When coffining the corpse every string in the shroud was cut with the scissors; and in defence of the practice there was a story that, after burial, a woman’s shade came to her friends, to say that all the strings in her shroud had not been cut. Her grave was opened, and this was found to be the case.
The only instance the writer has heard of Cere-cloth, that is, cloth dipped in wax in which dead bodies were wrapped, being used in the Highlands, is, that the Nicholsons of Scorrybreck, in Skye (a family said to be of Russian descent through Neacal mòr who was in Mungastadt), had a wax shirt (Leine Chéir) which, from the friendship between themselves and the chief of the Macleods, was sent for from Dunvegan on every occasion of a death.
The Watch of the Graveyard (Faire Chlaidh).—The person last buried had to keep watch over the graveyard till the next funeral came. This was called Faire Chlaidh, the graveyard watch, kept by the spirits of the departed.
At Kiel (Cill Challum Chille), in Morvern, the body of the Spanish Princess said to have been on board one of the Armada blown up in Tobermory Bay was buried. Two young men of the district made a paction, that whoever died first the other would watch the churchyard for him. The survivor, when keeping the promised watch, had the sight of his dead friend as well as his own. He saw both the material world and spirits. Each night he saw ghosts leaving the churchyard and returning before morning. He observed that one of the ghosts was always behind the rest when returning. He spoke to it, and ascertained it to be the ghost of the Spanish Princess. Her body had been removed to Spain, but one of her little fingers had been left behind, and she had to come back to where it was.
When two funeral parties met at the churchyard, a fight frequently ensued to determine who should get their friend first buried.
Suicides.—The bodies of suicides were not taken out of the house, for burial, by the doors, but through an opening made between the wall and the thatch. They were buried, along with unbaptized children, outside the common churchyard.
It was believed in the north, as in Skye and about Applecross (a Chomrach) in Ross-shire, no herring would be caught in any part of the sea which could be seen from the grave of a suicide.
Murder.—It was believed in Sutherlandshire that a murdered body remained undecayed till touched.