More Folklore from the Hebrides. 45
spread first on one side, then on the other, and it is put before the fire again. An earlier shape, still in use, which tradition associates with the female sex, is that of a triangle with the corners cut olT. A struthan or strudhaji (the word seems to be used for no other kind of cake) is made for each member of the household, including servants and herds. When harvest is late, an early patch of corn is mown on purpose for the struthan. St. Michael's Day is so far a festival that it is almost as important to have a bottle of whisky in the house then, as it is at a wedding or a fulling, and even yet, so I am told by a priest, the people ask if it is not a holiday of obligation.
On this day wild carrots are presented by the girls in a house to male visitors. An old woman named Campbell describes how " All the week before St. Michael's Day we gathered wild carrots^ and each of us hid our store on the machair. On St. Michael's Day we took them up, and we girls had a great day cooking and eating them and dancing and singing. The boys had their own fun. They used to try to find and to steal our carrots. We had always to give some to the first person we met after pulling them up, and also to the first person we met coming into the house when we got home."
Hogmany Night has naturally its especial customs. The children go round to the houses on New Year's Eve to ask their Hogmany. It appears from the fourth line of their rhyme as if the custom obtained formerly on ChristmasY,\&, as among the Spaniards, who keep then their Noche Buena.
" I to-night am going a Hogmanying, Going to renew the shout of the Kalends, To tell the women of the township That to-morrow is the Day of Christmas. I need not be telling it,
It was in existence in the time of my grandfather, Climbing at the lintel over the door And descending at the door, Giving my diian (rhyme) orderly, Courteously, knowingly, as I knew how to."
