Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-07-19
HIGHLAND VAGARIES
That Flow to ScOtland's Lowlands
and Permeate the People.
EVERY HOME HAS ITS BROWNIE.
The Peat-Fire Parties Are Superstition's
Breeding Places.
IMM0RTALS OF GAELIC MYTHOLOGY
CORRESPONDENCE OF THE DISPATCH. ]

| JEDBURGH, Scotland, July lU. - Lie
superstitions of the peasant folk of any
country are not only interesting in their
suggestion of thought, feeling and belief,
but through them much of the heart his
tory of people can often be traced. Scot
land is peculiarly rich in these forgivable
vagaries. A profound book might be writ
ten upon them. Such book would have
much ethnologic and sociologic value.
In newspaper articles the merest refer
ence to quaint things discoverable on this
line Of study among Scottish people can be
made. For in not quite q years wander
ings among the Scottish peasantry the num-
ber of these unique things secured has been
astonishing; and an interesting fact at least
to myself was the gradual change in my own
superstition regarding Scottish super
stitions I believed they would be
found altogether gloomy, savage, barbaric
| But gradually came to know that, how
| ever grim-visaged the face of the one confd-
| ing to me weird assertion of uncanny be-
| lief, the masses of the peasantrv, possibly
| barring the Northern crofters and all Scot
| tish fishermen from the Solway to the Fa-
| roe Islands, secuted and houted them, save
| those of tender and winsome character.
From the Highlands and Islands.
Demonology and witchcratt in Scotland
are matters of too recent record to expect
that their weird influences are anything like
largely dispelled. Scottish romance and
poetry reek with ''the deil's mischief" of
| this order; but the glamor of this form of
mental superstition-worship is not alone
sufficiently powerful to foster and preserve
the witches and warlocks to the imagina-
tions of the Scottish masses. There are re-
mote districts in the Scottish southeastern
and southwestern shires, for instance south
of the Tweed in Roxburgshire, and along
the Solway and Irish sea, where the old
wraiths, various and vagarous as in Tam
O'Shanter's time, seem fadeless; but the
great cradle and source of preservation of
all uncanny things in Scottish superstition
is still, am inclined to believe from actual
observation and study, the Scottish High
lands and islands.
These districts still annually send out
into all the lowland cities, villages and
countryside communities great numbers of
sturdy, honest, patient, though ignorant
and superstitious, men and women who en-
gage in all manner of service. They are
truly children of the mists. Their associa-
tion in homes, in inns, on estates and even
in factories, with lowland companions, eff
fects ceaseless transmission of the bugaboos
they have brought from the mountains and
glens; and this in turn rekindles and keeps
afame in the breasts of lowlanders, ordi-
narily subject to later-day influences, all
the inherent love for the fierce and gentle
spirits and sprites 80 marked among the
lowly of all olden Celtic lands and race
divisions.
A University Of Superstition.
These humble and unconscious mission
aries of superstition-ever a brave, tender
and imaginative folk-are reared from baby
hood to manhood in what may be termed
a university of superstition. In their lonely
and isolated lives every physical object and
phenomenon of nature has a significance of
good or i'll. Their entire environment is
rife with wild and fierce ancestral tales and
legends. Their homes in some "auld
clachan" In the glens, on the mountain
sides, within the purple straths, or clustered
in the upland corries or hollows, stand on
Gaelic fanes many of which are 1000 years
old. The pagan clachan (the "sacred circle
of stones'') is gone. The later chapels are
razed to the ground. But there the High
lander remains in his glen-side home stand
ing within the relics of antiquity lost in the
mists of oblivion.
Thus down through the centuries have
come the wild bardic songs, shreds of the
DdTDdrOuS TlItSJ anu tCllOS VI Lut Cldu anu
clash of awful mountain battles, the whole
dim, weird and spectral to his grave and
silent life; until every grotesque form in
mountain landscape has demon shape; every
shadowy tarn or hollow glen has its presid-
ing evil spirit, every cairn or menhir is the
abode of warlock or boyle; every floating
cloud is the sable wing of some lowering
and awful presence; every cry Of bird has
especial and weird significance; every
stream and loch has its spirit of good or
evil; and every trumpet blast of the tempest
is an undeniable challenge of personifed
malevolence and fury.
Eight Months of Fire1ighs Gossip.
And if this were not the omnipresent en-
vironment Of the region, see how his life is
threaded in warp and woof from the cradle,
with the very spirit of fdemonology and super
stition. For eight months of the year these
folk are shut within their mountain homes
by storm and food. From time immemorial
almost the exclusive diversion has been
that incompatible nursery of superstition,
the ceilidh pronounced "kailey," and Gae-
lie for ''gossiping party.") Here the auld
wives gather, and by the fickering light of
the peat fires recount, evening after evening
the whole winter long, all the narrowing
tales their ripe and bardic fancies conjure;
veritably curdling the blood with every
CHASTITY tale possible to human invention;
and sleeping the very soul in the fumes of
black art cauldrons, infinitely more weird
and hideous than Shakespeare has con jured
in the witch scenes of "Macbeth."
So as the burns springing from the misty
crag-rimmed corries descend and water the