Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-07-19
SUPERSTITIONS.
Some Stories of Scottish Elves
and Fairies.
CHRONOLOGY WITCHCRAFT.
The Mermaids of the Locks Still Exist Past
all Dispute - Those Nameless Els
Which Control the Vasaries
of the Weather.
Special Correspondence to the Gazette.


perstitions of the peasant folk of any coun-
try are not only interesting in their sug-
geStion of thought, feeling and belief, but
through them much of the heart history of
people can often be traced. Scotland is
peculiarly rich in these forgivable vagaries.
A profound book might be written upon
them. Such book would have much
ethnOlogic and sociologic value. In news
paper articles the mereSt reference to the
quaint things diScoverable on this line of
study among Scottish people can be made.
For in not quite years wanderingS among
the Scottish peaSantTy the number of these
unique things secured has been astonishing,
and an interesting fact, at least to myself,
was the gradual change in my own super
Stition regarding Scottish superStitions.
believed they would be found altogether
gloomy, savage, barbara. But | gradually
came to know that however grim visaged
the face of the one confiding to me weird
assertion of uncanny belief, the masses of
the peasantry, possibly barring the northern
crofters and all Scottish fishermen from
the Solway to the Farce islands, secuted
and 1outed them, save those of a tender
and winSome character.
Indeed among the most unlearned of
Scottish peasantry there is a serious
though exquisite vein of brightness better
than ordinary wit and more palpable than
extraordinary humor which, rejecting the
save In remote districts, insists on retain
ing and enjoying the pleasure found in an
apparent and gravely asserted belief in the
superstitions themselves. A lingering re-
spect for, if not belief in, the old spae-
wife or ''wise-woman, p" the half-witch, for
tune teller and destroyer of spells, charms
and blights from the evil eye'' still ex-
lists almost universally in Scotland; and
one casting ridicule upon her is instantly
met with the reproof: 1.-The gift she haze
is trae aboon, and what he gies daurna be
hidit Though the speaker may have no
more faith than yourself in the efficacy of
the pretended spae-wifes powers. The
loss of the charm of possessing the super
stition is begrudged. Thus the weird,
quaint things, many of which might seem
unaucountable and repulsive to us, have
become in lieu of book lore folk and fire.
side lore out of which endless entertain
ment is secured. Underneath much of
this there is a deep and earnest tender
ness such as all hearts know for many
things without apparent reason, that grow
into life out of ancestry, oft-repeated home
side tale, beloved custom and that mystic
rious yet powerful hallowing which comes
upon changelesS places and objects to men.
DEMoNoLoGY AND wITCHCRAFT
in Scotland are matters of too recent record
to expect that their weird influences are
anything like largely dispelled. Scottish
pOctIy ItCh WIFI -Iut
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
imaginations of the Scottish masses. There
are remote districts in the Scottish south
eastern and southwestern shireS, for in
stance 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 supersti-
ton is still, / am inclined to believe from
actual observation and study, the Scottish
highlands 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 engage in all manner of SER
vice. they are truly children of the mists.
Their association in homes, in inns, on sS-
tateS, and even in factories, with lowland
companions, effects ceaSeless transmission
of the bugaboos they have brought from
the mountains and glens; and this, in turn,
rekindles and keeps aflame in the breasts of
lowlanders, ordinarily subject to later-day
influences, all the inherent love for the
fierce and gentle spirits and sprites so
marked among the lowly of all oldeu Celtic
lands and race divisions.
These humble and unconscious mission
aries of superstition-ever a brave, tender
and imaginative folk-are reared from
babyhood to manhood. in what may be
truly termed university of superstition.
In their lonely and isolated lives every.
physical object and phenomenon of nature
has significance of good or i'll. Their en-
tire environment is rife with wild and
fierce ancestral tales and legends. Their
homes in some s.auid clachan' In the glens,
on No Sides within ha r,,,,1o
straths, or clustered in the upland corries
or hollows, stand on Gaelic fanes many of
which are 1000 years old. The pagan cla-
chan Che sacred circle of stones,") is
gone. The later chapels are RACED to the
ground. But there the Highlander remains
in his glen-side home, standing within the
relics of antiquity. lost in the midst of OBJ
liv1on. Thus down through the centuries
have come the wild bardic songs, shreds of
the barbarous rites, and echoes of the clang
and 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
presiding 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 signiti-
canoe; 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. And If
this were not the omniprescnt environment
of the region, see how his life is threaded
in warp and wool from the cradle, with the
very
SPIRIT OF CHRONOLOGY AND SUPERSTITION
For eight menths'of the year these folks
are shut within their mountain homes by
storm and food. From time imuemorial
almost the exclusive diversion has been that