CHAPTER II.
_BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD._
When writing of fairies I noticed,--but as it is connected with birth, I
may here mention it again,--a practice common in some localities of
placing in the bed where lay an expectant mother, a piece of cold iron
to scare the fairies, and prevent them from spiriting away mother and
child to elfland. An instance of this spiriting away at the time of
child-bearing is said to have occurred in Arran within these fifty
years. It is given by a correspondent in _Long Ago_:--"There was a woman
near Pladda, newly delivered, who was carried away, and on a certain
night her wraith stood before her husband telling him that the yearly
riding was at hand, and that she, with all the rout, should ride by his
house at such an hour, on such a night; that he must await her coming,
and throw over her her wedding gown, and so she should be rescued from
her tyrants. With that she vanished. And the time came, with the
jingling of bridles and the tramping of horses outside the cottage; but
this man, feeble-hearted, had summoned his neighbours to bear him
company, who held him, and would not suffer him to go out.
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