Folklore of the Scottish Highlands (15 page)

The charm placed by Brigit

About her horses, about her cows,

About her sheep, about her lambs:

To keep them from eye,

To keep them from omen,

To keep them from spell,

South and North.

(Carmichael)

A substance which was widely believed to be imbued with a certain magic power in the Highlands was cheese. This was regarded as a potent protection against the danger of wandering away from the correct track in the thick mists which come down so suddenly in the wild mountainous country of the north. and entirely blot out the dangerous cliffs and bogs that form so great a hazard to the traveller. Many wells are known as the Cheese Well (
Tobar a’ Chàise
), and it seems likely that it was at one time a custom to make an offering of cheese to a sacred well in some remote place, in order to obtain protection from the understandable fear of becoming enshrouded in one of these dread mists and meeting a miserable fate in barren bogland and treacherous countryside.

A charm used for the cure of sickness in man or beast was known as
eòlas
, ‘knowledge’. Hundreds of such charms have been collected all over the Highlands and Islands; there is a strong Catholic influence in these charms as the names of the saints invoked indicate, especially St Brigit, St Columba, St Michael and St Peter. People possessing the power of white witchcraft used to utter such charms over the ailing creature, while performing the requisite ritual at the same time. The
eòlas
or charm must also be repeated over water to be drunk by or poured over a sick person or beast. When animals or human beings were sick, those seeking a cure for them would walk for miles in order to get a vessel of sacred water over which some charmer had made an incantation. People were not always willing to impart information about the words used in healing or about the ritual involved; sometimes those cured were sworn to secrecy as to how the healing was performed, and complete silence throughout the ritual was a frequent requisite. The writer has known charmers who would not divulge their methods even to their husbands or wives. The Church, as well as the medical profession, frowns on these practices; the Church because they are suggestive of paganism, the doctors because they have no faith in them. But even doctors of high repute in the Highlands who have, themselves, been unable to cure a sick person, have expressed astonishment when a swift cure has been effected by a sincere charmer.

The
eòlas
was usually employed to cure illnesses of a limited kind such as toothache, bruises, urinary infections, swellings in the breast, epilepsy, and sprains, which were very common in rough, uneven country. The humblest of old women were often believed to have this power, and although any payment for a cure was prohibited, people often used to make some small present in kind for a bottle of special water and a healing charm. If the person seeking a cure had to make a long journey he must take up lodgings for the night before sunset. In some localities it was believed to be preferable if no lodging was taken on that night, and no food eaten. There are many stories told of the healing powers of certain people, often in conjunction with some sacred object or objects, such as stones, a holy well, a human skull and so on. One of the great curses of the Highlands and Islands was the high incidence of epilepsy, and many cures were tried in order to rid the afflicted person of the dread disease. One example of this which occurred in the parish of Nigg (Ross and Cromarty) in the nineteenth century concerns a boy of 15 who was very ill with epileptic fits. His distressed relatives first tried to cure him with the charm of mole’s blood. A plate was placed on the boy’s head; the live mole was held over the plate by the tail, its head cut off, and the blood allowed to drop onto the plate. Three moles were sacrificed, one after the other, but with no result. Next they tried the effect of a piece of the skull of a suicide; in order to obtain this, a journey of well over 60 miles had to be made. When the piece of bone was acquired, it was scraped to dust and mixed into a cup of water. This same ritual was performed in some parts of France, where ancient folklore is still in existence. The boy was made to swallow this concoction without knowing what it was. The results were not recorded, but the information was given to the informant, a patient of the doctor who noted the incident, by the sister of the epileptic boy. The skull of a suicide, often filled with water from a holy well, was a known and much-believed-in cure for epilepsy, but it was held in reserve as a final measure when all other, less dramatic remedies had failed. In Lewis, the skull of an ancestor would be dug up from a special place in the graveyard, after sunset and before sunrise, and water placed in it from a sacred well; this was then taken to the patient and he or she had to drink it; the whole ritual, from beginning to end, being performed in silence.

