Folklore of the Scottish Highlands (19 page)

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Wooden idol, Ballachulish, North Argyll. National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland

6 Life and death

Death has always been one of the main preoccupations of the Celt; this no doubt stems ultimately from the cult of graves, ancestor worship, and the belief that the burial mound was either one of the entrances to the Otherworld, or the place in which the departed continued his ghostly life, and must be propitiated with various rites and offerings. Even the practice of placing flowers on the graves of the departed must be an almost instinctive continuation of the widespread and archaic practice of honouring and placating the dead with offerings. Burial and everything associated with death has by no means always been a purely gloomy affair, and the social gathering and meal provided by the bereaved after the funeral is probably likewise a carry-over from the old funeral games and merry-making which were an integral part of Celtic burial traditions until comparatively recent times. Very often the fun got out of hand and bitter quarrels ending in blows were by no means uncommon phenomena. Funeral customs differed in the Highlands from area to area and according to the religion — Catholic or Protestant — of the people concerned. Belief in the ghost of the departed person was very strong, and, on occasion, the spirit could be positively dangerous to the living. In some districts it was believed that the soul stayed close to the corpse until after burial, so the body must be watched day and night. This custom was known as the ‘late wake’, and very unChristian activities could take place during this period of watching over the dead, and keeping guard on the restless spirit. All sorts of tricks were practised, games of leaping and wrestling were indulged in, riddles asked and answered, music known as the
coronach
or ‘lament’ was played, and the whole sad situation was treated with an almost callous revelry.

At the funeral of one of the lairds of Culloden the mourners were entertained so liberally before leaving Culloden House that when they did start for the Churchyard of Inverness they left the coffin behind! At another funeral a similar mistake occurred, and was only discovered when the party arrived at the churchyard and the sexton remarked, ‘It’s a grand funeral, but whaur’s Jean?’. It is told of an old woman in Glenmoriston, who lived half-way between St Columba’s Churchyard at the lower end of the glen and Clachan Mheircheird at the upper, that when her funeral came to the point at which the roads to those burial grounds parted, a discussion arose as to whether she should be buried in the upper or in the lower. The dispute led to a fight in which several persons were killed. The survivors then solved the question in dispute by burying the old lady where they had fought.

(William Mackay)

Pennant describes how, on the death of a Highlander, the body was stretched on a board, and covered with a coarse linen wrapper; the relatives of the deceased then placed a wooden platter on the breast of the corpse, containing a small quantity of salt and earth, not mixed together, but kept separate. The earth was symbolic of the corruptible body; the salt was the emblem of the indestructible spirit. All fire was extinguished in the room in which the corpse lay; in Pennant’s time it was regarded as such a bad omen for a cat or a dog to pass over the corpse that the poor creature must immediately be killed. Pennant also refers to the Late-Wake; he records that on the evening after the death of any person, the relations and friends of the deceased were in the habit of meeting at the house, accompanied by the music of bagpipe, harp (
33
) or fiddle. The nearest of kin — wife, son or daughter — would open a melancholy ball, dancing and at the same time weeping. This would continue until dawn. The younger people present treated the occasion with much more levity. Should the corpse remain unburied in the house for two days, the same rites would be observed on the second night. ‘Thus, Scythian-like, they rejoice at the deliverance of their friends out of this life of misery.’ Pennant also observes that the
coranach
, or singing at funerals, was still in use in his day in some places. These songs were generally eulogies of the deceased, or a recital of the valiant deeds he and his ancestors performed. Pennant comments:

I had not the fortune to be present at any in North Britain, but formerly assisted at one in the south of Ireland, where it was performed in the fullness of horror. The cries are called by the Irish the
Ulogohne
and
Húllulu
, two words extremely expressive of the sound uttered on these occasions and being of Celtic stock, Etymologists would swear to be the origin of the
ὀ
λολνγ
ώ
ν of the Greeks and
Ululatus
of the Latins. It was my fortune to arrive at a certain town in Kerry at the time that a person of some distinction departed this life; my curiosity led me to the house, where the funeral seemed conducted in the purest classical form . . . when the time approached for carrying the corpse out, the cry was re-doubled — a numerous band of females waiting in the outer court to attend the hearse and to pay (in chorus) the last tribute of their voices. The habit of this sorrowing train and the neglect of their persons, were admirably suited to the occasion: their robes were black and flowing, resembling the ancient
palla
; their feet naked, their hair long and dishevelled . . . the corpse was carried slowly along the verge of a most beautiful lake, the
ululatus
was continued, and the whole procession ended among the venerable ruins of an old abbey. But to return to North Britain. Midwives give new-born babes a small spoonful of earth and whisky as the first food they taste.

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Harp, sixteenth-century. Said to have been given to a member of the Robertson family of Lude, Blair Atholl, Perthshire, by Queen Mary in 1563. After D.S. Thompson 1983, 118

In certain places, Pennant records, ‘the death of people is supposed to be foretold by the cries and shrieks of
Benshi
or the Fairies wife, uttered along the very path where the funeral is to pass; and what in Wales are called corps candles, are often imagined to appear and foretell mortality’.

