Communication with the dead visiting the earth, i.e., communication with an earthly otherworld, appears in the beliefs concerning seers with mora traits and in the beliefs and even visions experienced by many active seers of the dead. The notion of initiation by the dead visiting the earth appears in many cultural forms. One of the most frequent variants occurs when the dead, returning in troops such as a gang of ghosts visiting around Christmas time or unbaptized souls, snatch a living person for a short period of time to show her or him who will be the dead of the coming year. These data fit into the traditional framework of communication with the "living dead" that were traditional all over Europe in the system of places and times related to the dead. Ever since the Christian Middle Ages, the returning dead have been known to visit the living periodically, at start-of-the-year or start-of-season festivals. The phenomenon of initiation by St. Lucy's chair occurs in this sphere at Christmas. Female initiating spirits from the world of the dead, sometimes with traits of the underworld, have also appeared from time to time as leaders of soul troops in a number of local variants in accordance with the local mythological legacy (such as the Austrian-German Perchta, Holda, the Swiss Frau Saelde, the Slovenian Pehtra baba, the Hungarian and Czech-Moravian Lucia, Luca, etc.), often displaying attributes to do with spinning and other womanly tasks, as well as with cows or milk.

Éva Pócs

At sea they take the form of sudden squalls, waterspouts, and spindrift columns, which cause wrecks and drowning, driving, besides, the fish from the shallows into deep water, so that the fisherman baits his lines in vain. n land their object is to check and crush back vegetation into its state of mid-winter torpidity; but failing in this, they swirl about in clouds of dust, which, being inhaled, causes grievous sickness in man and beast. Against the demon of the dust-cloud, as it swirls along the highway, a wise man will take this precaution: as it approaches, you are instantly to close your eyes and mouth as tightly as possible, at the same time turning your back upon it until it has swept by, mentally repeating - for you are not to open your mouth, nor as much as breathe, as long as you can help it - this rhyme: - "Gach cuman a's mias a's meadar Gu Pol, gu Peadair 'sgu Bride; Dion, a's seun a's gleidh mi 'o ole 'so chunnart, Air a bheallach, 's air a mhullach 'Sair an tullaich ud thall; Pol a's Peadair a's Bride caomh!" These old rhymes and incantations, abrupt and inconsecutive as they frequently are, and with such recondite allusions, are extremely difficult to translate, though to the competent Gaelic scholar and antiquary the general drift and meaning may be plain and patent enough. The above lines are something like this: - "Be the care of milk-pail, and bowl, and cog Given to Peter and Paul and Saint Bride: Wherever I wander protect me, ye Saints! Let not evil or harm me betide; Hear me, Peter and Paul, and gentle Saint Bride!" Twixt Ben Nevis and Glencoe: The Natural History, Legends, and Folk-Lore of the West Highlands. Alexander Stewart.

Indo-European structure of the Baltic pantheon hinges heavily on a correct appreciation and interpretation of Patollus-Pecullus. Christian demonology found him exploitable yet did not quite know what to do with him. He was a demon of the underworld and leader of the host of the dead in the skies, hellish and aerial at the same time. This hesitation helps piece together his original nature. He has a Lithuanian allonym Velinas (Velnias, Vels, nowadays 'devil'), which is cognate with veles 'ghosts' and with the ancestral goddess Veliuona; Szyrwid's dictionary of 1629 already equates Velnias with 'Piktis'. In Lithuanian folklore Velinas is the one-eyed, prophetic, treacherous, raging god of the veles who fight, hunt, and march in the skies; he is also the lord of hanging and the hanged. This dossier is ample to permit a typological comparison with both the one-eyed Hangagud Odin and the Old German Wutanes her. Beneath the death-god described by Simon Grunau and revived by Gunter Grass and the devil of demonology and folklore, we find a principal figure of the Baltic pantheon, whose name Pecullus has the same "rage" meaning that inheres in Odin, and whose parallel name Velinas is best connected with Old Norse valr, denoting the host of the slain. The presence of such a magical, death-oriented high god in close complementarity with the ruling thunder-god seems to be typical of several contiguous nothern European subgroups (cf: Odin : Thor and perhaps Esus : Taranis); Patollo's white headcloth may indeed be the missing link connecting Odin's floppy hat with Rudra's turban in India. Comparative Mythology. Jaan Puhvel.

