Sutherland and the Reay country

FOLK LORE. 117
peculiar powers, whose favour they would do well to court ;
and these supposed powers, it has been asserted, not without
reason, are the remains of a religion anterior to Christianity,
and which Christianity has not yet rooted out. They are
now, however, disappearing more quickly with the decad-
ence of the ceilidh, which has in great measure been
supplanted by the newspapers and books which Sutherlanders
use so abundantly.
The superstitions of the various parts of the county differ
widely, and it is not to be supposed that what follows is
believed in by all the people, or that any native of the county,
however superstitious, reckons a tithe of them among his
beliefs. They are, it must be understood, merely the
summary of a collection which the writer has been making
for quite a number of years.
To all who have given the subject of folk-lore any
attention it has become apparent that superstitions cling
round every stage of life, and that nearly all of them are
connected with a desire to peer into the unknown and
unknowable future. They begin with a person's birth and
end only after his death.
Following this order we find that the belief is entertained
in Sutherlandshire, as elsewhere, that a child born on a
Sabbath will be more fortunate than one born on any of the
other six days of the week. Although one does not here
think of 'chime hours,' the child born at midnight will grow
up to ' see things ' hidden from others — to have, in short,
the gift of second sight. It would be curious to ascertain if
those who in the Highlands claim this gift were born at this
hour ' when churchyards yawn.' If the little one have a caul
or thin membrane on the head when born, it will be espec-