Читать книгу Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland. Collected Entirely from Oral Sources онлайн

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“Onward past Greenock,

Like the deer of the cold high hills,

Breasting the rugged ground

With the hunter in pursuit;

She sailed with Fairy motion,3

Bounding smoothly in her pride,

Cleaving the green waves,

And passing to windward of the rest.”4

This latitude in the use of the word has led some writers on the subject to confound with the Fairies beings having as little connection with them as with mankind. A similar laxness occurs in the use of the English word Fairy. It is made to include kelpies, mermaids, and other supernatural beings, having no connection with the true Fairy, or Elfin race.

The following are the names by which the ‘Folk’ are known in Gaelic. It is observable that every one of the names, when applied to mortals, is contemptuous and disparaging.

Sithche (pronounced sheeche) is the generic and commonest term. It is a noun of common gender, and its plural is sithchean (sheechun). In Graham’s Highlands of Perthshire, a work more than once quoted by Sir Walter Scott, but unreliable as an authority, this word is written shi’ich.