[8] In the north of Ireland the band was taken off the spinning wheel to prevent the Fairies spoiling the linen.
[9] Similarly, in Dorsetshire fossil belemnites are called colepexies’ fingers, and in Northumberland a fungous excrescence, growing about the roots of old trees, is called Fairy butter. So in Ireland, the round towers are ascribed to them.
[10] Campbell’s West Highland Tales, ii. 46.
[11] The use of some kind of mill, generally a hand mill, is as universal as the growth of grain, and the necessity for reducing the solid grain into the more palatable form of meal no doubt led to its early invention. The Gaelic meil (or beil), to grind, the English mill, the Latin mola, and the Greek μυλη, show that it was known to the Aryan tribes at a period long anterior to history. The handmill mentioned in Scripture, worked by two women, seems the same with that still to be found in obscure corners in the West Highlands.
An instrument so useful to man in the less advanced stages of his civilization could not fail to be looked upon with much respect and good feeling. In the Hebrides it was rubbed every Saturday evening with a wisp of straw ‘for payment’ of its benevolent labours (sop ga shuathadh ris a bhrà ga pàigheadh). Meal ground in it is coarser than ordinary meal, and is known as gairbhein.
[12] Other charms used on the occasion were the taking of the woman to be delivered several times across the byre-drain (inne), the opening of every lock in the house, and ceremonies by means of
“A grey hank of flax and a cockscomb,
Two things against the commandments.”
These practices seem to have been known only to the very superstitious, and to have been local. The first belonged to Ross-shire, the second to the north-west mainland of Argyllshire, and the last to Tiree.
[13] Carleton (Tales and Stories, p. 74) mentions an Irish belief of a kindred character connected with oatmeal. When one crossed fair gurtha, or hungry grass (Scot., feur gorta, famine grass), a spot on which the Fairies had left one of their curses, he was struck with weakness and hunger, but, “if the person afflicted but tasted as much meal or flour as would lie on the point of a penknife, he will instantaneously break the spell of the Fairies, and recover his former strength.”