Because all matters of belief and superstitious practice are somewhat delicate, and information is often imparted in confidence, it has been decided not to give details of names or exact localities where first-hand information on ancient and often non-Christian practices has been obtained, and ritual actually witnessed. The most remarkable example of a human skull being used in the cure of epilepsy with seemingly unfailing success was told to the writer by the guardian of the skull, the man who actually performed the cures. A holy well, on a remote hillside, was an essential part of the procedure, and the well was called
Tobar á Chinn
, ‘The Well of the Head’. The story is as follows. In an isolated township in Wester Ross, in some of the wildest and most beautiful country in the entire Highlands, some 200 years ago a local woman committed suicide. According to religious custom, no suicide could be buried in the churchyard; her body was thus interred on the moor, outside the sacred precincts. After a time, her skull suddenly appeared miraculously, lying on the surface of the ground. According to the guardian, the ‘wise men’ of the township recognised this as a sign that it was to be used as a cure for epilepsy, for the crania of suicides were believed to have more potent powers of healing than those of people who had died in any other way. The waters of the well higher up on the hill were believed to have certain healing powers, and it was a powerful and ancient Celtic belief, of which there are many examples, that by placing a human head in a venerated well, the powers of the water — whatever they were, healing in general, effecting specific cures, imparting fertility, and so on — were markedly increased by the magic powers with which the human head was accredited in the Celtic world down the centuries. The skull was taken to the well and kept in a small stone coffin-like container, where it still lies. The guardian, a local charmer, was appointed and the position has remained hereditary to this day; cures are still performed on occasion. The well is not supposed to be visited for any purpose other than the healing of epileptics, for it is locally believed that the powers of the water are not inexhaustible, and must be used with care. The writer was in fact taken to see the well and the head, and the ritual was explained in detail by the guardian himself. The well lies in a hollow in the hill, and it would be virtually impossible to chance upon it.

The fame of the cure was apparently so great in the western Highlands and Islands that people who were seemingly incurable would travel there from great distances in the belief that it would not fail to bring relief from this deeply-distressing affliction. The patient and his or her companions must go to the house of the guardian. There, they would be instructed in the correct ritual; violation of any aspect of it would be certain to ruin all chances of a cure. The patient must climb the hill alone with the guardian. The ceremony had to be carried out after the sun had left the hill, and before it reached it again. Complete silence must be observed both on the long climb up to the well, and on the return to the house. Once the well was reached, the guardian took the skull from its stone cist and approached the well; the patient had to walk three times sunwise round the well (
deiseal
). The guardian then dipped the skull in the water and gave it to the suffering person in the name of the Trinity; this he did three times. He then put the ‘prohibitions’ on the patient, things that he must never do. What these were was not divulged. Then the descent back to the house was made. Before leaving for the hill, the guardian would ask the patient if he had complete faith in the power of the healing water. If there was any hesitation whatsoever about this, then he was not treated. It is widely believed all over the West that there has never been one failure to effect the cure. Although modern medical treatment for the control of epilepsy has lessened the popularity of this archaic folk healing, some people still prefer it, so great is their faith in its efficacy.

Various other methods for curing the widespread disease of epilepsy, which did not necessarily involve a charmer, were resorted to in different parts of the Highlands. Sacrifices of different kinds could be made. For example, it was believed that if a hen or a cock, a drake or a gander were buried alive at the exact spot where the epileptic had his or her first falling fit, no second attack would ever occur. Carmichael records an account of this given to him by a Ross-shire woman. A boy whose sister had an epileptic fit came to her mother to get a black cock which he knew she had. The bird was immediately buried alive at the spot where the girl had fallen. The girl had reached middle age by the time this story was told to Carmichael, but she never had another attack of epilepsy. Again, in Ross-shire, in the nineteenth century a minister records how he talked to his mother-in-law about the burying alive of a black cock at Evanton for the same purpose. She told him she had seen the girl in question fall in a fit on the floor of an upper room in the house. Straight away a hole was made at the spot where the girl fell, and a second hole made through the lower floor into the earth. A black cock was then procured, lowered down through the two floors and buried alive in the hole. Carmichael also records that some years previous to his writing, a boat was crossing Loch Duthaich from Letterfearn to Dornie, when a man in the boat had an epileptic fit. The other men took bearings, turned back to the shore, and obtained a black cock which they put, together with a stone, in a sack. When they reached the point where their companion had had his fit, they threw the sack with its victim into the water. The man, allegedly, never had another epileptic fit. Sometimes the blood of a black cock was sprinkled over one who was afflicted by the falling sickness; if no black cock was available, the blood of a black cat was used instead.