Blood of the Hosts Alexander Carmichael records in his notes to Carmina Gadelica that, while collecting runes and invocations in the more southerly of the Outer Hebrides, he heard many strange tales associated with the Spirit-Multitude. He was told by a native of Barra that, after an aerial battle between the rival forces of the Sluagh, the rocks and boulders are stained as with crimson blood. The red crotal obtained from lichened rocks, following upon a spell of hard frost, is called Fuil nan Sluagh, Blood of the Hosts. And it is said that, when the Nimble Men (Aurora Borealis) are giving battle in the air, the blood of their victims falls to the ground; and this 'elf's blood' congeals and forms the stones referred to in the Western Isles as blood-stones. Although to-day belief in the Sluagh is on the wane, Carmichael noted that, since it is from the west that the Spirit-Multitude is believed to come, it was customary to close the doors and windows on the west side of a house in which an islander lay dying, lest any strange contingent entered, and brought ill-fortune to its departing inmate. In some parts of the mainland, where the tradition of the Sluagh is totally unknown, it was the practice to open as widely as possible the door and windows of a dwelling in which a person was on the point of death, so that at the moment of expiry the escape of his disembodied spirit might be facilitated. The persistence with which belief in the Spirit-Multitude prevailed in Argyll is demonstrated by the fact that, when a burial was taking place at Glen Creran, in Appin, as recently as last century, immediately the corpse had been lowered and the earth closed over it, the funeral party used to smash the bier against a certain tree in the burying-ground, so as to render it useless in the event of the Sluagh's endeavouring to lure the dead away with it. To those unacquainted with the intricacies of the Gaelic language, it may be of passing interest to mention that the word, slogan, is derived from the Gaelic words, sluagh, denoting a host or multitude, and gairm, a cry or calling. Hence the true meaning of slogan - the cry of the host, the battle-cry. The Peat-Fire Flame: Folk-Tales and Traditions of the Highlands & Islands. Alasdair Alpin MacGregor.

Folk Cures: Amulets

Green glass beads worn about the neck will prevent or cure erysipelas.

Gold beads were formerly a protection against the "King's Evil" (scrofula), and nearly every maiden and matron wore ample strings of beautiful large beads.

Gold beads worn about the neck will cure sore throat.

Gold beads worn about the throat were thought to cure or prevent goître.

A string of gold beads worn on the neck will cure or prevent quinsy.

Red beads about the neck cure nose-bleed.

For nose-bleed wear a red bean on a white string round the neck.

A black silk cord about the neck cures croup.

Wearing brown paper on the chest will cure sea-sickness.

Tie a piece of black ribbon around a child's neck, and it will prevent croup.

To cure rheumatism, wear a brass ring on the finger.

Wearing brass rings will prevent cramp.

Sailors wear gold earrings for weak eyes or to strengthen the sight.

As a cure for nose-bleed, tie a string about the little finger.

A leather string commonly worn around the neck is supposed to prevent whooping-cough.

A red string tied about the waist cures nausea or sea-sickness.

Current Superstitions. Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk. The American Folk-Lore Society. Edited by Fanny D. Bergen. 1896.

Instances of leaving water for fairy use are common in Scotland. Trow wives in Shetland were greatly annoyed when they found no washing water for the use of their children in a certain cot. Muttering "Mukka, mukka, dilla do", one of them poured some swotts, or liquid from sowens, (oat husks steeped in water) into a basin, and washed the child and its clothes therein, pouring the swotts back into the keg with the words: "Tak ye dat for no' having clean water idda hoose dis Saturday nicht". In Uist it was felt that no one should sleep in a house without water, and least of all in a house where a child was, or the fairies might was their children with the milk supply.

