The Project Gutenberg eBook of Witchcraft & Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, by John Gregorson Campbell

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

Uniform with this Volume: Price 6s. net.

Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Collected entirely from Oral Sources by the late John Gregorson Campbell, Minister of Tiree

SOME PRESS OPINIONS

The border line of fairyland once crossed is a bourne from which few antiquaries return. We have had great difficulty in getting back ourselves, led on as we were by the seductive John Gregorson Campbell, assuredly, if ever man was, since Campbell of Islay’s day, in the innermost secrets of the Elfin folk. Indeed, Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands, full to overflowing though they are, do not seem to us to express with anything like the same fullness and body the misty legend and wayward romance and quaint realism of the Celtic supernatural as does this plainer and prosaic notebook of an old parish minister between 1861 and 1891. Folklore whether of Celt or Saxon, henceforward has to reckon with the posthumous notebooks of John Gregorson Campbell for an indispensable section of its apparatus of study.—ANTIQUARY.

The importance of the work from the scientific point of view can hardly be exaggerated, as its accuracy is absolutely indisputable. And yet being little more than a collection of stories told in the simplest English, it is as enjoyable as one of Mr. Lang’s fairy-books.—THE SPECTATOR.

Altogether the volume is in its way singularly interesting, and forms a rich mine for the folklorist. Some of the stories may be met with under other versions, but most of them appear here for the first time and are wonderfully varied. The light they throw upon the Highlander’s ways of thinking is remarkable.—SCOTTISH REVIEW.

Statements and beliefs are given exactly as they reached the author, nor do I think it would be possible to detect a single instance in which wider knowledge or prepossession of any kind has induced him to alter or distort a fact. This rigid conscientiousness will always secure for Mr. Campbell’s work the confidence and regard of true folklorists.... Campbell of Tiree takes his place by the side of Kirk, and of Walter Gregor of Pitsligo, among those recorders of folk-lore to whom the student can always turn with increased confidence and admiration.—Mr. Alfred Nutt in FOLKLORE.

Students of tradition will find much to interest them in this new collection of Highland folk-lore, for although a good deal of the information is similar to that contained in previous works of the kind, yet many details are new, and even those which are already familiar have this great recommendation—that they were obtained at first-hand from the peasantry, and not from other books.—RELIQUARY.

On the whole their can be few richer fields of ancient folk-belief, especially of the gloomier and sterner sort, than that which was so successfully cultivated by the lamented author of this book.—ATHENÆUM.

Mr. Campbell has escaped most of the difficulties by which his predecessors were beset. A very interesting series of stories has been collected, and the volume exercises much fascination over the reader. On the subjects such as divination, spells, the devil, etc., much interesting information is given. While scientifically thorough in treatment, the book is indeed admirably suited for general perusal.—NOTES AND QUERIES.

The tales are plucked directly from their native soil in the popular memory; and while few of them are absolute rarities, there is hardly anyone that does not in some way illustrate the infinite variety and the vivid imaginative colouring, as well as the wealth of Highland superstitions.—SCOTSMAN.

This volume is posthumous, and we cannot but regret that the author was not spared to see it safely launched. It is a capital book written in a thoroughly sane and sober spirit. In this it differs from most books that deal with the manners, customs, and usages of the Gaels of Scotland, for in them the wildest theories, based mainly on fanciful ideas, are treated as facts and enunciated as truths. In gathering his material the late Mr. Campbell relied solely on oral communications made to himself so that in every case of doubt he could interrogate his informant.—SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE.

Altogether the book is a notable and valuable addition to the literature of British folk-lore not unworthy to take its place alongside Mr. J. F. Campbell’s classic “Popular Tales of the West Highlands.”—GLASGOW HERALD.

The more collections of this sort we get the better will be the verdict of all who read this interesting book; and those who look at the question more from the scientific point of view will echo the wish.—MAN.

The fairies and tales about them, gathered by himself or by correspondents in all parts of the Highlands and Isles, take up the half of the book before us, the remarkable feature of which is that the whole of its contents has been taken down from oral sources. There are many variants and many common stories which are variously localised. Printed accounts of the fairies are religiously ignored.—THE NORTHERN CHRONICLE.

