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

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In these eddies, people going on a journey at night have been ‘lifted,’ and spent the night careering through the skies. On returning to the earth, though they came to the house last left, they were too stupefied to recognize either the house or its inmates. Others, through Fairy despite, have wandered about all night on foot, failing to reach their intended destination though quite near it, and perhaps in the morning finding themselves on the top of a distant hill, or in some inaccessible place to which they could never have made their way alone. Even in daylight some were carried in the Elfin eddy from one island to another, in great terror lest they should fall into the sea.

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When there is rain with sunshine, the ‘little people,’ according to a popular rhyme, are at their meat,

“Rain and sun,

Little people at their meat.”

When wind and rain come from opposite directions (which may for an instant be possible in a sudden shift of wind), by throwing some horse-dung against the wind, the Fairies are brought down in a shower!