Abstract
EDINBURGH FOLKLOKE.—In the Nineteenth Century and After for July, Mr. Lewis Spence publishes the first instalment of a much needed study of the folklore of Edinburgh, He proposes to deal with his study under three: (i) Mythology, dealing with traditional material predominantly of a religious character (ii) legendary tradition related to human porsonages or persons once actually existing; and (iii) folklore associated with ritual, popular customs, or superstition. In the first section he shows that the Chapel of St. Triduana in Restalrig was in all probability originally a structure erected over a holy well serving as a place of immersion. The shrine with its holy well was a resort of pilgrims for the cure of blindness. St. Triduana is not in the Roman calendar and was probably a Celtic goddess who, on account of the similarity of the legend accounting for her blindness, is to bo equated with St. Brigit, the goddess Brigantia of the Brigantes, and Sulina (Gael. Suil, “eye of life”), worshipped at Bath. Brounger, associated with the fishing suburb of Newhaven in popular tradition, was an old fisherman who when ho did not fish himself asked for a few fish or oysters from his returning neighbours. If they refused, ill luck followed. He is equated with the thunder god through a tradition connecting him with a flint or meteorite suggesting the holy or hicky stones representing that deity. It is possible that ho may be Perunu, the thunder god, of Riigen, linking up through the connexion of the North German fishers with Scotland, and also the Slavonic Bog. A demon, Shellycoat, finds an analogy in Japan only, and a piper wtho disappeared in a subterranean passage from the Castle to Holyrood recalls the legend of Orpheus and other stories of that class.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Research Items. Nature 120, 202–204 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/120202a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/120202a0