Those who are interested in our west Highlands and Islands—and who is not?—will find Mr. Campbell’s book a perfect mine of strange, weird stories and legends, the latter entirely characteristic of the people, the former dealing with magic, divination, and the superstitions of fairyland. Indeed it takes a place by itself, and a very important place, in our folk-lore literature.—THE BAILIE.

The tales are very diversified. They relate to the “fairies” and the superstitions regarding them. A chapter is devoted to augury, another to premonitions and divination, to dreams and prophecies, to imprecations, spells, and the black art. In short we have a very varied and manifold collection of Highland beliefs told with great freshness and vividness.—OBAN TIMES.

Glasgow
James MacLehose and Sons
Publishers to the University
London and New York: Macmillan and Co., Limited

WITCHCRAFT AND SECOND SIGHT IN THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND

CHAPTER I.
BLACK WITCHCRAFT.

Witchcraft introduces us to a class of popular superstitions entirely different from those connected with Fairies. Fairies, water-horses, and kindred supernatural beings were distinct from the Evil Spirits that gave to witches their unhallowed powers. They could not be compelled or conjured by mortals to appear when wanted, or enter into contracts of service. The Powers of Darkness, on the other hand, were always at the service of their votaries, and, by means of charms and incantations known to the initiated, were made to lend their aid in any scheme of malevolence.

A belief in magic widely, almost universally, prevails among the tribes of mankind, and the witchcraft of the Christian era, while it undoubtedly gained strength and character from mistaken interpretations of Scripture, owes many characteristics to the delusions of Pagan times.

The Highland witches have of course many points in common with their sisters of the south, but comparatively there is little repulsive or horrible in their character. Tales regarding them make no mention of incubus and succubus, midnight meetings and dances with the devil, dead men’s fingers, and more of the horrible and awful, the ravings of poor women driven crazy by persecution and torture. Neither is there mention of their riding through the air on broomsticks, nor, like the witch of Endor, raising the dead. Their art was forbidden, and their powers came from the devil; but it does not appear under what paction, or that there was any paction, under which this power was to be got. It was in the name of the devil, and against the name of the Trinity, they set about their cantrips, but a knowledge of the necessary charms, and the courage to use them, seem to have been all that was requisite. Those having the reputation of being witches were (and are, for a few still survive) usually old women, destitute of friends and means of support, and naturally ready to eke out a miserable livelihood by working on the fears or the simplicity of their more prosperous neighbours.

There are instances in which a farmer has bribed a witch by yearly presents not to do harm to his cattle; and we must remember that in days of scarcity and famine, poverty with icy hand and slow-consuming age will make people resort to shifts of which they would never dream when food was abundant. In most cases, the reputed witch was merely a superstitious and perhaps ill-favoured old woman, possessing a knowledge of rhymes and charms for the healing of disease in man and beast, and taking pains to sain her own cattle, if she had any, from harm. Sometimes she was also dishonest, desirous of being looked upon with awe, and taking advantage of nightfall to steal milk from her neighbours’ byres and corn from their stackyards. Her powers of witchcraft satisfactorily accounted to the popular mind for her butter and cheese—even if she had no cows—being abundant when the stores of others failed. In dark uncultured times a claim to influence over the unseen powers of nature, and to intercourse with spirits, had only to be made to be allowed, and the mere pretension too readily invests the claimant with awe to make it safe for any one to denounce the imposture. Many believed in the efficacy of the arts they practised, and in their own possession of the power with which the credulity of mankind was willing to accredit them. Unusual natural events and phenomena can easily be turned into proofs of a witch’s claim; imposture readily leads to delusion, and hence among the poor and uneducated it is no wonder to find witchcraft practised and believed in.

The power of witches was always at the disposal of those who were willing to pay for it, and the fact that the rewards of witchcraft did not sometimes exceed a pound of tobacco, alone shows how much the urgencies of want had to do with the pretence to supernatural powers. Unless payment was given the witch could do nothing; her spells were then of no avail. To explain the anomaly that witches possessed such tremendous powers and yet remained always in indigent circumstances, it was said the poor wretches could not benefit themselves; their power, as might be expected, considering the source from which it was derived, was only one of mischief and doing harm to others. Much of the superstition is at variance with this popular explanation, as, for instance, the taking of milk from the neighbours’ cows and the substance from their butter and cheese, but contradictions and absurdities never stand in the way of credulity and superstitious fears.