-The Fairy Tradition in Britain. Lewis Spence.

Apparitions of the Abducted Many persons believed to be dead by their relatives and friends appeared to them later and informed them that they were actually denizens of the fairy world. A woman from Unst, Shetland, who was thought to have died on the birth of her first child appeared in a dream to a neighbour and admitted that in her fairy state she had stolen the milk of her friend's cow, but that she would make up the loss to her. Soon afterwards this woman gave birth to a daughter, who, the apparition informed the mother, would bring prosperity to the family so long as she remained in it. The luck of the household held good until the girl married, when it "went from bad to worse". A certain man claimed to have seen this "trowbound" woman, but failed to say the words "Gude be aboot wise", which would have liberated her from the trows. There was, he said, a bar of iron in front of her to prevent her escape. The appearance of death usually accompanied cases of abduction when the fairies took the spirit only and not the body. At a Yule dance at Moolpund in Shetland, the supply of liquor ran short and a young man volunteered to fetch more. He was accompanied by his sweetheart. The man returned, mad with intoxication, crying that the trows had taken his lass. She was found dead in a burn, holding a bulwand, or rush, in her hand, "such as the grey-folk use for their horses". Before next Yule the young man was dead also.

-The Fairy Tradition in Britain. Lewis Spence.

The Hogmanay Lads - Part III

In South Uist, where the majority of the islanders are Roman Catholics, each person in turn seized the burning breast-strip and made the sign of the cross before sniffing it; then, in the name of the Trinity, it was put thrice sunwise round the heads of those present. The ceremony completed, food and drink were dispensed to the visitors. Before leaving a house where they had been made welcome, they went thrice sunwise round the fire, singing - Great good luck to the house, Good luck to the family, Good luck to every rafter of it, And to every worthy thing in it. Good luck to horses and cattle, Good luck to the sheep, Good luck to everything, And good luck to all your means. Good luck to the gudewife, Good luck to the children, Good luck to every friend, Great good luck and health to all. Sometimes they sang a single verse - May God bless the dwelling; Each stone and beam and stave. All food and drink and clothing, May health of men be there. But if they were not made welcome, they filed round the fire widdershins and tramped out noisily, shaking the dust of the house off their feet. At one time it was customary to build a small cairn at the door of an inhospitable house. This was called the caman mollachd, the cairn of the curse. When it was completed, the lads intoned a curse in a voice loud enough to penetrate to the inmates - The malison of God and of Hogmanay be on you. And the scath of the plaintive buzzard, Of the hen harrier, of the raven, of the eagle, And the scath of the sneaking fox. The scath of the dog and the cat be on you, Of the boar, and the badger, and the "brugha," Of the hipped boar and of the wild wolf, And the scath of the foul foumart. All the good things collected were carried by one of their number in a tanned leather bag of lamb-skin or sheep-skin to some roomy dwelling, barn, or other building as previously arranged, and here the girls of the township joined the lads in a feast and a dance. -The Silver Bough, Volume 3: A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals - Hallowe'en to Yule. F. Marian. McNeill

The Hogmanay Lads - Part II

The walls of the old Hebridean houses are very thick - from five to eight feet - and of uniform height. There are no gables, and the roof of the house being raised from the inner edge of the wall, the broad wall-top forms rude terrace. Beside the door, two or three stones project from the wall so as to provide steps, which are used by the inmates for the purpose of re-thatching the roof or securing it in time of storm. When the procession came to a house, the lads climbed by these steps on to the wall and went round it sunwise in single file, sometimes each holding on to the coat-tail of the lad in front, the man in the hide shaking the horns and hooves, the others shouting and beating the hide or striking the walls of the house with their sticks. This rite completed, they descended and gathered round the door singing - We are come to the door, To see if we be the better of our visit, To tell the generous women of the townland That tomorrow is Calenda Day. Kalend of the yellow buckskin bag. Strike the singed skin! Old wife in the press (corner) Old wife in the cell (graveyard) A thorn in both eyes, A thorn in her fork, Rise and open to us!

