Chapter I: Black Witchcraft (2)

A kitten that was listening rose and said, “Has Bald Entrails of the Cats been killed? If it were not the many nights I have got meat and milk in your family, I would have your long brindled weasand in my claws. Tell Streaked Foul-Face, that Bladrum is dead,”[14] and saying this the kitten went away, and was never seen afterwards.

Near Vaul in Tiree, a man riding home at night, with his son, a young boy, seated behind him, was met by a number of cats. The boy had his hands clasped round his father, and the man, pressing them to his sides, to make surer of the boy’s hold, urged his horse to its speed. The cats sprang, and, fastening on the boy, literally devoured him. When the man reached home, with his horse at full gallop, he had only the boy’s arms left.

A Wexford legend of the same kind (the two stories might have been originally identical), said to be at least as old as 1584, will be found in the _Dublin University Magazine_ for September, 1869.

A woman detected a strange cat drinking the milk in her kirn, caught it by the back of the neck, and rapped its nose against the floor. It went about mewing in a melancholy manner, till the woman took pity on it, and called it, saying, “Puss, puss, till you get a drop” (_Puis, puis, gus am faigheadh tu diar_). The cat answered, “It is not a drop I want, but the way my mouth is, Mary” (_Cha-ne diar tha mi’g iarraidh ach mar tha mo bhial a Mhàiri_). It then went away, but came back through the night with two other cats. One said they would take the back of their paws to the woman, but the second said the front of their paws. This resolution was carried by the casting vote of the injured cat, and the woman was torn in shreds.

A man, going in the evening to see a girl he was courting, was met at a lonely part of the road (near the end of Balefetrish Hill in Tiree) by seven cats, and was so terrified that he turned back and thereby lost his sweetheart. She married an old man from the village of Hianish, where a noted witch dwelt. The old man got the blame of bribing the witch to send the cats.

In olden times a cat belonging to the tenant of Heynish in Tiree was much addicted, like the rest of its kind, to stealing cheese. It was caught in the act, and, as a punishment for the past and a lesson for the future, its ears were taken off. The tenant had occasion to go from home, and on his return found the cat lying dead, having been hung for theft in his absence. He took it in his lap, and thus addressed it:

Did I not tell you, little Duncan,
You had needs of being wary;
When you went where the cheeses were,
The gallows would teach you how to dance.
Evil is it, earless cat,
They you have killed, because of cheese;
Your neck has paid for that refreshment,
At this time, after your death.

On hearing these expressions of sympathy, the cat began to revive, and the man went on:

A hundred welcomes wait you, cat,
Since in my lap you’ve chanced to be;
And, though I do not much liberty allow,
Many have you greatly loved.
Are you the untamed cat that Fionn had,
That hunted wild from glen to glen?
Had Oscar you at the battle of Bla-sguinn,
And left you heroes wounded there?
You drank the milk Catherine had,
For entertaining minstrel and meeting;
And why should I praise you?
You ought to be, like any kitten,
On the hillside seeking mice,
’Neath greyish grassy stems and bramble bushes.

On hearing this the cat ran away and was never again seen.

A Tiree boat was tacking out of a loch in the north. A man met it at a point of land near which it came, and asked to be taken to the other side. One of the boatmen was willing, but the rest were not, as they would thereby lose time. Next tack back, the man met the boat again, with the same result. “Well, then,” he said, “perhaps you will repent it.” At the mouth of the loch the boatmen heard a howling as of innumerable cats. A storm arose, and with difficulty they reached shelter at the island of Eigg.

WITCHES AS RATS.

A Tiree boatman, bringing a load of peats from the Ross of Mull, was met at the Treshinish Isles by two rats sailing along on dry cowsherds. As good luck did not direct him, he threw a piece of peat at the rats, and upset their frail barks. A storm sprang up, and with difficulty he got to land. The rats were witches, and he should not have meddled with them.

WITCHES AS GULLS.

A witch assumed the shape of a gull, delighting in storms, not only to bring danger or safety to a boat, as already told, but also for payment to bring back news of fishing boats driven away in a storm.

