at second hand.  The story ran as follows:—­The corpse was laid out in a room, and the watchers had retired to another apartment to partake of refreshments, having shut the door of the room where the corpse lay.  While they were eating there was heard a great noise, as of a struggle between two persons, proceeding from the room where the corpse lay.  None of the party would venture into the room, and in this emergency they sent for the minister, who came, and, with the open Bible in his hand, entered the room and shut the door.  The noise then ceased, and in about ten minutes he came out, lifted the tongs from the fireplace, and again re-entered the room.  When he came out again, he brought out with the tongs a glove, which was seen to be bloody, and this he put into the fire.  He refused, however, to tell either what he had seen or heard; but on the watchers returning to their post, the corpse lay as formerly, and as quiet and unruffled as if nothing had taken place, whereat they were all surprised.

From the death till the funeral it was customary for neighbours to call and see the corpse, and should any one see it and not touch it, that person would be haunted for several nights with fearful dreams.  I have seen young children and even infants made to touch the face of the corpse, notwithstanding their terror and screams.  If a child who had seen the corpse, but had not been compelled to touch it, had shortly afterwards awakened from a sleep crying, it would have been considered that its crying was caused by its having seen the ghost of the dead person.

If, when the funeral left the house, the company should go in a scattered, straggling manner, this was an omen that before long another funeral would leave the same house.  If the company walked away quickly, it was also a bad omen.  It was believed that the spirit of the last person buried in any graveyard had to keep watch lest any suicide or unbaptized child should be buried in the consecrated ground, so that, when two burials took place on the same day, there was a striving to be first at the churchyard.  In some parts of the Highlands this superstition led to many unseemly scenes when funerals occurred on the same day.

Those attending the funeral who were not near neighbours or relations were given a quantity of bread and cakes to take home with them, but relations and near neighbours returned to the house, where their wives were collected, and were liberally treated to both meat and drink.  This was termed the dredgy or dirgy, and to be present at this was considered a mark of respect to the departed.  This custom may be the remnant of an ancient practice—­in some sort a superstition—­which existed in Greece, where the friends of the deceased, after the funeral, held a banquet, the fragments of which were afterwards carried to the tomb.  Upon the death of a wealthy person, when the funeral had left the house, sums of money were divided among the poor.  In Catholic