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

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She can also be caught and mastered and made to communicate her information at the point of the sword. Oscar, son of the poet Ossian, met her on his way to the Cairbre’s feast, at which the dispute arose which led to his death. She was encountered by Hugh of the Little Head on the evening before his last battle, and left him as her parting gift (fàgail), that he should become the frightful apparition he did after death, the most celebrated in the West Highlands.

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The song of the Fairy woman foreboded great calamity, and men did not like to hear it. Scott calls it

“The fatal Banshi’s boding scream,”

but it was not a scream, only a wailing murmur (torman mulaid) of unearthly sweetness and melancholy.

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The Banshi is sometimes confounded with the Glaistig, the apparition of a woman, acting as tutelary guardian of the site to which she is attached. Many people use Banshi and Glaistig as convertible terms, and the confusion thence arising extends largely to books. The true Glaistig is a woman of human race, who has been put under enchantments, and to whom a Fairy nature has been given. She wears a green dress, like Fairy women, but her face is wan and grey, whence her name Glaistig, from glas, grey. She differs also in haunting castles and the folds of the cattle, and confining herself to servant’s work.