A boat from Tiree, going for a cargo of wood, was caught in a violent gale and driven north past Ardnamurchan Point. With difficulty the boatmen, four in number, secured her in a creek. They remained in a cave for four days, till the storm abated. The suddenness and violence of the gale caused much anxiety to their friends, and two women, one of whom had two sons and a son-in-law in the boat, and the other, a widow, her youngest and only surviving son, consulted a famous witch, _Nic-ill’-Dòmhnuich_, in Caolas, as to their fate. The witch told them to come next day, and she would tell them. Early next morning the widow went. “Yea,” said the witch, “they live, and they had no little amusement last night fighting for the _Fallaid_ bannock, and your son had his own share of it.” When the young men came home, they were questioned as to their seeing anything the night the witch was sent for news. They said a grey gull was seen by them sitting on the edge of the rocks that overhang their place of shelter and peering down at them. One was for throwing stones at it, but the rest dissuaded him. It was only seen that night and next morning.

WITCH AS CORMORANT.

A man named Campbell, in the Long Island, as the outer Hebrides are called, had two sweethearts, for one of whom he did not very much care. They were both to be present at a gathering of women for fulling cloth, and he resolved to go and see them. When he arrived he found only the one he least liked. He left shortly, and set off to where the other was. On the way he had to cross a ford on large stepping-stones. As he was doing so a cormorant (_sgarbh_) came, and splashed him fiercely with water. He had a cudgel in his hand, and gave the strange bird a whack on the back. He then passed on, and the distance being considerable did not return till next day. When returning he had to pass the house of the slighted damsel. Her mother met him at the door, and said, she could not understand what was wrong with her daughter; she had got suddenly ill last night, and was very bad with a sore back. Campbell said he knew the reason, and would have nothing further to say to her daughter. The woman then threatened him, but no evil ever came of her threat.

WITCHES AS WHALES.

A Skye fisherman gave the following narrative of witchcraft to which he himself was a witness. He and his brother were at the herring fishing in Portree in his native isle, and during that season out of all the herring boats one only was successful. It had only a crew of two, and every night caught from eight to ten crans of fish. The other boats were empty or nearly so. One night when the nets were set, the boat, in which he and his brother were, sprang a leak, and was taken back to the harbour and beached. The rest of the crew went away to the village, but he remained till the boat was left dry by the receding tide. In a while he also left, and as he did so, saw a young girl coming out of a house and tapping at a neighbour’s window. Another girl came out of that house, and wondering what the two could be about at that hour of the night, he followed them from the village. On reaching the green, the two girls began to disport themselves (_braise_), then of a sudden became hares, and chased each other round and round. After this they made their way to the shore, and at the edge of the water (_gob na tuinne_), leapt into the sea and became whales. They went out from land spouting the water as high as a ship’s mast. Next morning the boats came in empty. The fishermen said they had seen during the night two whales throwing up the sea in a dreadful manner (_smùideadh na fairge gu h-eagallach_), which made them think there was fish in the neighbourhood. The lucky boat was full as usual.

The meaning of this tale seems to be that the man had been listening the night before to tales of witchcraft, had fallen asleep in the boat on the beach, and had a troublous dream.

DELAYING THE BIRTH OF A CHILD.

This infernal cantrip was played by means of a ball of black worsted thread in a black bag, kept at the foot of the witch’s weaving loom, where it might not be detected. If the ball was taken away the plot fell through. In proof of this, there is a story told that a child was once kept twenty-two years in its mother’s womb by means of witches, and when born it had hair, beard, and teeth, like a person of that age.

The mother of a celebrated West Highland freebooter, ‘Allan of the Faggots’ (_Ailein nan sop_), was a servant maid who became pregnant by a married man. The man’s wife, when she heard of the scandal, got a _bone_ from a witch, which, she was assured, would, as long as it was kept, delay the birth of the child. Allan of the Faggots was thus kept in his mother’s womb for fifteen months beyond the usual time. The husband got word of his wife’s doings, and took a plan to defeat her. He made his Fool one day come home, pretending to be very drunk, staggering about, and smashing the furniture. On being called to task, the Fool said he had been in a house down yonder (that of the servant-maid), where a child had at last been born, and had got a dram, which went into his head. The wife, on hearing this, thought the witch had deceived her, and threw the bone into the fire. It disappeared in blue smoke, and knocked down the chimney! Allan was then born, with large teeth.

