I believe that I may venture to claim that a good deal of the folklore contained in the following pages has never before been printed, and that even in the case of such traditions and beliefs as are so far widespread as to have been gathered together elsewhere, that, at all events, they are here given for the first time as collected in the islands of South Uist and Eriskay. In the very few cases in which I have presented examples already published by Mr. Carmichael in his Carmina Gadelica, it is because we have both borrowed from a common fount, the Rev. Allan Macdonald, who has long had access to sources of information entirely inaccessible to all others, and to whom I acknowledge the deepest obligation. As priest, and even more as friend, to a people whose hearts can never open fully but to one of their own faith and living in their midst, he has had, and has used to the full, opportunities that are in the most literal sense unique, and without him—his knowledge, sympathy, and erudition—the folklore, songs, hymns, customs, and tales of these islands could never have been collected.
I.—Dangers and Precautions.
Among the more remote islands of the Outer Hebrides one is constantly confronted with the phrase, "It is not right," literally, "It is not ordered." Thus, it is not right to mend clothes while upon the person. It is an interference with the rights of the dead, to whom alone belongs
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