The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1890-05-06
SCOTCH SUPERSTITIONS.
Strange Ceremonies to Bring a Child
Back to Health.

Superstition fiourishes in some dis
tricts of the Highlands of Scotland as
prosperously as it did 200 years ago,
and men and women are glad &c
resort to the working Of charms
above all, in cases of illness which are
not easily cured by the physician. An
interesting point about these charms
is that they sometimes cure, probably
on the same principles that the re-
suits of faith healing and kindred phe-
norma are brought about.
DR.. Stewart, of Neither Lochaber,
recently published an account of a
ceremony which he witnessed in O Sc
Guided glen. He was on his way to
the house of a shepherd, in a lonely
district, and, finding no one at home,
he started to explore the neighbor-
hood. He had not gone far when he
saw smoke rising from a wooded hol-
low, and directed his steps in the
direction of it, thinking that the
women were doing their washing in
the brook. Reaching the top of a
steep bank and looking down to a little
plotof grass beside the burn, he saw two
women standing opposite each other,
holding between them vertically a
hoop which. except where it was held,
was wrapped in something burning
briskly. Through this hoop of fire
two other women were engaged in
passing backward and forward a
child, eighteen months old. The
child's mother was standing near,
earnestly watching the ceremony. As
DR.. Stewart came up the ceremony
was apparently concluded, and the
hoop was dropped into a pool, where
it sank kissing and spluttering.
The child, it seems, had been in i'll
health, constantly clamoring for food,
which it ate voraciously, but without
being benefited by it. 1t had a dried
and shrivelled aspect, and was, be-
sides, fractions and fretful in temper.
Medicine made it worse. In this
situation, a"Wise Woman, was called
in, who discovered that the child was
nnder the influence of ar evil eye of
great power from which there was
only one means of escape-by the rite
called, in Gaelic, Beannachd ma GUAR
tie, or the Blessing of the Circle. The
Wise Woman also discovered that the
spell had been laid on the child by a
beggarwoman who had refused bread
as aims and would take only money.
There was no money to give her, and
after peering into the child's face and
saying, '.Oh what a beautiful childfn
she had hobbled off, chuckling
viciously.. From that date the little
victim dwindled away, and although
a cormorant for food, became a frac-
tious weakling. The Wise Woman ac-
cordingly performed the rite she
advised passing the child through the
fiery hoop eighteen times, once
for each moon of his age. When
taken home the child was fed
and put to bed, and above his head
was suspended a small bunch of roid,
or bog myrtle, which was on no ac-
count to be touched until the Wise
Woman came to take 1t down at the
next crescent moon. 1t is further re-
lated, on DIR. Stewards authority,
that from the date of the rite he wit
messed the child began to improve.
In the neighborhood Of Glasgow,
passing a child under the belly Of a
donkey and over his back a given
number of times, according to its age,
is esteemed a cure for whooping
cough.-Illustgated Magazine.