A BED BLESSING. Which, fairly translated into English, will stand thus : A BLESSING TO BE SAID AT BEDTIME. This night I will lay me down to sleep In the companionship of the Virgin and her Son, I will not lie down to sleep with evil, Nor shall evil lie down to sleep with me; But I shall sleep with God. And with me shall God lie down. His good right arm be under my head; The cross of the Nine Angels be about me, Even to the soles of my feet. I supplicate Peter, I supplicate Paul, I supplicate Mary the Virgin and her Son, And I supplicate the twelve Apostles, That evil befall me not this night, with their consent. And Thou, Son of the sweet-savoured Virgin, Protect me this night from all the pains of darkness! And thou, Michael, ever beneficent, be about for the safe 221 Apart from the appropriateness and almost absolute faultlessness of the rhythm and language in which they are couched, nothing about these old Hebridean " Blessings" seems to us so beautiful and striking as the nearness with which they bring Heaven and its active, ceaseless beneficence, to the very firesides and commonest affairs of men. Nothing is too small or insignificant to be placed, not in a general way observe, but in the most literal particular sense, under the Divine guardianship. With these old people, in their ocean-girt and storm-swept islands, God was not merely the creator, but the ever present, ever near father, protector, and friend, while to them His angels were in very truth "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation"not merely in spiritual matters, we are to remark, but in all the affairs of common, every-day life. Since the days of the ancient Hebrews, nowhere shall we find so firm and fixed a belief in a direct and constant intercourse and communion for good between Heaven and Earth. The following "Blessing," to be said over cattle when being led to pasture of a morning, is exceedingly interesting: In English thus RANN BUACHAILLEACHD. Siubhal beinne, siubhal coille, O fheithe, o adh'rcean a cheile, 'So Luaths na Féinne. Banachag Phadruig ma'r casan, Gu'm bu slàn a thig sibh dhachaidh. A RHYME TO BE SAID IN DRIVING CATTLE TO PASTURE. Wandering o'er uplands, wandering through woods, St. Patrick's own milkmaid attend your steps Till safe I see you return to me again. The charm that Mary made to her cattle, Early and late, going and coming from pasture, Still keep you safe from quagmire and marsh, From pitfalls and from each other's horns, From the sudden swelling (of the torrent about) the Red Rock St. Patrick's milkmaid attend your feet, Safe and scaithless come ye home again. The reference to "Luath," Cuchullin's matchless dog, so celebrated in the Ossianic poems and old Fingalian tales, is curious. The ghosts of the Fingalian heroes, existing in a sort of middle statenot yet exactly saved nor wholly lost-with those of their famous dogs, were believed to visit at times the scenes of their former exploits for the sake of the hunting, in which they so much HIGHLAND FOLK-LORE. 223 delighted, and a cow or other animal, running about excitedly and wildly, and, to all human investigation, causelessly, was supposed to be the work of a passing Fingalian hunting party, invisible to mortal eyes, Luath, unmatched in spirit-land as upon earth, still leading the chase as of old. On the lines about St. Patrick's dairymaid or milkmaid Mr. Carmichael has the following note, which will be read with interest, and which we give in his own words :— 'Banachag Phadriug mu'r casan.' (St. Patrick's dairymaid be around your feet.) Banachag is the Hebridean form of the Banarach of the mainland, and Banachogach or Banacach is the Hebridean term for the smallpox. You will observe the close resemblance between the Gaelic word for a dairymaid and that for the smallpox. I think the explanation is obvious. Dairymaids were wont to get the cowpox, and people confounded the cow-pox with the smallpox. Hence, in the Highlands old people will tell you that effects of the cow-pox were known long before Jenner's celebrated discovery. Hence, also, you will rarely meet with a woman in the Highlands disfigured from the effects of smallpox. Not so the men, however. In England, again, in the rural parishes, the case is reversed. There you will see women pox-marked, but seldom men. The reason I take it to be is this:-In the Highlands it is the woman who milk the cattle, and in doing so they get the cow-pox off the cows in milking them. A Highlander would consider it unmanly to milk a cow. I have never seen or heard of one who could or would do this, except a young man in Lismore. Three or four young men, brothers, had a small farm among them. Their mother died and their two sisters married, and probably remembering CalumCille's celebrated saying 'Far am bi bò bith'dh bean, S' far am bi bean bithidh buaireadh.' And where there is a woman there will be mischief.) They resolved to do without a woman in their house at all; and they succeeded for a time, but not for long, for 'Man, the hermit, sighed, till woman smiled.' One of them ultimately brought home a wife, who soon became a cause of discord and ill-will among the previously happy and affectionate brothers. But this is digressing. In England it is the men who milk the cows. Most men in rural parishes can milk, and but few women. Consequently in the agricultural districts of England you hardly ever see an elderly man disfigured by the smallрох, but you can see many women so disfigured. These suggestions are simply the results of my own observations in England and in the Highlands. They may be to the purpose or not, I don't know." We think they are to the purpose, and we are very much obliged to our correspondent for his many interesting contributions from the Outer Hebrides to our stock of "auld-world" folk-lore. CHAPTER XXXVII. The Delights of Beltane Tide-Bishop Gawin Douglas-His Translation of the Æneid-The Fat of Deer-" Light and Shade" from the Gaelic-Mackworth Praed-Discovery of an old Flint Manufactory in the Moss of Ballachulish, In the poetry and proverbs of our country you constantly meet with references which go to prove that alternations of sunshine and shower [April 1873] have for ages been held to be the meteorological characteristics of an April day throughout the British Islands, and most of all, perhaps, in Scotland. To go no further, you will remember Scott's concluding lines in Rokeby "Time and Tide had thus their sway, Yielding, like an April day, Smiling noon for sullen morrow, This, however, has been the driest April known in the West Highlands for at least a score of years past. Hardly any rain has fallen during the month, and with a bright sun overhead, and drying north-easterly winds, rivers and streams have seldom been at a lower ebb even in midsummer, while in some places you hear complaints of an absolute scarcity of water even for ordinary household purposes-a very rare thing, indeed, in the West Highlands at this season of the year, or for that matter of it at any season. There was, however, such a superabundance of moisture in the ground, from the heavy rains of the past winter, that vegetation has as yet suffered little or nothing from the drought, and the country is beautiful exceedingly in all its greenery of leaf and gaiety of ex Р |