The Gaelic name ‘Buidseach’ is identical in meaning with the English ‘witch,’ a word it also somewhat resembles in form. The term ‘Bao’ is sometimes translated wizard, but is properly only a careless conversational form of Baobh, a wild furious woman, a wicked mischievous female, who scolds and storms and curses, caring neither what she says nor what she does, praying the houses may be razed (làrach lom) and the property destroyed (sgrios an codach) of those who have offended her. This is a word used in proverbs. “A raging woman obtains her imprecation, but her soul obtains no mercy.”[1] Baoth, weak, foolish, is often confounded with it. M’Intosh [2] makes the expression ‘maca bao,’ ‘a wizard’s son’ instead of macan baoth, a weak or little child. “Pity of her who is the mother of a helpless child, when May-day falls on a Thursday,” i.e.[3] owing to the infant mortality of the season.

A common answer to the question, What could witches do? is What could they not do? The classes of actions, however, ascribed to them are not numerous. They could take the milk from their neighbours’ cattle, bring fish to their own coasts, make fishermen successful, go to sea for fish themselves and bring home creelfuls, raise storms, sink ships, drown those who offended them; give strings to sailors with knots on them, the unloosening of which raised the wind; they could go to wine-cellars in London or Ireland, and drink wine till morning; fly through the air with magic quickness, and cross the seas in the most unlikely vessels, sieves, eggshells, or dry cowsherds; produce a wasting disease in an enemy, waylay and endanger the belated traveller, and by their cursed tricks keep a child in its mother’s womb past its proper time; suck cows, and assume various shapes. They could benefit, or at least ward away evil from a favourite, but their power of doing so seems to have been much feebler than their powers of mischief.

In carrying out their unhallowed cantrips, witches assumed various shapes. They became gulls, cormorants, ravens, rats, mice, black sheep, swelling waves, whales, and very frequently cats and hares. The shape was not always well chosen for the object to be attained, a hare, for instance, being but ill-formed for sucking cows, or a cat for drinking wine; neither was a sieve or an eggshell a likely vessel to go to sea in, nor a piece of tangle for carrying milk in, nor the chimney crook a probable substitute for the cow’s udder. This, however, is of no consequence. It is only part of the witch’s diabolical mode of going to work. The truth is, that these harmless animals whose shapes witches were said to assume, being seen in unusual places at unusual times, or conducting themselves in an unusual manner, were converted by the terrified imagination into witches pursuing their unlawful practices. Many tales seem to have their origin in vain attempts to stagger credulity, and in that delight which people of lively imaginations sometimes take in ‘cramming’ their more stupid fellows.

In addition to change of shape, witches had a machinery of charms, incantations, red, black, and blue threads, magic caps, and particularly a magic staff, called ‘an luirgean’ ‘an lorg ohn.’

There were certain nights of the year on which they were unusually busy. These were particularly the last night of every quarter. On Beltane night they were awake all night. Their object seems to have been to sain, i.e. keep evil away from, their own cattle or those of the farmers who employed them for the purpose. Others were no doubt taking advantage of any neglect in this respect to secure to themselves the butter and cheese for the next three months. No one, however, knows what they were after, as a woman who believed in their being awake on Beltane night piously said, “God and themselves know what they are doing.”[4]

Many tales relating to witchcraft, as has been already remarked, must have had their origin in attempts to ridicule people out of their belief and in an unbridled exercise of imagination. They only furnished a proof that men will believe the incredible.

WITCHES AND MILK.

To the poor a cow is invaluable, and its ailments are naturally a source of anxiety. Hence the poor man has been most frequently the victim of imposture, and his cow has the most frequently lost its milk through the machinations of witches. The folds of the affluent were seldom attacked, or those byres in which regard was paid to cleanliness and tidiness.

The stories of witches assuming the shape of hares and sucking cows are numberless. A boy who saw one described the hare as sitting on its hind legs, with its fore paws resting on the cow’s udder. Some people profess to have come upon the witch through the night while thus engaged, and caught her. The hare then became a woman.

When a witch assumes this shape it is dangerous to fire at her without putting silver, a sixpence or a button of that metal, in the gun. If the hare fired at was, as indeed it often was, a witch in disguise, the gun burst, and the shot came back and killed the party firing, or some mischance followed. Old women used, therefore, to recommend that a sixpence be put in the gun when firing at a hare.

