TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 1021 



them, speaking their own tongue, and of like blood and passions with themselves. 

 But kind and friendly as the islanders have always been, the author's attempts 

 ■would have had comparatively small results but for help received from the Rev. 

 Allan Macdonald, priest of Eriskay, whose lifelong knowledge of the islanders is- 

 unrivalled. 



Contact with modern civilisation and the consequent decay of native industries 

 and modes of life have proved here, as elsewhere, fatal to folk-lore ; and even the>- 

 very language in which the older life is crystallised is neglected by the School 

 Board and despised by the rising generation. 



Yet in the old days every act of life seems to have had its associated tradi- 

 tion : the lighting of the fire, the milking of the cows, the driving them home, the 

 roosting of the poultry, the watching of the cattle, the realisation of the changing 

 seasons, the baking of bread, the catching of fish, every detail of weaving and 

 dyeing and fulling, all had their special rhyme, or song, or story. In the long 

 winter evenings the time was passed in weaving heather ropes or making netS;, 

 while stories were told by recognised scalds, the literary descendants of tlie ballad- 

 makers of the Vikings who occupied these islands. Some of these stories are of 

 great length, and must have occupied many evenings in narration. Some are of 

 Ossianic origin. Here, as elsewhere, stories such as ' Cinderella ' and ' The Sleep- 

 ing Beauty ' are related in terms appropriate to the locality. Many of the songs- 

 have their special tunes, some of which the author has secured. 



Every member of the scant fauna, and every phase of the culture of the land 

 or of the sea, has its legend and its song. The undertone of half the legends is the 

 friendship and the kindliness of the sea — all are safe in the boat, be it but a few 

 yards from shore. 



Besides the innumerable and often unique superstitions — midsummer fireS;,. 

 salutations to the sun, and Hallowe'en divinations — the author attaches a peculiar 

 value to the ancient hymns, the quaint apocryphal stories, the prayers for all sorts 

 of occasions, the old catechisms and rosaries, the legends of St. Columba and his 

 followers, of St. Patrick and St. Bridget, the charms, spells, and divinations, with 

 their odd mixture of Paganism and Christianity, as these, perhaps more certainlj 

 than the rest, are becoming every day more difficult to recover. 



The author illustrated various archaic agricultural and domestic implements 

 and the methods of using them, and exhibited specimens of home-made cloth, of 

 the vegetable dyes used, of articles made of heather and ' bent,' and of charms and! 

 cures for disease. 



WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER U. 

 The following Reports and Papers were read : — 



1. Report on the Lake Village at Glastonbury. — See Reports, p. 694. 



2. On the Place of the Lake Village of Glastonhury in British Archteology.. 

 By Arthur J. Evans, F.S.A, 



3. On Traces of Terramare Settlements in Modern Italian Towns. 

 By Profes.sor AV. M. Flinders Petrie, D.C.L. 



4. On the Megalithic Monuments of Dartmoor. By P. F. S. Amery, 



5. Report on the Silchester Excavations, — See Reports, p* 689. 



