“ ‘Banachag Phadriug mu’r casan.’
(St. Patrick’s dairymaid be around your feet.)
Banachag is the Hebridean form of the Banarach of the mainland, and Banachogach or Banacach is the Hebridean term for the smallpox. You will observe the close resemblance between the Gaelic word for a dairymaid and that for the smallpox. I think the explanation is obvious. Dairymaids were wont to get the cow-pox, and people confounded the cow-pox with the smallpox. Hence, in the Highlands old people will tell you that effects of the cow-pox were known long before Jenner’s celebrated discovery. Hence, also, you will rarely meet with a woman in the Highlands disfigured from the effects of smallpox. Not so the men, however. In England, again, in the rural parishes, the case is reversed. There you will see women pox-marked, but seldom men. The reason I take it to be is this:—In the Highlands it is the woman who milk the cattle, and in doing so they get the cow-pox off the cows in milking them. A Highlander would consider it unmanly to milk a cow. I have never seen or heard of one who could or would do this, except a young man in Lismore. Three or four young men, brothers, had a small farm among them. Their mother died and their two sisters married, and probably remembering Calum-Cille’s celebrated saying—
‘Far am bi bò bith’dh bean,
S’ far am bi bean bithidh buaireadh.’
(Where there is a cow there will be a woman,
And where there is a woman there will be mischief.)
They resolved to do without a woman in their house at all; and they succeeded for a time, but not for long, for—
‘Man, the hermit, sighed, till woman smiled.’