The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Gaelic Incantations. 1 1
GAELIC INCANTATIONS, CHARMS, AND
BLESSINGS OF THE HEBRIDES/
By WILLIAM MACKENZIE.
AT a meeting of this Society on 7th IMay, 1879, I read
a paper entitled " Lca\es from my Celtic Portfolio,"
concluding with a number of Gaelic charms and incanta-
tions which I had gathered in \arious districts of the
Highlands. That paper appears in Vol. VIII. of our
Transactions. X'arious writers had previously published
specimens of Gaelic incantations, but so far as I am aware
our volume contains the first collection of them. Old
writers on Highland superstitions make frequent reference
to charms ; but while they giv^e descriptions of ceremonies
they unfortunately pass over the incantations with contempt.
There can be no doubt that many interesting relics of
antiquity have thus been lost to the folklorist. The belief
in these matters is rapidly becoming a thing of the past ;
and the charms and incantations are lost as each successive
year death carries away the old people among whom alone
they are to be found. While thus the field where charms
and incantations may be got is becoming more and more
limited, the collector has further to contend with these
difficulties (first) that those who know them and believe
in their efficacy will not communicate them to any one
on whom they may look as an unbeliever ; and (second;
that many who know them as matter of tradition are
frequently ashamed to own the fact. It is satisfactory to
know, however, that many of these relics of the past have
been rescued, and it is to be hoped that members of this
Society may do what they can to add to our store of this
particular kind of folklore ere it be too late. Our friend
' A paper read before the Gaelic Society of Inverness on 23rd March, 1892
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