598 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— H, I. 



stone was the ' knocking atone ' in Braham Wood, near Dingwall. Glach-na-Bhan 

 in Glenavon was said to ensure easy delivery to the wife who was chaired in it, and a 

 husband to single women. 



The Couvade. There are instances of the pseudo-maternal couvade. A man or 

 woman simulates the pangs of labour and thereby relieves the mother from whom the 

 pains are believed to be transferred to the actor. Two cases occur in Lumphanan, 

 Aberdeenshire. Elizabeth Sang, wife of John Jameson in Auchinhove, being lying in 

 bed undelivered, Margaret Clerk in Lumphanan cast ' her haill panes, dolouris and 

 tormentes ' upon John Jameson, her spouse, from which he never recovered. There 

 was a fatal ending to this transfer. 



In the second case the pains are transferred not to the husband but to another 

 man — probably a dependant — ^who was ' exceedinglie mervelousUe trublet,' but as 

 soon as the gentlewoman was delivered the pains departed from him. This was in 

 1595. In 1650 a case of transfer occurs in Insch where the pains are laid upon a 

 woman, who manifests all the symptoms of being in travail. 



(b) Death. — There is some evidence that in the north-east there was once practised 

 the custom of accelerating the end of the aged and diseased. At Alves in Morayshire 

 in 1663 a case is reported to the Session of some people in Easter Alves ' ringing the 

 millen bridle ' upon an aged woman to hasten her death. From the details it almost 

 seems to have been customary. The method was probably by strangulation. 



Rev. A. C. MacLean. — Celtic Folk-tale in the Light of Archceological 

 Research. 



Folk-tales, like folk-songs, when the medium of the written word was not in 

 common use among the people, held a place of very especial honour. Like the folk- 

 song, the folk-tale must neither be ' corrected ' nor ' improved,' and the narrators 

 of traditional folk-tales, possessing as they did the gift of verbatim repetition, were 

 held in very high honour as ' masters ' in this especial sphere. The accepted folk- 

 tales of the people were guarded by rigid literary laws. Accordingly folk-tales, 

 genuine and properly used, become an invaluable ' control ' to verify the results of 

 archaeological research. 



In the class of folk-tale which has become confused the narrator had lost the art, 

 or he had endeavoured to ' improve ' his tale ; for research purposes this type of 

 confused tale is almost useless. 



The other class is what may, very properly, be called the direct folk-tale, ancient, 

 genuine and unspoiled in oral transmission from narrator to narrator in successive 

 generations. This type of folk-tale is invaluable and very rare. 



In August 1908, in the Lews, the present writer was able to induce an old man, 

 seventy-five years of age, to tell a folk-tale, an unconsidered trifle from his point of 

 view, of Callernish. The old man got the tale about 1840, while the narrator, who 

 gave him the tale, got it about 1770-80 ; and the folk-tale was known to be old then. 

 Thus, long before the late Sir James Matheson of the Lews carried out his excavations 

 at Callernish, in 1858, folk-tales were associated with Callernish. 



Further, the evidence of the ' overground ' phenomena, together with the evidence 

 of the ' underground ' phenomena at Callernish, is in complete accord with the folk- 

 tale told — after the traditional manner — by the peat fires on winter evenings in the 

 Lews. The genuine and traditional folk-tale of the common people in the west 

 corresponds exactly with the accepted results of archaeological research as established 

 to-day. 



Exhibit. 

 Photographs of Dentition of three Bronze Age Skeletons found in 

 Glasgow in 1928, shown by Mr. J. Menzies Campbell. 



SECTION I— PHYSIOLOGY. 



(For reference to the publication elsewhere of communications entered in the 

 following list of transactions, see p. S86.) 



Thursday, September 6. 



Dr. H. E. C. Wilson. — Nitrogen Retention. 



The nature of the material stored during nitrogen retention is reviewed in the light 

 of : (1) Voit's idea, which maintained that the food protein was built up into a labile 



