Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (Volume 1 of 2)

by Sir John Rhys

In the last mentioned instance not only is the requisite cure effected, but the witch who caused the mischief is brought on the spot. I have recently heard of a parallel to this in a belief which appears to be still prevalent in the Channel Islands, more especially Guernsey. The following incidents have been communicated to me by an ardent folklorist, who has friends in the islands:—

An old woman in Torteval became ill, and her two sons were told that if they tried one of the charms of divination, such as boiling certain weeds in a pot, the first person to come to the house would prove to be the one who had cast a spell over their mother. Accordingly they made their bouillederie, and who should come to the door but a poor, unoffending Breton onion seller, and as he was going away he was waylaid by the two sons, who beat him within an inch of his life. They were prosecuted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment; but the charming did not come out in the evidence, though it was generally known to have been the reason for the assault. This account was given my informant in 1898, and the incident appears to have happened not very long before. Another is related thus:—A certain family suffered from a plague of lice, which they regarded as the consequence of a spell. They accordingly made their boiling of herbs and looked for the first comer. He turned out to be a neighbour of theirs who wished to buy some turnip seeds. The family abused him roundly. He went away, but he was watched and caught by two of the sons of the house, who beat him cruelly. They, on being prosecuted, had to pay him £5 damages. This took place in the summer of 1898, in the narrator’s own parish, in Guernsey. I have also another case of recent date, to the effect that a young woman, whose churning was so unsuccessful that the butter would not come, boiled herbs in the prescribed way. She awaited the first comer, and, being engaged, her intended husband was not unnaturally the first to arrive. She abused him so unsparingly that he broke off the engagement. These instances go far enough to raise the question why the boiling of herbs should be supposed to bring the culprit immediately on the spot, but they hardly go any further, namely, to help us to answer it.

Magic takes us back to a very primitive and loose manner of thinking; so the marvellously easy way in which it identifies any tie of association, however flimsy, with the insoluble bond of relationship which educated men and women regard as connecting cause and effect, renders even simpler means than I have described quite equal to the undoing of the evils resulting from the activity of the evil eye. Thus, let us suppose that a person endowed with the evil eye has just passed by the farmer’s herd of cattle, and a calf has suddenly been seized with a serious illness, the farmer hurries after the man of the evil eye to get the dust from under his feet. If he objects, the farmer may, as has sometimes been actually done, throw him down by force, take off his shoes, and scrape off the dust adhering to their soles, and carry it back to throw over the calf. Even that is not always necessary, as it appears to be quite enough if he takes up dust where he of the evil eye has just trod the ground. There are innumerable cases on folk-record of both means proving entirely efficacious, and they remind one of a story related in the Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 11, by Giraldus, as to the archbishop when he was preaching in the neighbourhood of Haverfordwest. A certain woman had lost her sight, but had so much faith in that holy man that she sent her son to try and procure the least bit of the fringe of his clothing. The youth, unable to make his way through the crowd that surrounded the preacher, waited till it dispersed, and then took home to his mother the sod on which he had stood and on which his feet had left their mark. That earth was applied by her to her face and eyes, with the result that she at once recovered her sight. A similar question of psychology presents itself in a practice intended as a preservative against the evil eye rather than as a cure. I allude to what I have heard about two maiden ladies living in a Manx village which I know very well: they are natives of a neighbouring parish, and I am assured that whenever a stranger enters their house they proceed, as soon as he goes away, to strew a little dust or sand over the spot where he stood. That is understood to prevent any malignant influence resulting from his visit. This tacit identifying of a man with his footprints may be detected in a more precarious and pleasing form in a quaint conceit familiar to me in the lyrics of rustic life in Wales, when, for example, a coy maiden leaves her lovesick swain hotly avowing his perfect readiness to cusanu ol ei thraed, that is, to do on his knees all the stages of her path across the meadow, kissing the ground wherever it has been honoured with the tread of her dainty foot. Let me take another case, in which the cord of association is not so inconceivably slender, namely, when two or more persons standing in a close relation to one another are mistakenly treated a little too much as if mutually independent, the objection is heard that it matters not whether it is A or B, that it is, in fact, all the same, as they belong to the same concern. In Welsh this is sometimes expressed by saying, Yr un yw Huw’r Glyn a’i glocs, that is, ‘Hugh of the Glen and his clogs are all one.’ Then, when you speak in English of a man ‘standing in another’s shoes,’ I am by no means certain, that you are not employing an expression which meant something more to those who first used it than it does to us. Our modern idioms, with all their straining after the abstract, are but primitive man’s mental tools adapted to the requirements of civilized life, and they often retain traces of the form and shape which the neolithic worker’s chipping and polishing gave them.

