A special form of warning is the “Licht before Death.” In the parish of Tynron it is recounted how this mysterious light illumined up, on one occasion, the whole interior of a byre where a woman was engaged milking cows, and how afterwards she learned that her mother had died the same evening.
Mr John Corrie (Moniaive) gives a good example of this form from the parish of Glencairn:—
“An old Glencairn lady, on looking out of the door one dark night, saw a strange light shining in the vicinity of a house where an acquaintance lived. Entering the house she commented on what she had seen, and expressed the hope that ‘it wasna the deid licht.’ Her fears were ridiculed, but next morning it transpired that a member of the family over whose dwelling the light was seen had committed suicide.”
There is another illustration from Glencairn, and perhaps a more valuable one, on account of the precision of its details:—
“Peggy D——, when going to lock her door one night, saw a light go past, carried, as she supposed, by a neighbour. There was nothing unusual in this, but there was a high stone dyke with a flight of steps in it close to the foot of the garden, and she was surprised to see the light and supposed light-bearer pass right through the obstructing fence as if nothing of the kind had been there, and although the ground below the house was very uneven, the light itself was never lost sight of for a moment. Peggy, rooted to the spot, watched the light go down through the fields, then along the public road until the churchyard was reached. When turning in that direction it passed through the locked gate with the same apparent ease that the other obstacles had been surmounted, and, entering the graveyard, became lost to sight among the tombstones. A week later Peggy D——’s daughter was carried a corpse to the same churchyard.”[(70)]
“Deid Lichts.”
Sketch by J. Copland, Dundrennan.
Other old and significant terms associated with the premonition of death are the “dead-watch,” or “dede-chack,” really the peculiar clicking noise made by wood-worms; and the “dede-drap,” which was the rather eerie sound made by the intermittent falling of a drop of water from the eaves; and “dead-bell,” a tingling in the ears, believed to announce a friend’s death.
Other expressions of a similar nature are the “dede-spall,” which is the semi-molten part of the grease of a candle (so called from its resemblance to wood-shaving) when it falls over the edge in semi-circular form, and which, if pronounced, and turning with an appearance of persistence toward some person in particular, was supposed to indicate the approaching hand of death.