In other tales to the same effect, the trick usually is played on a married woman, by the mother of a maid who had been slighted on her account.

CLAY CORPSE.

The greatest evil that witches can do is to make, for a person whose death they desire, a clay body or image (_corp creadha_), into which pins are stuck, to produce a slow and painful disease, terminating in dissolution. Waxen figures for the same purpose, and melted by exposure to a slow fire, were known to Lowland superstition. In the Highlands wax was not accessible to poor bodies, and they had to make clay serve the turn. It is said that when a person wants a limb he cannot be destroyed by witches in this manner.

MacIain Ghiarr, the Ardnamurchan thief, stole so many cattle from MacLean of Dowart that he made that chief his deadly enemy. On one of his roving expeditions he was passing at midnight the chapel or burying-ground of Pennygown (_caibeal Peighinn-a-ghobhan_), on the Sound of Mull. Seeing a light in the chapel, he entered, and found three witches sticking pins in a clay body (_corp creadha_) intended to represent MacLean of Dowart. As each pin was stuck in, MacLean was seized with a stitch in the corresponding part of his body. Only the last pin remained to be stuck in. It was to be in the heart, and to cause death. MacIain Ghiarr scattered the witches, took with him the clay corpse, and made his way to MacLean, whom he found at death’s door. He took out in his presence the pins one by one, and when the last was taken out MacLean jumped up a hale man, and remained ever after the warm friend of MacIain Ghiarr.

MacGilvray, a former minister of Strathfillan, in Perthshire, was seized with burning pains all over his body, and was slowly wasting away by some malady, of which the nature could not be understood. He lived at Clachan in that strath, and one morning early a woman from the opposite side of the river, on her way to call and ask for him, saw another woman going along before her, who had the reputation of being a witch. Wondering what her neighbour was about at that early hour, she kept well behind and watched. The foremost woman, on coming to a hollow, stooped down, buried something in the ground, and then walked on towards the minister’s house. The other came and dug up what had been buried. It proved to be a piece of wood stuck all over with pins. She took it with her to the manse, and produced it, to the confusion of the witch. On the pins being withdrawn the minister was freed from his pains and got quite well again.

Ross-shire witches could not destroy ‘Donald of the Ear’ (_Do’uill na Cluaise_), of whom they had made a clay figure, from being unable to put on the ear. Donald had lost the ear in battle. Similarly a _corp creadha_ made for Lord Macdonald by _Raonaid a Chreagain_ failed, because the witches never could put the arm on.

Witches could also produce disease in other ways. Thus, a young man in Perthshire—the tailor Cumming in Drimachastle, Rannoch—fell into a decline. He accounted himself for the loss of health, decay, and sweats at night by witches coming at night when he was in Badenoch (a district at the time celebrated for witchcraft), and converting him into a horse, on which they rode through the air to Edinburgh and other places to spend the night carousing in well-stored cellars. He now saw them often passing in different shapes and in eggshells, etc. The poor young man did not understand the sweats of consumption, and his imagination was disordered by the many tales of witchcraft he had heard.

The same tale, of converting men into horses, is with slight variations common. In Lorn, a woman came night after night and shook a bridle at the son of a neighbouring farmer. He immediately became a horse, on which she rode to London, etc. A younger brother exchanged beds with him, and when the witches were carousing, secured the magic bridle, converted the witch herself into a horse, rode home, and before taking off the bridle took his horse to a smithy, and put on four shoes. Next day an old woman of the neighbourhood was found with her feet and hands horribly mangled.

SILVER SIXPENCE.

As already said, silver fired from a gun will wound a witch, and force her to assume her proper shape. An English sportsman, according to a Perthshire version of an old story, was sitting surrounded by his dogs, in a mountain bothy at the dead hour of night. A cat came in, but the dogs did not move. It sat with its back to the fire, and swelled till it was as large as a yearling calf. The Englishman took a silver button off his clothes, and putting it in the gun, fired at the cat. The brute scampered out at the door. On going to the strath next day, the sportsman being a doctor, was sent for to see a farmer’s wife, who had got suddenly ill. He went, and extracted his own silver button from her right breast.

