"Rowan-tree and red thread Puts the witches to their speed."
In the neighbourhood of Peterhead, there lived, a few years ago, a famous exorcist, whose ancestors had for several generations practised the same profession. He was greatly resorted to by parties in the Buchan district, for curing elfshot cattle, cows whose milk had been surreptitiously taken away, to recover stolen property and find out thieves, and put a stop to "cloddings." This latter description of _diablerie_, is just a repetition of the Cock Lane ghost's tricks, and occasionally yet occurs. On one occasion the exorcist was bearded in his own den: for about twenty-five years ago a terrible "clodding" took place at a farm-house in the parish of Longside, a mile or two from his own; it defied the united efforts of priest and layman to lay it, and the operator was called in, and while in the middle of one of his most powerful exorcisms, was struck on the side of his head with a piece of peat. The annoyance continued a few weeks, and then ceased altogether. In the parish of Banchory Ternan, about seven years ago, a "clodding" took place, which created considerable sensation in the district.
_Names of Places in Normandy and Orkney._--In reading Depping's _History of the Norman Maritime Expeditions_, my attention was directed to Appendix IX. vol. ii. p. 339., "Des Noms Topographiques de Normandie dont l'origine est étrangère." Many of the names given there resemble those in Orkney. I note a few of them.
Depedal. Deepdale, a secluded valley near Kirkwall; _Dalv_, Icelandic, a valley.
Auppegard, Eppegard in Normandy; Kongsgarth, Herdmansgarth in Orkney; Icelandic _Gardr_, a field, an enclosure.
Cape La Hogue, derived by M. Depping from _hougr_, a promontory; Hoxay in Orkney, _hougs_ and _ay_, an island. _Haugs-eid_, isthmus of the hillock, is another derivation.
Cherbourg, Dep. p. 331.; Suhm, in a note appended, finds the root in his tongue, _skiair_, _skeer_; Icelandic _Sker_, a sea-rock, the Orkney _Skerry_, an islet covered at high water.
Houlmes, near Rouen; the Orkney _Holm_, a small island generally uninhabited.
Bye, a dwelling, is the Orkney Bu or Boo, a pure Icelandic word.
Other instances could be given; and there is nothing remarkable in this when it is considered that the invaders of Orkney and Normandy were the same people at the same period, and the better preservation of the Norse tongue in Orkney is readily to be accounted for. In Normandy the language of the invaders was lost in the French in a very short space of time, while the Norse continued the language of Orkney and Zetland during their subjection to the Norwegian earls for a period of 600 years; and only last year, 1850, it was that an old man in Unst in Zetland, who could speak Norse, died at the age of eighty-seven years; and except there be in Foula (Fougla, the fowls' island, called Thule in the Latin charters of its proprietors) a person living who can speak it, that old tongue is extinct in Britain.