As already said, silver fired from a gun will wound a witch, and force her to assume her proper shape. An English sportsman, according to a Perthshire version of an old story, was sitting surrounded by his dogs, in a mountain bothy at the dead hour of night. A cat came in, but the dogs did not move. It sat with its back to the fire, and swelled till it was as large as a yearling calf. The Englishman took a silver button off his clothes, and putting it in the gun, fired at the cat. The brute scampered out at the door. On going to the strath next day, the sportsman being a doctor, was sent for to see a farmer’s wife, who had got suddenly ill. He went, and extracted his own silver button from her right breast.
SAVING HORSES.
In Uist, a band of horses wandered on to a ledge in the face of a steep precipice. It was impossible to take them from their dangerous position to the top of the cliff by ropes, and to force them from the ledge to the sea, which washed the base of the precipice, seemed from the height of the fall, inevitable destruction. An old man, who was reputed to know more than his paternoster, advised, however, they should be driven over, and himself began an incantation, beginning “Casa Gurra, Casa Gurra,” whatever that may mean. The horses of their own accord went over the ledge, and swam safely to land.
TAILOR AND WITCHES.
A Glen-Quoich tailor, detected among a company of witches, was asked what had brought him into such society? He said it was “for the pleasure of the company” (mar shodan ris a chuideachd).
CELEBRATED WITCHES.
The best-known names seem to have been merely nicknames, given perhaps to more than one old woman. ‘Blue-eye’ (Gorm-shùil) is said to originate from the witch having one eye black or brown and the other blue. It is, however, a corruption of Gormla, an ancient and pretty Gaelic name, usually rendered Dorothy. Gormla Mhòr from Meigh, Lochaber, was stronger than all the witches of Mull, and gave the finishing stroke, as already detailed, to Capt. Forrest’s ship. She met her death when astraddle on a mountain stream, to intercept a salmon that had made its way up to spawn. A large fish made a rush, knocked her backwards in the water, and drowned her. There was a Gormshuil in the village of Hianish, Tiree, a most notorious local witch, and one in Cràcaig in Skye, equally notorious. ‘Brindled-Headless-Stocking Foot’ (Cas a mhogain riabhaich) and ‘Rough Foot-gear, the Herdsman’s daughter’ (Caiseart gharbh ni’n an Aodhair) were anywhere but where the person who is telling about them comes from himself. Shaw, the Lochnell bard, makes them sisters dwelling in Glenforsa in Mull, when Ossian was a little boy, and contemporaries of Mac-Rùsluin. ‘Sallow Spot’ (Ball Odhar) was from Kintra (Ceann-trà) in Ardnamurchan; ‘Yellow Claws’ (Spòga buidhe) from Maligeir on the east side of Skye; Doideag-un is the well-known name of the Mull witches, and is given by children to the falling snowflakes, which they are informed are the Mull witches on their journey through the air. Big Kate MacIntyre in Fort-William was extensively known some forty years ago as a person skilled in divinations and possessing mysterious powers.
WIZARD RISING AFTER DEATH.
People who practised forbidden arts, as may readily be supposed, did not rest after death. When buried they remained quiet like other people, but till then might be troublesome.