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gifts. Thus a tall, black haired native of Kirk Michael described to me how he chanced on New Year's Day, years ago, to turn into a lonely cottage in order to light his pipe, and how he found he was the qualtagh: he had to sit down to have food, and when he went away it was with a present and the blessings of the family. Now New Year's Day is the time for gifts in Wales, as shown by the name for them, calennig, which is derived from calan, the Welsh form of the Latin calenda, New Year's Day being in Welsh Y Calan, 'the Calends.' The same is the day for gifts in Scotland and in Ireland, except in so far as Christmas boxes have been making inroads from England: I need not add that the Jour de l'An is the day for gifts also in France. My question then is this: Is there any essential connexion of origin between the institution of New Year's Day gifts and the belief in the first-foot?

Now that it has been indicated what sort of a qualtagh it is unlucky to have, I may as well proceed to mention the other things which I have heard treated as unlucky in the island. Some of them scarcely require to be noticed, as there is nothing specially Manx about them, such as the belief that it is unlucky to have the first glimpse of the new moon through glass. That is a superstition which is, I believe, widely spread, and, among other countries, it is quite familiar in Wales, where it is also unlucky to see the moon for the first time through a hedge or over a house. What this means I cannot guess, unless it be that it was once considered one's duty to watch the first appearance of the new moon from the highest point in the landscape of the district in which one dwelt. Such a point would in that case become the chief centre of a moon worship now lost in oblivion.

It is believed in Man, as it used to be in Wales and

Ireland, that it is unlucky to disturb antiquities, especi ally old burial places and old churches. This superstition is unfortunately passing away in all three countries, but you still hear of it, especially in the Isle of Man, mostly after mischief has been done. Thus a good Manx scholar told me how a relative of his in the Ronnag, a small valley near South Barrule, had carted away the earth from an old burial ground on his farm and used it as manure for his fields, and how his beasts died afterwards. The narrator said he did not know whether there was any truth in it, but everybody believed that it was the reason why the cattle died; and so did the farmer himself at last: so he desisted from completing his disturbance of the old site. It is possibly for a similar reason that a house in ruins is seldom pulled down, or the materials used for other buildings. Where that has been done misfortunes have ensued; at any rate, I have heard it said so more than once. I ought to have stated that the non-disturbance of antiquities in the island is quite consistent with their being now and then shamefully neglected as elsewhere. This is now met by an excellent statute recently enacted by the House of Keys for the preservation of the public monuments of the island.

Of the other and more purely Manx superstitions I may mention one which obtains among the Peel fishermen of the present day: no boat is willing to be third in the order of sailing out from Peel harbour to the fisheries. So it sometimes happens that after two boats have departed, the others remain watching each other for days, each hoping that somebody else may be reckless enough to break through the invisible barrier of 'bad luck.' I have often asked for an explanation of this superstition, but the only intelligible answer I have had was that it has been observed that the third boat

has done badly several years in succession; but I am unable to ascertain how far that represents the fact. Another of the unlucky things is to have a white stone in the boat, even in the ballast, and for that I never could get any explanation at all; but there is no doubt as to the fact of this superstition, and I may illustrate it from the case of a clergyman's son on the west side, who took it into his head to go out with some fishermen several days in succession. They chanced to be unsuccessful each time, and they gave their Jonah the nickname of Clagh Vane, or 'White Stone.' Now what can be the origin of this tabu? It seems to me that if the Manx had once a habit of adorning the graves of the departed with white stones, that circumstance would be a reasonable explanation of the superstition in question. Further, it is quite possible they did, and here Manx archæologists could probably help as to the matter of fact. In the absence, however, of information to the point from Man, I take the liberty of citing some relating to Scotland. It comes from Mr. Gomme's presidential address to the Folk-Lore Society: see FolkLore for 1893, pp. 13-4:

'Near Inverary, it is the custom among the fisher-folk, and has been so within the memory of the oldest, to place little white stones or pebbles on the graves of their friends. No reason is now given for the practice, beyond that most potent and delightful of all reasons in the minds of folk-lore students, namely, that it has always been done. Now there is nothing between this modern practice sanctioned by traditional observance and the practice of the stone-age people in the same neighbourhood and in others, as made known to us by their grave-relics. Thus, in a cairn at Achnacrie opened by Dr. Angus Smith, on entering the innermost chamber "the first thing that struck the eye was a row of quartz

pebbles larger than a walnut; these were arranged on the ledge of the lower granite block of the east side." Near Crinan, at Duncraigaig and at Rudie, the same characteristic was observed, and Canon Greenwell, who examined the cairns, says the pebbles "must have been placed there with some intention, and probably possessed a symbolic meaning." See also Burghead, by Mr. H. W. Young (Inverness, 1899), p. 10, where we read that at Burghead the 'smooth white pebbles, sometimes five or seven of them, but never more,' have been usually arranged as crosses on the graves which he has found under the fallen ramparts. Can this be a Christian superstition with the white stones of the Apocalypse as its foundation?

Here I may mention a fact which I do not know where else to put, namely, that a fisherman on his way in the morning to the fishing, and chancing to pass by the cottage of another fisherman who is not on friendly terms with him, will pluck a straw from the thatch of the latter's dwelling. Thereby he is supposed to rob him of his luck in the fishing for that day. One would expect to learn that the straw from the thatch served as the subject of an incantation directed against the owner of the thatch. I have never heard anything suggested to that effect; but I conclude that the plucking of the straw is only a partial survival of what was once a complete ritual for bewitching one's neighbour, unless getting possession of the straw was supposed to carry with it possession of everything belonging to the other man, including his luck in fishing for that day.

Owing to my ignorance as to the superstitions of other fishermen than those of the Isle of Man, I will not attempt to classify the remaining instances to be mentioned, such as the unluckiness of mentioning a horse or a mouse on board a fishing-boat: I seem,

however, to have heard of similar tabus among Scottish fishermen; and, according to Dr. Blind, Shetland fishermen will not mention a church or a clergyman when out at sea, but use quite other names for both when on board a ship (Folk-Lore for 1892, p. 89). Novices in the Manx fisheries have to learn not to point to anything with one finger: they have to point with the whole hand or not at all. This looks as if it belonged to a code of rules as to the use of the hand, such as prevail among the Neapolitans and other peoples whose chief article of faith is the belief in malign influences: see Mr. Elworthy's volume on The Evil Eye.

Whether the Manx are alone in thinking it unlucky to lend salt from one boat to another when they are engaged in the fishing, I know not: such lending would probably be inconvenient, but why it should be unlucky, as they believe it to be, does not appear. The first of May is a day on which it is unlucky to lend anything, and especially to give any one fire1. This looks as if it pointed back to some druidic custom of lighting all fires at that time from a sacred hearth, but, so far as is known, this only took place at the beginning of the other half-year, namely, Sauin or Allhallows, which is sometimes rendered into Manx as Laa 'll mooar ny Saintsh, 'the Day of the great Feast of the Saints.'

Lastly, I may mention that it is unlucky to say that you are very well: at any rate, I infer that it is regarded so, as you will never get a Manxman to say that he is feer vie, 'very well.' He usually admits that he is 'middling'; and if by any chance he risks a stronger adjective, he hastens to qualify it by adding 'now,' or 'just now,' with an emphasis indicative of his anxiety not to say

1 With this compare what Mr. Gomme has to say of a New Year's Day custom observed in Lanarkshire: see p. 633 of the Ethnographic Report referred to at p. 103 above, and compare Henderson, p. 74.

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