It is difficult to arrange these scraps under any clearly classified headings, and now that I have led the reader into the midst of matters magical, perhaps I may just as well go on to the mention of a few more: I alluded to the boiling of the herbs according to the charmer’s orders, with the result, among other things, of bringing the witch to the spot. This is, however, not the only instance of the importance and strange efficacy of fire. For when a beast dies on a farm, of course it dies, according to the old-fashioned view of things as I understand it, from the influence of the evil eye or the interposition of a witch. So if you want to know to whom you are indebted for the loss of the beast, you have simply to burn its carcase in the open air and watch who comes first to the spot or who first passes by: that is the criminal to be charged with the death of the animal, and he cannot help coming there—such is the effect of the fire. A Michael woman, who is now about thirty, related to me how she watched while the carcase of a bewitched colt was burning, how she saw the witch coming, and how she remembers her shrivelled face, with nose and chin in close proximity. According to another native of Michael, a well informed middle-aged man, the animal in question was oftenest a calf, and it was wont to be burnt whole, skin and all. The object, according to him, is invariably to bring the bewitcher on the spot, and he always comes; but I am not clear what happens to him when he appears. My informant added, however, that it was believed that, unless the bewitcher got possession of the heart of the burning beast, he lost all his power of bewitching. He related, also, how his father and three other men were once out fishing on the west coast of the island, when one of the three suddenly expressed his wish to land. As they were fishing successfully some two or three miles from the shore, they would not hear of it. He, however, insisted that they must put him ashore at once, which made his comrades highly indignant; but they soon had to give way, as they found that he was determined to leap overboard unless they complied. When he got on shore they watched him hurrying away towards where a beast was burning in the corner of a field.

Manx stories merge this burning in a very perplexing fashion with what may be termed a sacrifice for luck. The following scraps of information will make it clear what I mean:—A respectable farmer from Andreas told me that he was driving with his wife to the neighbouring parish of Jurby some years ago, and that on the way they beheld the carcase of a cow or an ox burning in a field, with a woman engaged in stirring the fire. On reaching the village to which they were going, they found that the burning beast belonged to a farmer whom they knew. They were further told it was no wonder that the said farmer had one of his cattle burnt, as several of them had recently died. Whether this was a case of sacrifice or not I cannot say. But let me give another instance: a man whom I have already mentioned, saw at a farm nearer the centre of the island a live calf being burnt. The owner bears an English name, but his family has long been settled in Man. The farmer’s explanation to my informant was that the calf was burnt to secure luck for the rest of the herd, some of which were threatening to die. My informant thought there was absolutely nothing the matter with them, except that they had too little food. Be that as it may, the one calf was sacrificed as a burnt offering to secure luck for the rest of the cattle. Let me here also quote Mr. Moore’s note in his Manx Surnames, p. 184, on the place-name Cabbal yn Oural Losht, or the ‘Chapel of the Burnt Sacrifice.’ ‘This name,’ he says, ‘records a circumstance which took place in the nineteenth century, but which, it is to be hoped, was never customary in the Isle of Man. A farmer, who had lost a number of his sheep and cattle by murrain, burned a calf as a propitiatory offering to the Deity on this spot, where a chapel was afterwards built. Hence the name.’ Particulars, I may say, of time, place, and person, could be easily added to Mr. Moore’s statement, excepting, perhaps, as to the deity in question: on that point I have never been informed, but Mr. Moore was probably right in the use of the capital d, as the sacrificer was, according to all accounts, a devout Christian. I have to thank Sir Frederick Pollock for calling my attention to a parallel this side of the sea: he refers me to Worth’s History of Devonshire (London, 1886), p. 339, where one reads the following singular passage:—‘Living animals have been burnt alive in sacrifice within memory to avert the loss of other stock. The burial of three puppies “brandise-wise” in a field is supposed to rid it of weeds.’ The second statement is very curious, and the first seems to mean that preventive sacrifices have been performed in Devonshire within the memory of men living in the author’s time.

