5. Lastly, recourse may be had to a ritual of the same nature as that observed by the druid of ancient Erinn, when, burdened with a heavy meal of the flesh of a red pig, he laid him down for the night in order to await a prophetic dream as to the manner of man the nobles of Erinn assembled at Tara were to elect to be their king. The incident is given in the story of Cúchulainn's sick-bed; and you all know the passage about Brian and the taghairm in the 4th Canto of Scott's Lady of the Lake. But the Manx girl has only to eat a salt herring, bones and all, without drinking or uttering a word, and to retire backwards to bed. When she sleeps and dreams, she will behold her future husband approaching to give her drink.
Probably none of the practices which I have enumerated, or similar ones mentioned to me, are in any sense peculiar to the Isle of Man; but what interests me in them is the divided opinion as to the proper night for them in the year. I am sorry to say that I have very little information as to the blindman's-buff ritual (No. 4); what information I have, to wit, the evidence of two persons in the South, fixes it on Hollantide Eve. But as to the others (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5), they are observed by some on that night, and by others on New Year's Eve, sometimes according to the Old Style[1] and sometimes the New. Further, those who are wont to practise the Salt Heap ritual, for instance, on Hollantide Eve, would be very indignant to hear that anybody should think New Year's Eve the proper night, and vice versa. So by bringing women bred and born in different parishes to compare notes on this point, I have witnessed arguing hardly less earnest than that which characterised the ancient controversy between British and Italian ecclesiastics as to the proper time for keeping Easter. I have not been able to map the island according to the practices pre-
- ↑ This is called in Phillips' Prayer-book Lá nolick y biggy, "Little Nativity Day," and Lá ghian blieny, "The Day of the Year's End," meaning of course the forroer, not the latter, end of the year.
