CHARM FOR CLOTH.
After being fulled, new cloth was folded and placed on a table. The women, who had been engaged in the fulling, then gathered round it and sang the following charm seven times. During the singing they kept time to the music by raising their hands simultaneously and beating the cloth with the tips of their fingers. After each repetition of the charm the cloth was turned over end:
“Well do I say my verse,
As I descend the glen,
One verse, two verses, etc., down to seven and a half verses.
Let not the wearer of the cloth be wounded,
And may he never be torn,
And when he goes to battle or conflict,
The full succour of the Lord be his.
[The little sea-gull yonder swimming
And the white wave that she loves,
She swims pleasantly
And I swim cheerfully spinning;
When I sow my flax
And spin my lint
I will make linen from the awns
And get seven marks for the yard.]
Water-cress pulled through flag-stone,
And given to wife unawares,
Deer’s shank in the herring’s head,
And in the slender body of the speckled salmon.”
Then, striking the cloth faster, the singers say:
“Let this be second cloth, and not enemy’s spoil,
Nor property of clerk or priest.
But his own property, and may he enjoy and wear it.”
It is said there is a bone in the herring’s head that resembles a deer’s foot. Some say the word should not be “deer’s shank” (Lurg an fhéidh), but “deer’s antlers” (Cuibhn’an fhéidh). The part of the song within brackets seems to belong to the music more than to the meaning. The final wish is that the cloth when turned, or made into a second suit, may prove as good as new, and not, like cloth found on dead bodies, a perquisite of the priest’s. In olden times the seventh yard (slat) of chequered cloth (Clò Breac) was given to the factor and priest, as well as the seventh lamb from the fold.