Chapter XIII.
Superstitions Generally.
In the hill country of every land superstition and credulity are met with. Here in Gairloch the supernatural is suggested on all sides. Weird mountain forms often veiled in murky mists, frantic ocean waves thundering in gloomy caverns, hoarse rumblings of rushing waters, startling echoes from terrific precipices, curiously gnarled and twisted trees, tangled jungles in green islands, black peat mosses, wild moorlands, bubbling springs, dark caves, deep lochs, moaning winds, lonely paths, long winter nights,—such are the surroundings of man in this wild country. Can we wonder that the Gairloch Highlander has always been superstitious and credulous?
Superstition is still rife here, but with the march of education it is gradually decaying, and, partly from this cause, and partly from the disinclination of the superstitious to tell strangers about their doings and fancies, it is difficult to obtain descriptions of present instances, so that the notices which follow will often relate to circumstances of the past, though not indeed of the remote past. They are all local cases.
Amongst the older superstitions of Gairloch were the sacrifices of bulls at Isle Maree, the resort to the oracular stone with the hole, and the rites for the care of insanity mentioned in the presbytery records ([Appendix F, section iv.]), and more particularly described in the two last chapters.
Some other notions of a superstitious kind are hinted at in other parts of this book. In the old presbytery records there are notices of marches round "monuments," charmings, libations, and midsummer or Beltane fires in the neighbouring parishes, and no doubt there were similar practices in Gairloch but most of these are forgotten now.
There was a superstitious belief, scarcely yet dead, that a draught of the waters of Loch Maree was a certain cure for any disease,—a notion akin to that which prompted the friends of the insane to take them to Isle Maree. The modern advocates of hydropathy might have thought this belief in Loch Maree water was far from being superstitious, had it not been for the established fact that the water drinker used always to cast his offering of small money into the loch at the time he imbibed its waters. The Fox point was the usual—perhaps the only—place where the Loch Maree water-cure was practised. They say that when the loch was very low, coins used often to be found among the pebbles in the water surrounding this point. I have been told that a man found five coins here not many years ago, but I have been unable to get a sight of them. In connection with this superstition it may be mentioned, that within recent years invalids have had bottles of Loch Maree water sent to them, with a firm belief in its curative qualities.
Local names are often evidences of superstition. In Gairloch we have Cathair Mhor and Cathair Bheag,—names applied to several places,—and the Sitheanan Dubha on Isle Ewe and on the North Point. There is Cathair Mhor at the head of Loch Maree, and Cathair Beag (the Gaelic name of the place) at Kerrysdale. These names mean respectively the big and little seats of the fairies. There are no stories told now-a-days of these fairy seats, but their names testify to the belief in fairies which was universal not long ago.