One more Manx instance: an octogenarian woman, born in the parish of Bride, and now living at Kirk Andreas, saw, when she was a ‘lump of a girl’ of ten or fifteen years of age, a live sheep being burnt in a field in the parish of Andreas, on May-day, whereby she meant the first of May reckoned according to the Old Style. She asserts[12] very decidedly that it was son oural, ‘for a sacrifice,’ as she put it, and ‘for an object to the public’: those were her words when she expressed herself in English. Further, she made the statement that it was a custom to burn a sheep on Old May-day for a sacrifice. I was fully alive to the interest of this evidence, and cross-examined her so far as her age allows of it, and I find that she adheres to her statement with all firmness, but I distinguish two or three points in her evidence: 1. I have no doubt that she saw, as she was passing by a certain field on the borders of Andreas parish, a live sheep being burnt on Old May-day. 2. But her statement that it was son oural, or as a sacrifice, was probably only an inference drawn by her, possibly years afterwards, on hearing things of the kind discussed. 3. Lastly, I am convinced that she did hear the May-day sacrifice discussed, both in Manx and in English: her words, ‘for an object to the public,’ are her imperfect recollection of a phrase used in her hearing by somebody more ambitious of employing English abstract terms than she is; and the formal nature of her statement in Manx, that it was customary on May-day to burn as a sacrifice one head of sheep (Laa Boaldyn va cliaghtey dy lostey son oural un baagh keyrragh), produces the same impression on my mind, that she is only repeating somebody else’s words. I mention this more especially as I have failed to find anybody else in Andreas or Bride, or indeed in the whole island, who will now confess to having ever heard of the sheep sacrifice on Old May-day.

The time assigned to the sheep sacrifice, namely May-day, leads me to make some remarks on the importance of that day among the Celts. The day meant is, as I have already said, Old May-day, in Manx Shenn Laa Boaldyn, the belltaine of Cormac’s Glossary, Scotch Gaelic bealtuinn. This was a day when systematic efforts were made to protect man and beast against elves and witches; for it was then that people carried crosses of rowan in their hats and placed May flowers over the tops of their doors and elsewhere as preservatives against all malignant influences. With the same object in view crosses of rowan were likewise fastened to the tails of the cattle, small crosses which had to be made without the help of a knife: I exhibited a tiny specimen at one of the meetings of the Folk-Lore Society. Early on May morning one went out to gather the dew as a thing of great virtue, as in other countries. At Kirk Michael one woman, who had been out on this errand years ago, told me that she washed her face with the dew in order to secure luck, a good complexion, and safety against witches. The break of this day is also the signal for setting the ling or the gorse on fire, which is done in order to burn out the witches wont to take the form of the hare; and guns, I am told, were freely used to shoot any game met with on that morning. With the proper charge some of the witches were now and then hit and wounded, whereupon they resumed the human form and remained cripples for the rest of their lives. Fire, however, appears to have been the chief agency relied on to clear away the witches and other malignant beings; and I have heard of this use of fire having been carried so far that a practice was sometimes observed—as, for example, in Lezayre—of burning gorse, however little, in the hedge of each field on a farm in order to drive away the witches and secure luck.

