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

41 страница из 66

ssss1

Many of the deformities in children are attributed to the Fairies. When a child is incautiously left alone by its mother, for however short a time, the Fairies may come and give its little legs such a twist as will leave it hopelessly lame ever after. To give them their due, however, they sometimes took care of children whom they found forgotten, and even of grown up people sleeping incautiously in dangerous places.

ssss1

The elves have children of their own, and require the services of midwives like the human race. ‘Howdies,’ as they are called, taken in the way of their profession to the Fairy dwelling, found on coming out that the time they had stayed was incredibly longer or shorter than they imagined, and none of them was ever the better ultimately of her adventure.

ssss1

The Gaelic sìthche, like the English elf, has two ideas, almost amounting to two meanings, attached to it. In the plural, sìthchean, it conveys the idea of a diminutive race, travelling in eddy winds, lifting men from the ground, stealing, and entering houses in companies; while in the singular, sìthche, the idea conveyed is that of one who approaches mankind in dimensions. The ‘man and woman of peace’ hire themselves to the human race for a day’s work or a term of service, and contract marriages with it. The elfin youth (Gille sìth) has enormous strength, that of a dozen men it is said, and the elfin women (or Banshis) are remarkably handsome. The aged of the race were generally the reverse, in point of beauty, especially those of them substituted for Fairy-abducted children and animals.