Folk-Lore and Legends Scotland

The Project Guten­berg eBook, Folk-​Lore and Leg­ends, by Anony­mous

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Ti­tle: Folk-​Lore and Leg­ends Scot­land

Au­thor: Anony­mous

Re­lease Date: Novem­ber 15, 2005 [eBook #17071]

Lan­guage: En­glish

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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTEN­BERG EBOOK FOLK-​LORE AND LEG­ENDS***

Tran­scribed from the 1889 W. W. Gib­bings edi­tion by David Price, email ccx074@coven­try.ac.uk

FOLK-​LORE AND LEG­ENDS SCOT­LAND

W. W. GIB­BINGS 18 BURY ST., LON­DON, W.C. 1889

Con­tents:

Prefa­to­ry Note Canobie Dick and Thomas of Er­cil­doun. Coin­nach Oer. El­phin Irv­ing. The Ghosts of Craig-​Aulna­ic. The Doomed Rid­er. Whip­pety Stourie. The Weird of the Three Ar­rows. The Laird of Bal­machie's Wife. Michael Scott. The Min­is­ter and the Fairy. The Fish­er­man and the Mer­man. The Laird O' Co'. Ewen of the Lit­tle Head. Jock and his Moth­er. Saint Colum­ba. The Mer­maid Wife. The Fid­dler and the Bogle of Bo­gan­do­ran. Thomas the Rhymer. Fairy Friends. The Seal-​Catch­er's Ad­ven­ture. The Fairies of Mer­lin's Craig. Ro­ry Macgillivray. The Haunt­ed Ships. The Brown­ie. Mauns' Stane. “Horse and Hat­tock.” Se­cret Com­mon­wealth. The Fairy Boy of Lei­th. The Dra­cae. Lord Tar­bat's Re­la­tions. The Bogle. Daoine Shie, or the Men of Peace. The Death “Bree.”

PREFA­TO­RY NOTE

The dis­tinc­tive fea­tures of Scotch Folk-​lore are such as might have been ex­pect­ed from a con­sid­er­ation of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of Scotch scenery. The rugged grandeur of the moun­tain, the solemn in­flu­ence of the widespread­ing moor, the dark face of the deep moun­tain loch, the bab­bling of the lit­tle stream, seem all to be re­flect­ed in the pop­ular tales and su­per­sti­tions. The ac­quain­tance with na­ture in a se­vere, grand, and some­what ter­ri­ble form must nec­es­sar­ily have its ef­fect on the hu­man mind, and the Scotch mind and char­ac­ter bear the im­press of their nat­ural sur­round­ings. The fairies, the brown­ies, the bogles of Scot­land are the same be­ings as those with whom the Irish have peo­pled the hills, the nooks, and the streams of their land, yet how dif­fer­ent, how dis­tin­guished from their coun­ter­parts, how clothed, as it were, in the na­tion­al dress!

CANOBIE DICK AND THOMAS OF ER­CIL­DOUN.

Now it chanced many years since that there lived on the Bor­ders a jol­ly rat­tling horse-​cow­per, who was re­mark­able for a reck­less and fear­less tem­per, which made him much ad­mired and a lit­tle dread­ed amongst his neigh­bours. One moon­light night, as he rode over Bow­den Moor, on the west side of the Eil­don Hills, the scene of Thomas the Rhymer's prophe­cies, and of­ten men­tioned in his his­to­ry, hav­ing a brace of hors­es along with him, which he had not been able to dis­pose of, he met a man of ven­er­able ap­pear­ance and sin­gu­lar­ly an­tique dress, who, to his great sur­prise, asked the price of his hors­es, and be­gan to chaf­fer with him on the sub­ject. To Canobie Dick, for so shall we call our Bor­der deal­er, a chap was a chap, and he would have sold a horse to the dev­il him­self, with­out mind­ing his cloven hoof, and would have prob­ably cheat­ed Old Nick in­to the bar­gain. The stranger paid the price they agreed on, and all that puz­zled Dick in the trans­ac­tion was, that the gold which he re­ceived was in uni­corns, bon­net-​pieces, and oth­er an­cient coins, which would have been in­valu­able to col­lec­tors, but were rather trou­ble­some in mod­ern cur­ren­cy. It was gold, how­ev­er, and there­fore Dick con­trived to get bet­ter val­ue for the coin than he per­haps gave to his cus­tomer. By the com­mand of so good a mer­chant, he brought hors­es to the same spot more than once; the pur­chas­er on­ly stip­ulat­ing that he should al­ways come by night and alone. I do not know whether it was from mere cu­rios­ity, or whether some hope of gain mixed with it, but af­ter Dick had sold sev­er­al hors­es in this way, he be­gan to com­plain that dry bar­gains were un­lucky, and to hint, that since his chap must live in the neigh­bour­hood, he ought, in the cour­tesy of deal­ing, to treat him to half a mutchkin.

