal, or flour. Together with this the young people provide themselves with large quantities of hard-boiled dyed eggs, which they roll about, and finally eat. The English hot cross buns at Easter are only the cakes which the Saxons ate in honour of their goddess “Eastre,” and from which the Christian clergy, who were unable to prevent people from eating them, sought to expel the Paganism by marking them with the cross. Hence the hot cross buns.