The peat-fire flame : folk-tales and traditions of the Highlands & Islands

WITCH TALES AND THE EVIL EYE
time. " And, if the step must be taken, a step beyond thee
for Ewen."
And it was when Black Sir Ewen Cameron realised he
was in the darkest danger that he remembered the protective
power of running water. So, he leapt into the middle of
the nearest stream. Then cried Gormnl in her bitterness
that the foe of her clan had eluded her after all.
" The wish of mine heart to thee, Locheil, thou best loved
of men." To which Locheil replied : " The wish of thine
heart, carlin, be on yonder grey stone."
Thereat a large, grey boulder, to which Locheil had
pointed with his sword, was rent in twain, as by magic.
And from that day Gormul, the witch of Moy, abandoned
her endeavours to destroy Black Ewen Cameron of Locheil.
The Power of a Live Cinder.
It was believed that a live coal or a smouldering peat,
taken from a fire for the purpose of kindling a fire in
another house, had certain occult properties, except when it
had to be conveyed across water. Often a woman would
take a kindling from her neighbour's fire, to enable her to
' spirit ' the substance out of her neighbour's milk, or to
extract the butter from her neighbour's chum. The folklore
of the Scottish Highlands and Islands is full of
reference to the manner in which witches and those
possessed of the Evil Eye put a spell on the milk, or rendered
a churning of no avail, and even separated the web from
the warp after a weaving. Apropos the belief in the
supernatural power emanating from a kindling taken from
the fire in a neighbour's house, the following folk-tale used
to be recited about sixty years ago by a cottar in Barra.
The mother of a crofter family in the Isle of Skye toiled
with her churn in the ben of her house. Seated in the but
on the meal-girnel, cross-legged-wise, after the fashion of
his craft, was the local tailor, sewing clothes for the sons,
who were out on the moor at the peat-cutting. Meanwhile
a woman from a neighbouring croft came in and asked for
a kindling for her fire. No sooner had she got the kindling
and departed with it than the tailor leapt down from the
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