The man who told me this, on being asked whether he had ever heard of cattle being driven through fire or between two fires on May-day, replied that it was not known to him as a Manx custom, but that it was an Irish one. A cattle-dealer whom he named used on May-day to drive his cattle through fire so as to singe them a little, as he believed that would preserve them from harm. He was an Irishman, who came to the island for many years, and whose children are settled in the island now. On my asking him if he knew whence the dealer came, he answered, ‘From the mountains over there,’ pointing to the Mourne Mountains looming faintly in the mists on the western horizon. The Irish custom known to my Manx informant is interesting both as throwing light on the Manx custom, and as being the continuation of a very ancient rite mentioned by Cormac. That writer, or somebody in his name, says that belltaine, May-day, was so called from the ‘lucky fire,’ or the ‘two fires,’ which the druids of Erin used to make on that day with great incantations; and cattle, he adds, used to be brought to those fires, or to be driven between them, as a safeguard against the diseases of the year. Cormac[13] says nothing, it will be noticed, as to one of the cattle or the sheep being sacrificed for the sake of prosperity to the rest. However, Scottish[14] May-day customs point to a sacrifice having been once usual, and that possibly of human beings, and not of sheep as in the Isle of Man. I have elsewhere[15] tried to equate these Celtic May-day practices with the Thargelia[16] of the Athenians of antiquity. The Thargelia were characterized by peculiar rites, and among other things then done, two adult persons were led about, as it were scapegoats, and at the end they were sacrificed and burnt, so that their ashes might be dispersed. Here we seem to be on the track of a very ancient Aryan practice, although the Celtic season does not quite coincide with the Greek one. Several items of importance for comparison here will be found passed under careful review in a most suggestive paper by Mr. Lawrence Gomme, ‘On the Method of determining the Value of Folklore as Ethnological Data,’ in the Fourth Report of the Ethnographical Survey Committee[17].

It is probably in some ancient May-day custom that we are to look for the key to a remarkable place-name occurring several times in the island: I allude to that of Cronk yn Irree Laa, which probably means the Hill of the Rise of Day. This is the name of one of the mountains in the south of the island, but it is also borne by one of the knolls near the eastern end of the range of low hills ending abruptly on the coast between Ramsey and Bride parish, and quite a small knoll bears the name, near the church of Jurby[18]. I have heard of a fourth instance, which, as I learn from Mr. Philip Kermode, editor of the Lioar Manninagh, is on Clay Head, near Laxey. It has been attempted to explain it as meaning the Hill of the Watch by Day, in reference to the old institution of Watch and Ward on conspicuous places in the island; but that explanation is inadmissible as doing violence to the phonetics of the words in question[19]. I am rather inclined to think that the name everywhere refers to an eminence to which the surrounding inhabitants resorted for a religious purpose on a particular day in the year. I should suggest that it was to do homage to the rising sun on May morning, but this conjecture is offered only to await a better explanation.

The next great day in the pagan calendar of the Celts is called in Manx Laa Lhunys, in Irish Lugnassad, the assembly or fair, which was associated with the name of the god Lug. This should correspond to Lammas, but, reckoned as it is according to the Old Style, it falls on the twelfth of August, which used to be a great day for business fairs in the Isle of Man as in Wales. But for holiday making the twelfth only suited when it happened to be a Sunday: when that was not the case, the first Sunday after the twelfth was fixed upon. It is known, accordingly, as the first Sunday of Harvest, and it used to be celebrated by crowds of people visiting the tops of the mountains. The kind of interference to which I have alluded with regard to an ancient holiday, is one of the regular results of the transition from Roman Catholicism to a Protestant system with only one fixed holiday, namely, Sunday. The same shifting has partly happened in Wales, where Lammas is Gwyl Awst, or the festival of Augustus, since the birthday of Augustus, auspiciously for him and the celebrity of his day, fell in with the great day of the god Lug in the Celtic world. Now the day for going up the Fan Fach mountain in Carmarthenshire was Lammas, but under a Protestant Church it became the first Sunday in August; and even modified in that way it could not long survive under a vigorous sabbatarian régime either in Wales or Man. As to the latter in particular, I have heard it related by persons who were present, how the crowds on the top of South Barrule on the first Sunday of Harvest were denounced as pagans by a preacher called William Gick, some seventy years ago; and how another man called Paric Beg, or Little Patrick, preaching to the crowds on Snaefell in milder terms, used to wind up the service with a collection, which appears to have proved a speedier method of reducing the dimensions of these meetings on the mountain tops. Be that as it may, they seem to have dwindled since then to comparative insignificance.