Martin relates how the natives of the Island of Eigg did not allow Protestants to come to their burials. He also mentions some small chapels on the Island of Benbecula. One of these was called Nun’s Town (
Baile nan Caillich
), for there were nunneries here ‘in the time of popery’. Martin tells how the natives had recently discovered a stone vault on the east side of the town which was full of small bones. Some people would have it that they were the bones of birds, and others that they were the remains of pigmies. Sir Norman MacLeod was asked about them and he surmised that they were the bones of the illegitimate babies of the nuns. This greatly displeased the Catholics on the Island; the vault was promptly closed up, and never again opened. Martin, who records a good deal about death customs and burials in the Islands, tells us that the burial ground near the houses on the Island of Borera was called the Monks Field, because all the monks that died in the Islands to the north of Eigg were buried in this small piece of ground. Another Island, Lingay, lying half a league south on the side of Borera is, according to Martin’s observation, entirely moss covered with heather which afforded five peats in depth; even so, such was the sanctity of the Island down the ages in the eyes of the natives of the Islands that they dared not cut fuel in it, rich in peats though it was.

Shaw, in recording traditions from Moray in the eighteenth century, gives us some information about death customs in his day. Although, like so many collectors of folk belief, he was a minister of the Church, and therefore somewhat ashamed and censorious of the customs of his fellow-countrymen, he did write them down faithfully as he found them, at a time when they were fully active. The area with which he was particularly concerned extended from the mouth of the River Spey to the borders of Lochaber, and from the Moray Firth to the Grampian hills. It was commonly said in Moray at this time that at death one passed into the
saoghal thall
, ‘the Yonder World’; today, in modern Gaelic communities it is never said of a person who has died,
bhàsaich e
(
bàs
, ‘death’); this is reserved for animals. Of a human being people say
chaochail e
, ‘he changed’, or
shiubhail e
, ‘he travelled’, which is very similar to Shaw’s eighteenth-century observation. He says, somewhat sternly, of the Highlanders of his day: ‘they retain many heathenish practices’, which included music and dancing at lyke-wakes and burials; these sports were commonplace. The nearest relations of the deceased were apparently the first to dance. He also mentions the mourning women (
bean tuirim
) who were employed to chant the
coranach
, or lament, reciting the heroic deeds, the hunting prowess, the largesse and so on of the deceased, in true archaic Celtic fashion. Shaw also notes that it was commonplace in Moray in his day for people to make a sunwise (
deiseal
) procession round the church at marriages, funerals and the kirking of women, that is, their first visit to church after the birth of a child — before this they were held to be unclean.

It was also at one time widely believed that on the night of the day that a child was baptised, the baby should neither be bathed nor washed. This was to make sure that the evil-averting baptismal water was not washed off the child before it had slept under its protection. Very often the holy water used at the ceremony was bottled up and kept as a precious remedy for various disorders. Female children must not be baptised with the same water as that used for a male child, otherwise they would, according to popular superstition, grow beards. One minister recorded an experience he himself had when he was about to baptise a female baby with the water with which he had just baptised a male child. The grandmother apparently snatched away the baptismal bowl and filled it with fresh holy water, lest the girl should grow up and have a beard. In many districts it was considered to be unlucky if a child was not baptised within a year of its birth. Another ancient belief of the Highlanders was in the efficacy of a cold plunge and in earlier times in the Highlands as soon as the baby was born it was plunged into a running stream and then wrapped in a warm blanket. This is almost identical with the custom recorded by Strabo for Gaul where mothers of newly-born infants plunged them into the ice-cold waters of some river in order to make them strong and lusty.

A widespread Highland custom was to make the baby swallow a large quantity of fresh butter after birth. At this time, the power of the fairies was much feared and before baptism it must be protected against this dangerous race of beings, and other supernatural creatures. One method was to take a basket half-filled with bread and cheese, and wrapped in a clean linen cloth. The child was laid on top of this package as if it were in a cradle. The basket was then lifted up by the oldest female member of the family, carried three times round the fire, and then suspended for a few seconds above it. After that, the infant was put back in its cradle, and the bread and cheese shared out amongst those present as a guarantee of their health for the coming year. Another superstition recorded like those above by MacGregor early in the twentieth century was that soon after the birth of a child and after all the correct ritual had been observed, a dish containing a mixture of oat-meal and water was made, and each person present must take three horn-spoonfuls in order to bring protection on the infant. The custom was still vestigially extant in Perthshire when MacGregor wrote, and may, of course, have continued long after, unknown to the minister. There too, it was traditionally believed that, until she had been kirked, everything a new mother touched was unclean. Another protection given to the newly-born child, this time against worldly ills, was to twine a straw rope three times sunwise round the infant’s body when it was being washed, in the name of the Trinity. This rope was then cut into three parts and as long as these pieces did not re-unite, the child would be safe from the curse of epilepsy; Carmichael recorded this custom in the Islands.