Parties who entered the house of a reputed witch in Cornaig, Tiree, found two churns full of water on the floor and a shallow milk-dish (measair) full of butter on the table.

In olden times the master of a ship, dining with the Laird of Coll, was asked if the butter on the table was not very fine. He said it was for pig’s butter. The dairymaid was called up and questioned. She confessed that seeing a whale (muc-mhara, lit. sea-pig) passing, and hearing its bellow (geumraich), she had taken the substance (toradh) of its milk from it. If the laird believed her, he was an honest, unsuspicious man, who never dreamt of any collusion between her and his guest.

A Tiree witch once took all their milk from the Laird of Coll’s cows, and was on her way home with it in a duitheaman, a black seaweed not unlike a tangle, wrapped round her body. A man met her, cut the black tangle with his knife, and all the milk flowed out on the ground. Witches also carried away milk in needles, dung-forks, etc., and have been detected taking it in a stream from the chimney crook. A sailor, whose ship was on her way through the Kyles of Bute (na caoil Bhòdach), hearing a bull roaring on the Cowal coast, took the milk from the herd of which it was lord by cutting the cable with an axe. The milk came streaming from the cable.

It is related of ‘Mr. Lachlan,’ a former minister of Kintail, that going one day to the house of a reputed witch, without telling who he was, he induced her, as a specimen of her power, to milk the chimney crook.[5] The cow from which the milk was to be taken was the minister’s own. The witch went to work, till all the milk was extracted, and then asked the minister if he was satisfied. He told her to go on, and she milked the iron till blood came. When the minister went home he found his cow dead.

A witch in Lochaber had a little pet sheep, by milking which she gathered to herself the milk from the flocks of all the neighbouring farmers.

Hairy Donald (Dò’ull Molach), a Morven celebrity of last century, professing great skill in healing or hurting cattle by means of magic charms, was laughed at for his pretensions by the parish minister, and his powers were made game of. Donald, at his own request, was shut up in a room, and a particular cow was named by the minister for him to exercise his talents upon. Before he finished his incantations the cow fell over the rocks.

A man bought at a market from a stranger a mart or winter cow. When killing it, the blows of the axe made no impression. An old man who came the way, when told of this, examined the cow’s tail, and found a red string tied round it. On this being taken away, the cow fell at the first blow.

COUNTER-CHARMS.

Of course the spells of witches could be counteracted. It would not be right that such dangerous powers should be unchecked. Some of the counter-charms were good disinfectants, but in general the efficacy of the remedy was as imaginary as the enemy whose machinations were to be defeated. It was to prevent the taking of milk from cows that nearly all the counter-charms were used. Anything in which people believed would be sufficient, but the antidotes in ordinary use were these.

Juniper (Iubhar-beinne, aiteal), pulled in a particular manner, was burned before the cattle and put in cows’ tails.

A ball of hair (gaoisid), called a Ronag, was put in the milk-pail on Lammas-day or on the Thursday after, to keep its substance in the milk during the rest of the year. MacSymon (Mac-Shiomoun, a sept of MacArthurs), a native of Balemartin, Tiree, was much resorted to in former times for these constitution balls. On Lammas-day (Lùnasdal) he gave to all who came to him a little bag of plants, sewn up, to be placed in the cream jug (croggan uachdair) for the ensuing year, that the cattle and the milk might retain their virtue or substance (toradh).

Stale urine (maistir) should be sprinkled on the door-posts and about the byre. It keeps away the evil eye. There was an old woman in Coll who was taken notice of by her neighbours for sprinkling cows and door-posts every night. Her intention no doubt was to make assurance doubly sure.

New York,	The Macmillan Co.
London,	Simpkin, Hamilton and Co.
Cambridge,	Macmillan and Bowes.
Edinburgh,	Douglas and Foulis.

