648 REPORT—1896. 
Fire is also carried ‘round about women before they are churched after 
child-bearing, and it is used likewise about children until they be christ- 
ened, both which are performed in the morning and at night... as an 
effectual means to preserve both the mother and the infant from the 
power of evil spirits who are ready at such times to do mischief and 
sometimes carry away the infant.’! In the Western Isles of Scotland, as 
Candlemas Day comes round, the mistress and servants of each family, 
taking a sheaf of oats, dress it up in woman’s apparel, and after putting 
it in a large basket, beside which a wooden club is placed, they cry three 
times, ‘ Briid is come, Briid is welcome.’ This they do just before going 
to bed, and as soon as they rise in the morning they look among the ashes, 
expecting to see the impression of Briid’s club there, which if they do, they 
reckon it a true presage of a good crop and prosperous year.?, The same 
conception is more generally expressed in the Manx custom. In many of 
the upland cottages it is customary for the housewife, after raking the fire 
for the night, and just before stepping into bed, to spread the ashes smooth 
over the floor with the tongs, in the hope of finding in them, next morning, 
the trace of a foot. Should the toes of this ominous print point towards 
the door, then it is believed a member of the family will die in the course 
of the year ; but should the heel of the fairy foot point in that direction, 
then it is firmly believed that the family will be augmented within the 
same period. 
I will next proceed to formulate the various elements which distinguish 
the ceremonies of the house-fire in those examples which are unconnected 
with any of the evidence previously dealt with. 
That the hearth is the residence of a house-spirit is to be illustrated 
by many scraps of our fairy mythology. In a seventeenth-century work 
quoted by Brand, we read ‘ Doth not the warm zeal of an Englishman’s 
devotion (who was ever observed to contend most stifly pro aris et focis) 
make him maintain and defend the sacred hearth, as the sanctuary and 
chief place of residence of the tutelary lares and household gods, and the 
only court where the lady fairies convene to dance and revel?’ (ii, 504). 
Maids are punished by the fairies (fairies being the generic folklore title 
for any form of spirit) for untidy household habits, and particularly for 
not attending properly to the hearth. Thus in the old ballad of ‘ Robin 
Goodfellow ’ it is said : 
‘Where fires thou find’st unraked and hearths unswept, 
There pinch the maids as blue as bilbery.’ 
In Ireland the fairies are believed to visit the farmhouses in their 
district on particular nights, and the embers are collected, the hearth 
swept, and a vessel of water placed for their use before the family retire 
to rest ;4 Spenser observes that at the kindling of the fire and lighting of 
candles the people say certain prayers, and use some other superstitious rites, 
which show that they honour the fire and the light ;° and in an old diary, 
printed by the Kilkenny Archeological Society (vol. i. [n. s.] p. 183), we 
read that ‘servants when they scour andirons, fire-shovell, or tongues, 
1 Martin, Western Islands, pp. 113, 117. 
2 Thid., p. 119. ; 
3 Train’s History of the Isle of Man, ii. p. 115; also Hampson’s Medii Zvi Kal. 
i. p. 221. 
4 Croker’s Researches in the South of Ireland, p. 84. 
5 Spenser’s View of the State of Ireland, p. 98. 
