the churchyard, some persons left behind take out the bed-straw on which the person died and burn the same at a little distance from the house. There may be perhaps some reason for the burning thereof to prevent infection; but why it should be done just at that time I know not well, unless it be to give advertisement to any of the people who dwell in the way betwixt and the church-yard to come and attend the buriall."[1]
That there is nothing peculiarly Highland in the connection of lights with deaths is quite certain. "Amongst the Indians of New England, and the Eskimo, lights seen on the roofs of their wigwams and huts portend death."[2] On the English and Scottish border, "lights of circular form seen in the air, when there is no fire or candle," are a presage of death.[3] In Sussex in recent years "considerable alarm was created . . . . by a pale light being observed to move over the bed of a sick person, and, after flickering for some time in different parts of the room, to vanish through the window."[4] In a like case to this, the observer proved it "to be a male glowworm." The light in the former case "was pronounced to be a warning."
In Denmark, "if a person in a house is ill, his death is forewarned by a light. It may be seen during the night slowly gliding from the house to the gate of the churchyard, and along the church-road, which very often is not the common road, but that by which funeral processions pass." . . . . "Sometimes death in a house is forewarned by corpse-flames, the part of a house in which a person is to die being, so to say, enveloped in light, glowing."[5]
In the Isle of Man, on May Eve, many of the inhabitants "remained on the hills till sunrise, endeavouring to pry into futurity by observing particular omens. If a bright
