Perhaps there is no part of the Highlands of Scotland where the practice of using the flaming torches of Hallowe’en is so much observed, even still, as in the braes of Aberdeenshire. Not later than last year, our Gracious Majesty, no doubt in order to preserve those relics of ancient times, caused these blazing torches to be kindled by the youth of the place, around Balmoral Castle. The torches are considered by the natives to be the means of protecting, not only their farms and other possessions from the ravages of the fairies, but likewise mothers and newly-born infants. While the landed possessions were duly surrounded that evening by the torch-bearers, the dwellings where children had born were encompassed with still greater care, for the safety of the mothers and their young offspring, which the fairies were on the watch to snatch away. The torch-bearers used great care in carrying their fire in the right-hand, and therewith running around their premises from right to left, thus observing the “Deas-iuil,” or the right hand direction. The “Tuath-iuil,” being the left-hand, or wrong direction, would render their precautions entirely abortive. In this manner they protected their properties, and prevented the fairy thieves from snatching away the unbaptised infants from their mothers’ bed, placing in their room their own ugly and deformed children. Martin, in his History of the Western Isles, informs us, “That this was considered an effectual means to preserve both the mother and infant from the power of evil spirits, who are ready at such times to do mischief, and sometimes carry away the infants, and return poor, meagre skeletons; and these infants have voracious appetites. In this case it was usual for those who believed that their children were thus taken away, to dig a grave in the fields on quarter-day, and there to lay the fairy-skeleton till next morning, at which time the parents went to the place, where they doubted not to find their own child instead of the skeleton.” They had also, in other localties, recourse to the barbarous charm of burning, with a live coal, the toes of the suffering infant, the supposed changeling. The Fairies were not contented with abstracting handsome children—beautiful maidens and wives sometimes disappeared.
“The Miller of Menstrie,” in Clackmannan, who possessed a charming spouse, had given offence to the fairy court, and was, in consequence, deprived of his fair helpmate. His distress was aggravated by hearing his wife singing in the air—
Oh! Alva woods are bonnie,
Tillicoultry hills are fair;
But when I think o’ the bonnie braes o’ Menstrie,
It mak’s my heart aye sair.
After many attempts to procure her restoration, the miller chanced one day, in riddling some stuff at the mill-door, to use a posture of enchantment, when the spell was dissolved, and the matron fell into his arms. The wife of the Blacksmith of Tullibody was carried up the chimney, the fairies, as they bore her off, singing—
Deidle linkum doddie;
We’ve gotten drucken Davie’s wife,