Ossian Collection > Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland > Volume 4

ORACLES. 357
ever, claims an Egyptian parentage. St. Asnbrose says
he was worshipped there. Hence it yet is, that tliey
croak when a clifF is about to fall ; and hence also it is
unlucky to shoot them ; not, as generally esteemed, be-
cause they embody the spirit of King- Arthur. But,
though I have not chosen to enter into the mysteries of
Highland witchcraft, I must remark that the Highland
Witch appeared, like the Norwegian one, in the shape of a
cat, and also of a raven. She further assumed the form
of a magpie, as in England ; whence the soothsaying fa-
culties of this bird. Alias, she was a hare, a stone, and
many other things, on which I need not rest. As a cat,
she succeeded in drowning an ancient Rasay, who had
been hostile to her fraternity: attacking his boat in that
villainous channel of Portree where I was once nearly
drowned, myself, without her aid, and filling the boat and
the rigging M'ith a swarm of fellow imps, who, clambering
on the lee gunwale and stays, upset the boat. Of the last
oracular machinery which I shall notice, viz. the shoulder
bone of a sheep, Mr. Elphinstone has found the parallel
in Caubul. But it does not follow that the Highlanders*
brought it thence, as you, among others, have chosen to
suppose. Nor from Persia ; where it is also mentioned
as in use by Hanway. Drayton notes it as an English
superstition ; and so does Selden, as used in the time of
Henry the second. The sayings of Mahomet were recorded
by his disciples on shoulder bones of mutton, as well as
upon leaves. It was also used in the ^f^poixavTeKx. of the
Greeks.
Among incantations to procure wind, we have heard of
at least two. Water was poured on certain, black stones
for this purpose; and the cunning mohk with the fearful
name, O'Gorgon, already mentioned, made money of this
trade, as the Laplanders have done before him. It was
customary also to hang a he-goat to the mast for a fair
wind. This is a sacrifice to ^olus ; but whence, he alone
knows; unless, by a blunder, the goat has been trans-
ferred from Bacchus. Their northern progeuitois skinned