SAVING HORSES.

In Uist, a band of horses wandered on to a ledge in the face of a steep precipice. It was impossible to take them from their dangerous position to the top of the cliff by ropes, and to force them from the ledge to the sea, which washed the base of the precipice, seemed from the height of the fall, inevitable destruction. An old man, who was reputed to know more than his paternoster, advised, however, they should be driven over, and himself began an incantation, beginning “_Casa Gurra, Casa Gurra_,” whatever that may mean. The horses of their own accord went over the ledge, and swam safely to land.

TAILOR AND WITCHES.

A Glen-Quoich tailor, detected among a company of witches, was asked what had brought him into such society? He said it was “for the pleasure of the company” (_mar shodan ris a chuideachd_).

CELEBRATED WITCHES.

The best-known names seem to have been merely nicknames, given perhaps to more than one old woman. ‘Blue-eye’ (_Gorm-shùil_) is said to originate from the witch having one eye black or brown and the other blue. It is, however, a corruption of _Gormla_, an ancient and pretty Gaelic name, usually rendered Dorothy. _Gormla Mhòr_ from Meigh, Lochaber, was stronger than all the witches of Mull, and gave the finishing stroke, as already detailed, to Capt. Forrest’s ship. She met her death when astraddle on a mountain stream, to intercept a salmon that had made its way up to spawn. A large fish made a rush, knocked her backwards in the water, and drowned her. There was a Gormshuil in the village of Hianish, Tiree, a most notorious local witch, and one in Cràcaig in Skye, equally notorious. ‘Brindled-Headless-Stocking Foot’ (_Cas a mhogain riabhaich_) and ‘Rough Foot-gear, the Herdsman’s daughter’ (_Caiseart gharbh ni’n an Aodhair_) were anywhere but where the person who is telling about them comes from himself. Shaw, the Lochnell bard, makes them sisters dwelling in Glenforsa in Mull, when Ossian was a little boy, and contemporaries of Mac-Rùsluin. ‘Sallow Spot’ (_Ball Odhar_) was from Kintra (_Ceann-trà_) in Ardnamurchan; ‘Yellow Claws’ (_Spòga buidhe_) from Maligeir on the east side of Skye; _Doideag-un_ is the well-known name of the Mull witches, and is given by children to the falling snowflakes, which they are informed are the Mull witches on their journey through the air. Big Kate MacIntyre in Fort-William was extensively known some forty years ago as a person skilled in divinations and possessing mysterious powers.

WIZARD RISING AFTER DEATH.

People who practised forbidden arts, as may readily be supposed, did not rest after death. When buried they remained quiet like other people, but till then might be troublesome.

Among the hills of Ross-shire, an old man, who in his time was not ‘canny,’ died in his son’s house, a lonely hut in the hills remote from other houses. He was stretched and adjusted (_air a ruidheadh ’s air a chàradh_) on a board in a closet, and the shepherd, leaving his wife and children in the house, went to the strath for people to come to the wake and funeral. At midnight, one of the children, playing through the house, peeped in at the keyhole of the closet and cried out, “Mother, mother! my grandfather is rising.”[15] The door of the closet was fast locked, and the dead man, finding he could not open it, began to scrape and dig the earth below it, to make a passage for himself. The children gathered round their mother, and in extremity of terror all listened to the scraping of the unhallowed corpse. At last the head appeared below the door, the corpse increased its exertions, and the terror of the mother and children became intense. The body was halfway through below the door when the cock crew and it fell powerless in the pit it had dug. That pit could never afterwards be kept filled up to the level of the rest of the floor.

In Tiree, a head-stone, placed at the grave of a man whom report accused of dabbling in the dark science, would not remain in its place till secured by a chain. It fell every now and then out of its position, but after the chain was fastened to it, it remained firm, and is so now without the chain.

HOW TO DETECT WITCHES.

Early in the morning, on the first Monday of each of the four quarters of the year, the smoke from a witch’s house _goes against the wind_. This may be seen by any one who takes the trouble of rising early and going to an eminence, whence the witch’s house can be seen.