P. 290. It ought to have been pointed out that the fairies, whose food and drink it is death to share, represent the dead.
P. 291. For Conla read Connla or Condla: the later form is Colla. The Condla in question is called Condla Rúad in the story, but the heading to it has Ectra Condla Chaim, ‘the Adventure of C. the Dear One.’
P. 294. I am now inclined to think that butch was produced out of the northern pronunciation of witch by regarding its w as a mutation consonant and replacing it, as in some other instances, by b as the radical.
P. 308. With the Manx use of rowan on May-day compare a passage to the following effect concerning Wales—I translate it from the faulty Welsh in which it is quoted by one of the competitors for the folklore prize at the Liverpool Eisteđfod, 1900: he gave no indication of its provenance:—Another bad papistic habit which prevails among some Welsh people is that of placing some of the wood of the rowan tree (coed cerđin or criafol) in their corn lands (ỻafyrieu) and their fields on May-eve (Nos Glamau) with the idea that such a custom brings a blessing on their fields, a proceeding which would better become atheists and pagans than Christians.
P. 325. In the comparison with the brownie the fairy nurse in the Pennant Valley has been overlooked: see p. 109.
P. 331, line 1. For I. 42–3 read ii. 42–3.
Pp. 377, 395. With the story of Ffynnon Gywer and the other fairy wells, also with the wells which have been more especially called sacred in this volume, compare the following paragraph from Martin’s Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (London, 1703), pp. 229–30: it is concerning Gigay, now more commonly written Gigha, the name of an island near the west coast of Kintyre:—‘There is a well in the north end of this isle called Toubir-more, i. e. a great well, because of its effects, for which it is famous among the islanders; who together with the inhabitants use it as a Catholicon for diseases. It’s covered with stone and clay, because the natives fancy that the stream that flows from it might overflow the isle; and it is always opened by a Diroch, i. e. an inmate, else they think it would not exert its vertues. They ascribe one very extraordinary effect to it, and ’tis this; that when any foreign boats are wind-bound here (which often happens) the master of the boat ordinarily gives the native that lets the water run a piece of money, and they say that immediately afterwards the wind changes in favour of those that are thus detain’d by contrary winds. Every stranger that goes to drink of the water of this well, is accustomed to leave on its stone cover a piece of money, a needle, pin, or one of the prettiest variegated stones they can find.’ Last September I visited Gigha and saw a well there which is supposed to be the one to which Martin refers. It is very insignificant and known now by a name pronounced Tobar a vėac, possibly for an older Mo-Bheac: in Scotch Gaelic Bëac, written Beathag, is equated with the name Sophia. The only tradition now current about the well is that emptying it used to prove the means of raising a wind or even of producing great storms, and this appears to have been told Pennant: see his Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides, MDCCLXXII (Chester, 1774), p. 226:—‘Visit the few wonders of the isle: the first is a little well of a most miraculous quality, for in old times, if ever the chieftain lay here wind-bound, he had nothing more to do than cause the well to be cleared, and instantly a favorable gale arose. But miracles are now ceased.’
P. 378. A similar rhyme is current in the neighbourhood of Dolgeỻey, as Miss Lucy Griffith informs me, as follows:—
Dolgeỻe dol a goỻir,
Daear a’i ỻwnc, dw’r ’n ’i ỻe.