There They Remain Throughout The Night, Digging In The Sands With Their Naked Feet, And Stripping Off Between Their Fingers The Leaves Of The Rosemary Flowers Culled Upon The Beach.

Those women, according to the tradition, are natives of the islands, who, marrying strangers, and dying in their sins, have returned to their beloved birthplace to beg the prayers of their friends."

Another superstition was recalled. "At the seaside village of St. Gildas, the fishermen who lead evil lives are often disturbed at midnight by three knocks at their door from an invisible hand. They immediately get up and, impelled by some supernatural power whose behests they cannot resist and dare not question, go down to the beach, where they find long black boats, apparently empty, yet sunk so deeply in the water as to be nearly level with it. The moment they enter, a large white sail streams out from the top of the mast, and the bark is carried out to sea with irresistible rapidity, never to be seen by mortal eyes again. The belief is that these boats are freighted with condemned souls, and that the fishermen are doomed to pilot them over the waste of waters until the day of judgment. The legend, like many others, is of Celtic origin." (footnote: Alexander Bell.)

One can readily see how the imaginative minds of those Celtic fishermen could people their desolate coasts with spectres and phantoms, and indeed we did not need to draw much on our own imagination to see strange figures gliding along the shore in the gloom on a night like this.

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