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

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
Tf the person approaching- a washing-woman were able to
get his hands on her before she either saw or heard him,
and she meanwhile engaged with the shronds, he was able
to detain her, and demand of her an answer to his
interrogations. If, on the other hand, he was observed or
heard by her in his approach, she was able to deprive him
of the use of his limbs.
There is a tradition in the Alvie district of Inverness-shire
that one of the lochans set in the surrounding hills was the
haunt of such a washing-woman. Visible onlv to those
under the shadow of death was this phantom washer of the
shrouds. It was held that she represented the disembodied
spirit of a mother, who had died in childbirth, and whose
garments had not all been washed at the time of her burial.
Since death at childbirth was regarded as premature and
unpropitious, the phantom washing-woman of Alvie continued
to rinse in this lochan the shirts of all those who
were fated to die or be killed in battle between the date of
the mother's death and the date on which she would have
died in the natural course of events.
One of the most popular of Highland stories connected
with the washing of the death-shrouds is told of the
Mermaid of Loch Slin. On turning a comer on the path
by the side of this loch one Sabbath morning, a Cromarty
maiden was startled at finding what seemed to be a tall
female who, standing in the water just beyond a cluster of
flags and rushes, was " knocking claes " on a stone with a
bludgeon. On a bleaching-green near at hand she observed
more than thirty smocks and shirts, all horribly besmeared
with blood. Shortly after the appearance of this apparition,
the roof of Fearn Abbey collapsed during worship, burying
the congregation in its debris, and killing thirty-six. This
accounted for the strange washing bv the banks of Loch
Slin.
Lad of the Wet Foot.
The story is told in the Isle of Benbecula of the way in
which a henchman of Mac 'ic Ailein nan Eilean—the
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