[30] The Rev. Robert Kirk, in his Secret Commonwealth, defines the second-sight, which enabled him to see the ‘good people’, as ‘a rapture, transport, and sort of death’. He and our present witness came into the world with this abnormal faculty; but there is the remarkable case to record of the late Father Allen Macdonald, who during a residence of twenty years on the tiny and isolated Isle of Erisgey, Western Hebrides, acquired the second-sight, and was able some years before he died there (in 1905) to exercise it as freely as though he had been a natural-born seer.
[31] In his note to Le Chant des Trépassés (Barzaz Breiz, p. 507), Villemarqué reports that in some localities in Lower Brittany on All Saints Night libations of milk are poured over the tombs of the dead. This is proof that the nature of fairies in Scotland and of the dead in Brittany is thought to be the same.
[32] ‘In many parts of the Highlands, where the same deity is known, the stone into which women poured the libation of milk is called Leac na Gruagaich, “Flag-stone of the Gruagach.” If the libation was omitted in the evening, the best cow in the fold would be found dead in the morning.’—Alexander Carmichael.
[33] Dr. George Henderson, in The Norse Influence on Celtic Scotland (Glasgow, 1901), p. 101, says:—‘Shony was a sea-god in Lewis, where ale was sacrificed to him at Hallowtide. After coming to the church of St. Mulvay at night a man was sent to wade into the sea, saying: “Shony, I give you this cup of ale hoping that you will be so kind as to give us plenty of sea-ware for enriching our ground the ensuing year.” As ō from Norse would become o, and fn becomes nn, one thinks of Sjöfn, one of the goddesses in the Edda. In any case the word is Norse.’ It seems, therefore, that the Celtic stock in Lewis have adopted the name Shony or Shoney, and possibly also the god it designates, through contact with Norsemen; but, at all events, they have assimilated him to their own fairy pantheon, as we can see in their celebrating special libations to him on the ancient Celtic feast of the dead and fairies, Halloween.
[34] This, as Dr. Carmichael told me, I believe very justly represents the present state of folk-lore in many parts of the Highlands. There are, it is true, old men and women here and there who know much about fairies, but they, fearing the ridicule of a younger and ‘educated’ generation, are generally unwilling to admit any belief in fairies.
[35] The following note by Miss Tolmie is of great interest and value, especially when one bears in mind Cuchulainn’s traditional relation with Skye (see p. [4]):—‘The Koolian range should never be written Cu-chullin. The name is written here with a K, to ensure its being correctly uttered and written. It is probably a Norse word; but, as yet, a satisfactory explanation of its origin and meaning has not been published. In Gaelic the range is always alluded to (in the masculine singular) as the Koolian.’
[36] Dr. Alexander Carmichael found that the scene of this widespread tale is variously laid, in Argyll, in Perth, in Inverness, and in other counties of the Highlands. From his own collection of folk-songs he contributes the following verses to illustrate the song (existing in numerous versions), which the maiden while invisible used to sing to the cows of Colin:—
Crodh Chailean! crodh Chailean!
Crodh Chailean mo ghaoil,
Crodh Chailean mo chridhe,
Air lighe cheare fraoish.
(Cows of Colin! cows of Colin!
Cows of Colin of my love,
Cows of Colin of my heart,
In colour of the heather-hen.)
In one of Dr. Carmichael’s versions, ‘Colin’s wife and her infant child had been lifted away by the fairies to a fairy bower in the glen between the hills.’ There she was kept nursing the babes which the fairies had stolen, until ‘upon Hallow Eve, when all the bowers were open’, Colin by placing a steel tinder above the lintel of the door to the fairy bower was enabled to enter the bower and in safety lead forth his wife and child.
[37] In this beautiful fairy legend we recognize the fairy woman as one of the Tuatha De Danann-like fairies—one of the women of the Sidhe, as Irish seers call them.