It is reckoned very unlucky in some parts of the country to have a child left unbaptised beyond the year in which it was born. For example, should a child come into the world on the 30th December, 1877, the parents would feel very uncomfortable, and consider it a neglect of duty, if they did not get the infant baptised either on that or next day.
Even in England peculiar frets are still observed in regard to infants. In a late number of an English paper, the following paragraph appeared:—“A certain act of barbarity and superstition is practised in many parts of the country. Children who are sickly are taken to a woman for the purpose of being cut for a supposed disease, called the Spinnage. The infants are, on a Monday morning, taken to this woman, who, for threepence, with a pair of scissors, cuts through the lobe of the right ear, then makes a cross with the blood upon the forehead and breast of the child. On the following Monday the same barbarous ceremony is performed upon the left ear, and on the succeeding Monday the right ear is again doomed to undergo the same ceremony. In some cases, it is deemed necessary to perform this ridiculous operation nine times. It is not the lower classes alone who are chargeable with this and similar follies. Some of the higher classes likewise observe them. It is quite common to make the children partake of a roasted mouse as a cure for whooping-cough.”
The cold-bath was so much esteemed by the Highlanders in ancient times that, as soon as an infant was born, he was plunged into a running stream, and then carefully wrapped in a warm blanket. Immediately thereafter, the little creature was forced to swallow a large quantity of fresh butter. It was made into a ball of no ordinary size, and was pressed down its little throat, in a manner sufficient to create a fear of the poor child being suffocated. Another fret was observed, that immediately after a child was baptised, he behoved to be secured from the power of the fairies, and of all evil spirits. For this purpose a basket was taken, which was half filled with bread and cheese, wrapped up in a clean linen cloth. Over this parcel the child was laid as if in a cradle. The basket was then taken up by the oldest female in the family circle at the time, carried three times round the fire, and then suspended for a few seconds from the crook that hung over the fire. The child was then removed from its temporary berth, while the bread and cheese were divided among the company present, as nourishment to guarantee their health for another year. There was still another superstition, that soon after the birth of a child, when all the duties necessary on such occasions had been performed, it was customary to make a dish of “crowdie” by mixing oaten meal and water together, of which each of the company required to take three horn-spoonfuls, for the protection of the infant. This superstition was, until of late, very prevalent in the Highlands of Perthshire. It was likewise the custom that the mother of the infant dare not perform any work, or engage herself in any of her domestic affairs, until she had been kirked. After she had performed this religious rite, and had dealt out a portion of bread and cheese to every one she met on her way home from the place of worship, she was invested with free liberty to attend to her ordinary household concerns. Until then, however, everything she did, and every object she handled, was reckoned unclean, and would not be meddled with by any in the family circle.