What I command, I’ll rack thee with old cramps;
Fill all thy bones with aches; make thee roar
That beasts shall tremble at thy din!”
Get wet, then, as often and as much as you like, in the West Highlands, but don’t sit down or idle about in wet clothes, is a friend’s advice; otherwise, you will soon have a pretty correct idea of the nature of the cramps and aches of which even the brutal Caliban had such a horror that he exclaims:—
“No, ‘pray thee!—
I must obey: his art is of such power,
It would control my dam’s god, Setebos,
And make a vassal of him.”
Supplementary to our last paper on the spells and incantations of the Highlands, the following has been sent to us by our kind correspondent, Mr. Carmichael, of the Inland Revenue, Island of Uist, a gentleman of whom highly honourable mention is made in Mr. Campbell’s West Highland Tales, and in some of the notes to the Rev. Dr. Clerk’s Ossian. Mr. Carmichael is more conversant, perhaps, than anybody else with the antiquities and folk-lore of the Outer Hebrides. The incantation that follows was taken down by Mr. Carmichael from the recitation of “an honest, unsophisticated old Banarach, or dairymaid, in North Uist, who is even yet occasionally consulted about sickly cows”:—