fortune to the too bold intruder; but one youth braved the danger and spoke to it. He got the answer: "I am the girl who broke the Sabbath and disobeyed my mother. From henceforward for ever I am doomed through that mother's curse to wander over moor and hill as a warning light, and from this doom I shall not be free till the end of the world."
In some parts of Skye there is a variant of this story, and the girl becomes a man who gathered bracken or heather for thatching on the Sabbath.
(9) A party of girls passing a small church saw the windows suddenly lighted up. There was no one in the church and the door was fast locked. It was a perfectly dark night, with no moon to cast a light on the windows. There was no water near which might possibly glitter and so throw a reflection. There was, in fact, no explanation. As far as I can recollect, this is the same church or mission-room from which music was heard to come.
(10) The last of the stories I shall give at present relates to a dream. A man at Sluggans (a straggling row of cottages with small crofts about a mile from Portree) had a dream in which a figure appeared to him telling him of a large sum of money hidden near an old Dun in the neighbourhood, probably Dun Borve, which is the nearest Dun to the township. Waking, the man remembered his dream, and through the day he heard the voice still repeating the same tale. But recognizing in the figure the Enemy of Mankind, he refused to be tempted. Satan having been baulked in his desire, which was to get the man into his power, desisted from his efforts.
The Kern Baby in India.
(Folk-Lore, vol. xxxii. p. 215 et seqq.)
By the kind permission of Dr. Rendel Harris, communicated through Sir James Frazer, the following further communication from Rev. F. Kilbey, the Mission House, Sohagpur, Central Provinces, India, dated 31st May, 1922, is published.