or, again, the beautiful Cairioll Callaig, Hogmanay Carol - I am now come to your country, To renew to you the Hogmanay; I need not tell you of it. It was in the time of our forefathers. I ascend by the door linitel, I descend by the doorstep; I will sing my song becomingly, Mannerly, slowly, mindfully. The Hogmanay skin is in my pocket; Great will be the smoke from it presently. The house-man will get it in his hand, He will place its nose in the fire, He will go sunwise round the babes, And for seven verities round the housewife. The housewife it is she who deserves it. The hand to dispense to us the Hogmanay; A small gift of the bloom of sumuner, Much I wish it with the bread. Give it to us if it be possible, If you may not, do not detain us; I am the servant of God's Son at the door, Arise thyself and open to me. On being admitted, the gillean greeted the inmates with grave dignity. The leader of the band went to the fire and singed the tail end of the hide; then went round the room, holding it out for each member of the household in turn to sniff. The inhaling of the fumes was a talisman for fertility and protection from disease and misfortune in the coming year. Should the tuft go out in anyone's hand, it was a bad omen for the person concerned. In some districts, or where the company was large, each of the Hogmanay lads singed the short curly wool of the casein-uchd, which was fixed to his staff for that purpose, and applied it to the nose of every person and animal present. The Caluinn Breast-Strip is in my pocket, A goodly mist comes from it; The good man will get it first, And shove its nose into the fire upon the hearth; It will go sunwise round the children, And particularly the wife will get it. -The Silver Bough, Volume 3: A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals - Hallowe'en to Yule. F. Marian McNeill.

The Hogmanay Lads

The ritual of the Hogmanay guisers - the Procession of the Bull - is one of the most ancient and curious pagan survivals in Scotland. The hide of a bull, with horns, hooves, and tail attached, was kept in the rafters throughout the year and taken down on Hogmanay. One of the gillean Callaig or Hogmanay lads was enveloped in the hide, and each of his companions provided himself with a staff - usually a caman or shinty stick - to the end of which was secured a piece of sheepskin known as the casein-uchd, the Hogmanay breast-strip. "The casein-uchd," says Dr. Carmichael, "is a strip of skin from the breast of a sheep killed at Christmas, New Year and other sacred festivals. The strip is oval, and no knife must be used in removing it from the flesh. Two such strips were placed face to face to form a bag. Probably this was the ulim, the sacred bag for alms." Dr. Maclagan describes it as "a narrow strip, abut three inches wide, cut from lip or neck along the belly to tail." This, presumably, was the custom in Argyll. The skin of a cow, a goat, or a deer was occasionally substituted, and in Mull the principal singer of the party carried a singed sheep's tail. Towards midnight (to return to the Outer Hebrides), the band set off on a round of the township, the man in the hide leading, whilst his followers "kept beating the hide with their staves, making a noise like the beating of a drum, and shouting their rune, Caluinn a Bhuilg, Hogmanay of the Sack - Hogmanay of the Sack, Hogmanay of the Sack, Strike the hide, Strike the hide. Hogmanay of the Sack, Hogmanay of the Sack, Beat the skin. Beat the skin. Hogmanay of the Sack, Hogmanay of the Sack, Down with it! Up with it! Strike the hide! Hogmanay of the Sack, Hogmanay of the Sack, Down with it! Up with it! Beat the skin. Hogmanay of the Sack, Hogmanay of the Sack. The Silver Bough, Volume 3: A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals - Hallowe'en to Yule. F. Marian. McNeill.