5 Supernatural beings, omens and social customs

Daily life in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland was dominated by superstitions and by a strong belief in spirits and supernatural beings of various kinds. The Church naturally disapproved of these blatantly pagan traditions but so deeply rooted were they in the daily lives of the people that they were almost impossible to eradicate. Supernatural beings, baleful and benign, haunted virtually every feature of the wild, mountainous landscape or the low-lying Islands, studded with bogs and waters and girdled with beautiful but treacherous shores. It was necessary for one going on a journey, no matter how brief, to be armed with talismans of various kinds to counteract the evil powers of many of the malevolent beings they were constantly in danger of offending or which might inadvertently cross their paths. It was necessary, according to belief, to arm oneself with protective amulets such as white quartz pebbles, a piece of wood from some sacred tree such as the rowan; and of course the Bible, kept in the pocket, was another potent source of protection. Not all the various creatures who shared with mankind the wild terrain were hostile; indeed, many could be protective and positively helpful to those in danger. One of the most widely known in the rich repertoire of ‘fairy’ lore was the ubiquitous
each-uisge
(water-horse, less commonly,
tarbh-uisge
, water bull), usually a dangerous being, which sometimes appeared in the form of a beautiful horse, occasionally saddled and bridled, as if waiting for some unwary traveller, who would be glad to shorten his journey by jumping onto the obliging animal’s back and — as he thought — obtaining a convenient lift to his place of destination. There are many different versions of this widespread motif. Sometimes the trusting traveller would be dragged into a lake or river and devoured by his steed; at other times, if he were quick-witted enough, he could manage to escape.

The
each-uisge
also had a penchant for young girls, many of whom seemed to have time to be lying invitingly on tufts of sweet-smelling heather, or by the grassy lakeside. A youth of great beauty would sit down beside the girl and would begin to converse with her. Totally disarmed by his god-like appearance, she, uncharacteristically, would submit to the embraces that he soon began to lavish on her. It would seem to her that she had encountered the great love of her life, and lying back, she would begin to stroke his head and sing a love song to him and he would be put under the spell of her sweet voice and sleep would overcome him. She would tenderly stroke his hair, and then, in a terrible moment of truth, she would come upon the water weeds which were still entangled in his copious locks. Alarmed, she would look down at his feet, and now see that they were not those of a youth, but the hooves of a horse. Fear of death would give her a wild courage, and, if she were lucky enough to rise without disturbing him, she would have to run for her life. More often, however, he would entice her to climb on his back and then plunge deep into the waters with her, and she would never be heard of again. I myself have heard various versions of this widespread and sinister motif, both in the Hebrides and on the Scottish mainland, and have sometimes felt a sense of dread when walking near a lake or river where the water-horse and other unpleasant beings were traditionally believed to lurk. But not all spirits were evil and dangerous to mankind. Unexpectedly, perhaps, it was the fairies who could manifest the greatest malevolence to human beings, and who had an unpleasant habit of stealing their babies. The best remedy for this was to put the cradle out in the sunshine or leave it in the living room which served many purposes, while placing the long, iron tongs, which were to be found in every home, across the infant’s cradle. Iron was a powerful averter of evil and dangerous spells.