“You may see my dwelling if you will,” said the stranger; “but if you lose courage at what you see there, you will rue it all your life.”

Dick­on, how­ev­er, laughed the warn­ing to scorn, and hav­ing alight­ed to se­cure his horse, he fol­lowed the stranger up a nar­row foot­path, which led them up the hills to the sin­gu­lar em­inence stuck be­twixt the most south­ern and the cen­tre peaks, and called, from its re­sem­blance to such an an­imal in its form, the Luck­en Hare. At the foot of this em­inence, which is al­most as fa­mous for witch-​meet­ings as the neigh­bour­ing wind­mill of Kip­pi­law, Dick was some­what star­tled to ob­serve that his con­duc­tor en­tered the hill­side by a pas­sage or cav­ern, of which he him­self, though well ac­quaint­ed with the spot, had nev­er seen nor heard.

“You may still re­turn,” said his guide, look­ing omi­nous­ly back up­on him; but Dick scorned to show the white feath­er, and on they went. They en­tered a very long range of sta­bles; in ev­ery stall stood a coal-​black horse; by ev­ery horse lay a knight in coal-​black ar­mour, with a drawn sword in his hand; but all were as silent, hoof and limb, as if they had been cut out of mar­ble. A great num­ber of torch­es lent a gloomy lus­tre to the hall, which, like those of the Caliph Vathek, was of large di­men­sions. At the up­per end, how­ev­er, they at length ar­rived, where a sword and horn lay on an an­tique ta­ble.

“He that shall sound that horn and draw that sword,” said the stranger, who now in­ti­mat­ed that he was the fa­mous Thomas of Er­cil­doun, “shall, if his heart fail him not, be king over all broad Britain. So speaks the tongue that can­not lie. But all de­pends on courage, and much on your tak­ing the sword or horn first.”

Dick was much dis­posed to take the sword, but his bold spir­it was quailed by the su­per­nat­ural ter­rors of the hall, and he thought to un­sheathe the sword first might be con­strued in­to de­fi­ance, and give of­fence to the pow­ers of the moun­tain. He took the bu­gle with a trem­bling hand, and blew a fee­ble note, but loud enough to pro­duce a ter­ri­ble an­swer. Thun­der rolled in stun­ning peals through the im­mense hall; hors­es and men start­ed to life; the steeds snort­ed, stamped, ground their bits, and tossed their heads; the war­riors sprang to their feet, clashed their ar­mour, and bran­dished their swords. Dick's ter­ror was ex­treme at see­ing the whole army, which had been so late­ly silent as the grave, in up­roar, and about to rush on him. He dropped the horn, and made a fee­ble at­tempt to seize the en­chant­ed sword; but at the same mo­ment a voice pro­nounced aloud the mys­te­ri­ous words--

“Woe to the cow­ard, that ev­er he was born, Who did not draw the sword be­fore he blew the horn!”

At the same time a whirl­wind of ir­re­sistible fury howled through the long hall, bore the un­for­tu­nate horse-​jock­ey clear out of the mouth of the cav­ern, and pre­cip­itat­ed him over a steep bank of loose stones, where the shep­herds found him the next morn­ing, with just breath suf­fi­cient to tell his fear­ful tale, af­ter con­clud­ing which he ex­pired.

COIN­NACH OER.