A curious custom in the Highlands identifies the Yule-log with the Cailleach or Spirit of Winter. Early on Yule E'en, whilst the housewife was still busy in the kitchen, and the flailman chapped in the barn to provide fodder for the cattle, and the herd-laddie's axe resounded on the fir-stock, so that there should be plenty of fire-candles to brighten the Yule festivities, the head of the house went out to the woods and procured the stump of some withered tree, which he proceeded to carve into the rude resemblance of a woman. He was joined by the other members of the household, now relieved from toil, and they returned with the Cailleach in their midst. The stump was placed ceremoniously in the heart of the peat fire, and the whole company cracked jokes while the Christmas Old Wife blazed. -The Silver Bough, Volume 3: A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals - Hallowe'en to Yule. F. Marian. McNeill.

Originally a community festival, Yule became increasingly a season of family and social gatherings. There were great preparations in the home. The house was cleaned and whitewashed from floor to ceiling, and barns and outhouses as well; whilst the spence was stored with good things to eat. When merry Yule-day comes, I trow, Ye'll scantlins fin' a hungry mou!; Sma' are our cares, our stamacks fou O' gusty gear, And kickshaws, strangers to the view Sin fairn-year. During the Daft Days, every kind of avoidable work was banned. On Yule E'en, yarn was reeled and hanked, rok and reel were put by, the "peaty neuk" was filled to the rafters and the water-stoups to the brim; for, says the old rhyme, Atween Yule and Yearsmas Auld wives should'na spin, And nae house should be waterless Whar maidens lie within, lest the kelpie carry them off. Above all, a clean, bright fireside was necessary to propitiate the household gods. The folk of the hills garlanded their ingle-neuks with evergreens, and the folk of the sea theirs with seaweeds gathered at ebb-tide; and branches of the sacred rowan were hung above the lintel in house, sable, and byre to keep mischievous or evil spirits at bay. In wooded country a Yule-log was brought in. A small procession, headed by the man of the house, went off to the woods to cut it. It was carried home ceremoniously and placed on the blazing fire, usually late in the evening, so that it should continue to burn after the family were in bed, and preferably all night. The Silver Bough, Volume 3: A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals - Hallowe'en to Yule. F. Marian McNeill

Glastonbury Thorn On Christmas-eve, (new style), 1753, a vast concourse of people attended the noted thorn, but to their great disappointment there was no appearance of its blowing, which made them watch it narrowly the 5th of January, the Christmas-day, (old style), when it blowed as usual. - London Evening Post On the same evening, at Quainton, in Buckinghamshire, above two thousand people went, with lanterns and candles, to view a blackthorn in that neighbourhood, and which was remembered to be a slip from the famous Glastonbury thorn, and that it always budded on the 24th, was full blown the next day, and went all off at night. The people finding no appearance of a bud, it was agreed by all, that December 25 (new style) could not be the right Christmas-day, and accordingly refused going to church, and treating their friends that day as usual; at length the affair became so serious, that the ministers of the neighbouring villages, in order to appease them, thought it prudent to give notice, that the Old Christmas-day should be kept holy as before. This famous hawthorn, which grew on a hill in the church-yard of Glastonbury-abbey, it has been said, sprung from the staff of St. Joseph of Arimathea, who having fixed it in the ground with his own hand on Christmas-day, the staff took root immediately, put forth leaves, and the next day was covered with milk-white blossoms. It has been added, that this thorn continued to blow every Christmas-day during a long series of years, and that slips from the original plant are still preserved, and continue to blow every Christmas-day to the present time. -The Everyday Book, Vol. II. William Hone.