	PAGE
CHAPTER I Black Witchcraft
Introductory	1
Witches and Milk	7
Counter-Charms	10
Going to Sea	15
Raising Storms and Drowning People	19
Witches as Sheep	30
Witches as Hares	33
Witches as Cats	34
Witches as Rats	42
Witches as Gulls	42
Witch as Cormorant	43
Witches as Whales	44
Delaying the Birth of a Child	45
Clay Corpse	46
Silver Sixpence	49
Saving Horses	50
Tailor and Witches	50
Celebrated Witches	50
Wizard Rising after Death	52
How to Detect Witches	53
CHAPTER II White Witchcraft
Introductory	54
Eòlas	57
Cure for the Evil Eye	59
Charm for Sprains	66
Charm for Bruises	67
Charm for Rheumatic Pains	67
Charm for Consumption	68
For Affections of the Chest	68
Charm for Toothache	69
Made for Merrion MacFadyn	70
Charms for Cattle	71
Charm against Danger	73
The Old Wife’s Charm for her Cow	73
Charm for a Sheep in its Cot	74
Against Drowning and in War	74
Charm against Dangers in War	75
Charm for Cloth	77
Charm for General Use	79
“The Gospel of Christ”	79
Charm for conferring Graces	80
Charm for the Faces of Young Women	81
Love Charm	82
Charm to keep away Harm in a Lawsuit	83
Serpent Stone	84
Snail Beads	88
Frog Stone	89
Stones	90
Fairy Arrow	91
Cruban Stone	92
Various	93
Gospel	94
Miscellaneous Cures	94
Warts	94
Stye	95
Tetter	95
Hiccup	96
Hooping-cough	96
Stiff Neck	96
Toothache	96
Falling Sickness	97
Madness	97
Axillary Swelling	99
Lumbago	100
Consumption	100
Leprosy	100
Loch Ma Nàr	101
Wells	101
Mountain Ash	103
Pearlwort	103
St. John’s Wort	104
Juniper	105
Yarrow	106
The Enticing Plant	106
The Daughter of the King of Enchantments	107
CHAPTER III Death Warnings
Introductory	109
Hugh of the Little Head	111
CHAPTER IV Second Sight
Introductory	120
Spectres of the Living	132
Apparitions of the Dead	137
Strong and Undue Wishes	141
Tàradh	144
Marriage	147
Coming Misfortune	148
Events at a Distance	149
Death	150
Coffin	151
Noise of Glasses to be used at Funerals	154
Funeral Procession	155
Wraiths seen before Death	158
Drowning	160
Horses and Dogs	163
Crying heard before Death	166
Lights	169
Spirits seen before Death	172
Return of the Dead	172
Bones of the Dead and Place of Burial	176
Spirits appearing in Dreams	179
To get rid of the Second Sight	180
CHAPTER V Hobgoblins
Introductory	181
The Bodach, or Carle	187
Fuath	188
Cachlaidh Na Feusaig, Islay	189
The Headless Body	191
The Grey Paw	194
Ewen and the Carlin Wife	198
The Black Walker of the Ford	201
Strowan, Athole	203
The Unearthly Whistle	204
The Battle of Gaura	205
The Beast of Odal Pass	207
Luideag, “The Rag”	208
Lochan Doimeig	208
Return of the Dead	210
Donald Gorm’s Ghost	211
Taibhse Choimhlig	213
Kingairloch, Argyleshire	214
Fladdachuain	215
Haunted Houses	217
Bocain, Goblins	220
CHAPTER VI The Celtic Year
Introductory	224
Nollaig	229
Calluinn	230
Christmas Rhymes	233
New-Year Night	236
New-Year’s Day	238
The Twelve Days of Christmas	243
Winter Season	244
February	245
Earrach beag nam Faochag	247
St. Bride’s Day	247
Spring	250
The Whistle	250
The Sharp-billed One	251
The Sweeper	251
Gearran, a Gelding, or perhaps Gearan, Complaint	251
The Old Wife	253
Three Hog Days	254
Seed-time	255
Shrovetide	256
Lent	258
St. Kessock’s Day	259
St. Patrick’s Day	259
Lady Day	261
Shore or Maundy-Thursday	261
Good Friday	262
Easter	263
All-Fools’ Day	266
Bailc na Bealltainn	267
May-Day	267
Month of May	272
Whistling Week	273
May	273
The Avoiding Day of the Year	273
Whitsuntide, Pentecost	274
St. John’s or Midsummer’s Eve	276
Dog Days	276
Translation of Martin	277
Lammas	277
The Hot Month (i.e. August)	279
Assumption Day	279
Roodmas, September 14th-26th	280
Michaelmas	281
Hallowmas	281