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

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In Skye the Bean-nighe is said to be squat in figure (tiughiosal), or not unlike a ‘small pitiful child’ (paisde beag brònach). If a person caught her she told all that would befall him in after life. She answered all his questions, but he must answer hers. Men did not like to tell what she said. Women dying in childbed were looked upon as dying prematurely, and it was believed that unless all the clothes left by them were washed they would have to wash them themselves till the natural period of their death. It was women ‘dreeing this weird’ who were the washing women. If the person hearing them at work beating their clothes (slacartaich) caught them before being observed, he could not be heard by them; but if they saw him first, he lost the power of his limbs (lùgh).

In the highlands of Perthshire the washing woman is represented as small and round, and dressed in pretty green. She spreads by moonlight the linen winding sheets of those soon to die, and is caught by getting between her and the stream.