Robert Kirk and The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies Robert Kirk (1644-1692) was an Episcopalian minister and Gaelic scholar who spent much of his life in Balquhidder and Aberfoyle, both near Loch Lomond in the west of Scotland, and wrote a book about fairies; this was first published by Walter Scott in 1815, and Andrew Lang published another edition with a commentary in 1893. Fairies lived in "fairy hills", and there was such a hill at Aberfoyle called Doon Hill. According to Kirk, says Lang, the Highlanders "superstitiously believe the souls of their Predecessors to dwell" in the fairy-hills. "And for that end, say they, a Mote or Mount was dedicate beside every Churchyard, to receive the souls till their adjacent bodies arise, and so become as a Fairy hill." Kirk says of fairy beliefs: "'Tis one of their Tenets, that nothing perisheth, but (as the Sun and Year) every Thing goes in a Circle, lesser or greater, and is renewed and refreshed in its Revolutions." Later he adds: "They are not subject to sore Sicknesses, but dwindle and decay at a certain Period, all about one Age. Some say their continual Sadness is because of their pendulous State, as uncertain what at the last Revolution will become of them, when they are lock't up into one unchangeable Condition." Some say that fairies are "departed Souls, attending awhile in this inferior State, and clothed with Bodies procured their their Almsdeeds in this Lyfe; fluid, active, aetheriall Vehicles to hold them, that they may not scatter, or wander, and be lost in the Totum [Whole], or their first Nothing; but if any were so impious as to have given no Alms, they say when the Souls of such do depairt, they sleep in an unactive State till they resume the terrestriall Bodies again." This sounds very much like a cycle of reincarnation, and is not far from the Cornish belief that fairies who take animal form "get smaller and smaller with every change, till they are finally lost in the earth as muryans (ants)." Fairies, Ghosts, King Arthur, and Hounds From Hell: The Pagan and Medieval Origins of British Folklore. Robin Melrose.

In the seventeenth century there was in the possession of Lord Duffus an old silver cup called the Fairy Cup, concerning which the following tradition was related to John Aubrey, the antiquary, by a correspondent writing from Scotland on the 25th of March 1695. An ancestor of the then Lord Duffus was walking in the fields near his house in Morayshire when he heard the noise of a whirlwind and of voices crying: "horse and Hattock!" This was the exclamation fairies were said to use "when they remove from any place." Lord Duffus was bold enough to cry "Horse and Hattock" also, and was immediately caught up through the air with the fairies to the King of France's cellar at Paris, where, after he had heartily drunk, he fell asleep. There he was found lying the next morning with the silver cup in his hand, and was promptly brought before the King, to whom, on being questioned, he repeated this story; and the King, in dismissing him, presented him with the cup. -Edward Sidney Hartland, The Science of Fairytales.

A spell to conjure up a fairy, written about 1600, is found in the Ashmole MS. (No. 1406). "For myselfe," says the writer, "I call Margaret Barrance, but this will obteine any one that is not already bownd." This is interesting, as being among the few recorded instances where a fairy, or perhaps a person kidnapped by the fairies, is called by his or her personal name. "First," continues the communication, "Gett a broad square cristall or Venus (Venice?) glasse, in length and breadth three inches. Then lay that glasse or cristall in the bloud of a white henne three Wednesdayes, or three Fridayes; then take it out and wash it with holy aqua and fumigate it. Then take three hazel sticks or wands of an yeare groth, pill them fayre and white, and make soe longe as you write the spiritts name, or fayries name, which you call three times, on every sticke being made flatt on one side. Then bury them under some hill, whereas you suppose fayries haunt, the Wednesday before you call her, and the Friday followinge take them uppe, and call her at eight or three or ten of the clocke, which be good plannetts and howrs for that turne. But when you call, be in cleane life, and turn thy face towards the East; and when you have her, bind her to that stone ore glasse". -The Fairy Tradition in Britain. Lewis Spence. Pg. 167.

A complaint known to the Anglo-Saxons as aelfsgotha (hiccough, or heartburn) was attributed to fairy agency, or perhaps to elfin possession. A Latin charm used to expel it, when translated, runs: "Almighty God, expel from thy servant N. through the laying on of this writing, all attack of the Castalides from his head, from his hair and from all parts of his body". The "Castalides" were the Muses of Classical myth, but the name is used here as a Latin equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon word aelf, "an elf". (W. Bonsor, "Magical Practices against Elves", Folk-Lore, XXXVII, p. 350 ff.)

-The Fairy Tradition in Britain, Lewis Spence, pg. 167