Listening to: songs of bad luck and death! Drunken driver by Grampaw Joe, Don’t go in the lion’s cage tonight by Homer and Jethro and My dead dog rover by Ian Whitcomb.
Watching: Following up on the Loch Ness Monster entry, my good friend, Wilson Delcox of northern, south central Illinois sent me this link. One not to be missed The Loch Ness Horror – and it really is!
I have been reading an old book about the life and times of Slackbuie. The name comes from Gaelic, meaning ‘the yellow hollow’, referring to the former jaundice ward sited there I imagine. It has a long history and if you are ever having difficulty sleeping, the university report on excavating the iron age post hole they found here, is, well, not to put too fine a point on it, a masterpiece of post hole reporting. It will, I believe, set the standard for years to come. The only disappointment is that nothing was actually found in the post hole – not even a post!
In the book, I stumbled across a particularly fascinating chapter on omens and superstition, and it certainly seems they were a superstitious bunch in this neck of the woods. I realise that you probably lie awake worrying about the omens of Slackbuie, so I will share.
There are obvious ones like, spilling salt – especially if you are a slug, and breaking mirrors, but there are some real gems of ill luck premonitions like dreaming of baldness, a hole in the roof or even of a baby girl!
There is also useful advice on when it is best to leave the house. Translating from Gaelic, it reads:
“Go not from home on Monday, stir not on Tuesday, Wednesday is unfortunate, and Thursday is a holy day, Friday is not prosperous and it is not meet for thee to go tomorrow”
By my reckoning, that doesn’t leave a lot of options really, but good to know.
We also receive a warning of evil spirits, and are treated to the tale of a man who killed a calf (wonder what omen the calf saw?) and was getting it ready for the pot, when it bellowed. Shocked, he cut its head of and threw the head in the fire, which prevented it bellowing again. Really?
Death in general is a particularly good source of bad luck. For example, it is bad luck to measure a living person for a shroud. “Thank your Granny, she has made you a lovely new shroud!”
It is also bad luck if a cat jumps over a corpse. Maybe its just me, but I would suggest that if you have a dead body lying in the house for a cat to jump over, that should probably be a clue.
Finally, the last person to join a funeral will be the next carried into one. Right, I am not completely convinced about this omen. In my experience, humiliation and having to stand leaning on the coffin in a busy church follows being late. I know this as I am generally late for pretty much all festivities. On the death of my great uncle Tam, a small, select family group headed down to Stirling for the funeral, by car. After stopping to see to our cashmere needs at a certain tourist outlet en route, we arrived at the church somewhat tardy, in fact sufficiently tardy to see everyone leave. This was bad, but we also missed hearing which cemetery they were heading to. Not a problem thought I. “Follow that car, the driver is wearing a white shirt and black tie – obviously going to the grave side.”
This theory was great, till the car pulled into a driveway, and out got a policeman going home. Once we explained, and confirmed that we were as stupid as we looked, we settled on a new technique. Pick a graveyard randomly, there can’t be too many in Stirling. Alas there was no-one there to disturb the sleep of the dead at the first choice, so onto choice two, which involved getting lost in a housing estate. Finally we were forced to ask for help. I wound down a window, and asked a venerable old pensioner if she had seen a hearse? The language was certainly unlady like and the directions she gave were more likely to hurt than take us to the cemetery. This finished with us having to run, with the grace and nimbleness of stags on the hill, over a footbridge to the cemetery gates. Red faced and gasping for breath, the stags on the hill were forced to accept we had missed that bit of the day as well.
Fortunately, I did know where the hotel was for the highlight of the day, the wake. This after all is the main event – steak pie, drams and recounting tales of the dearly departed that would never have been told when he was not departed. Fortunately we knew a shortcut to the hotel.
Ok, so we may have ended up driving down a footpath, but women and children in Stirling are also quite rude I have learned. Unfortunately, we were late again, and were stuck at a small table in front of everyone as all the seats were taken. On this particular occasion, ‘the top table’ was not for my celebrity, and not the most desireable seat to be had.
Back to the book. One other useful bit of information I came across was a charm to ‘free’ trapped milk in cows udders and womens’ breasts. I have decided though, that should Wife of Willox Dixon ever require this kind of help, I shall not be sending her to the byre to recite the charm – sometimes I can spot where misfortune is likely to come from, without any help!
Atomic Crofter 