Coin­nach Oer, which means Dun Ken­neth, was a cel­ebrat­ed man in his gen­er­ation. He has been called the Isa­iah of the North. The prophe­cies of this man are very fre­quent­ly al­lud­ed to and quot­ed in var­ious parts of the High­lands; al­though lit­tle is known of the man him­self, ex­cept in Ross-​shire. He was a small farmer in Strath­pef­fer, near Ding­wall, and for many years of his life nei­ther ex­hib­it­ed any tal­ents, nor claimed any in­tel­li­gence above his fel­lows. The man­ner in which he ob­tained the prophet­ic gift was told by him­self in the fol­low­ing man­ner:--

As he was one day at work in the hill cast­ing (dig­ging) peats, he heard a voice which seemed to call to him out of the air. It com­mand­ed him to dig un­der a lit­tle green knoll which was near, and to gath­er up the small white stones which he would dis­cov­er be­neath the turf. The voice in­formed him, at the same time, that while he kept these stones in his pos­ses­sion, he should be en­dued with the pow­er of su­per­nat­ural fore­knowl­edge.

Ken­neth, though great­ly alarmed at this aeri­al con­ver­sa­tion, fol­lowed the di­rec­tions of his in­vis­ible in­struc­tor, and turn­ing up the turf on the hillock, in a lit­tle time dis­cov­ered the tal­is­mans. From that day for­ward, the mind of Ken­neth was il­lu­mi­nat­ed by gleams of un­earth­ly light; and he made many pre­dic­tions, of which the creduli­ty of the peo­ple, and the co­in­ci­dence of ac­ci­dent, of­ten sup­plied con­fir­ma­tion; and he cer­tain­ly be­came the most no­table of the High­land prophets. The most re­mark­able and well known of his vati­ci­na­tions is the fol­low­ing:--“When­ev­er a M'Lean with long hands, a Fras­er with a black spot on his face, a M'Gre­gor with a black knee, and a club-​foot­ed M'Leod of Ra­ga, shall have ex­ist­ed; when­ev­er there shall have been suc­ces­sive­ly three M'Don­alds of the name of John, and three M'Kin­nons of the same Chris­tian name,--op­pres­sors will ap­pear in the coun­try, and the peo­ple will change their own land for a strange one.” All these per­son­ages have ap­peared since; and it is the com­mon opin­ion of the peas­antry, that the con­sum­ma­tion of the prophe­cy was ful­filled, when the ex­ac­tion of the ex­or­bi­tant rents re­duced the High­landers to pover­ty, and the in­tro­duc­tion of the sheep ban­ished the peo­ple to Amer­ica.

What­ev­er might have been the gift of Ken­neth Oer, he does not ap­pear to have used it with an ex­traor­di­nary de­gree of dis­cre­tion; and the last time he ex­er­cised it, he was very near pay­ing dear for his div­ina­tion.

On this oc­ca­sion he hap­pened to be at some high fes­ti­val of the M'Ken­zies at Cas­tle Braan. One of the guests was so ex­hil­arat­ed by the scene of gai­ety, that he could not for­bear an eu­logium on the gal­lantry of the feast, and the no­ble­ness of the guests. Ken­neth, it ap­pears, had no re­gard for the M'Ken­zies, and was so pro­voked by this sal­ly in their praise, that he not on­ly broke out in­to a se­vere satire against their whole race, but gave vent to the prophet­ic de­nun­ci­ation of wrath and con­fu­sion up­on their pos­ter­ity. The guests be­ing in­formed (or hav­ing over­heard a part) of this rhap­sody, in­stant­ly rose up with one ac­cord to pun­ish the con­tu­me­ly of the prophet. Ken­neth, though he fore­told the fate of oth­ers, did not in any man­ner look in­to that of him­self; for this rea­son, be­ing doubt­ful of de­bat­ing the pro­pri­ety of his pre­dic­tion up­on such un­equal terms, he fled with the great­est pre­cip­ita­tion. The M'Ken­zies fol­lowed with in­fi­nite zeal; and more than one ball had whis­tled over the head of the seer be­fore he reached Loch Ousie. The con­se­quences of this pre­dic­tion so dis­gust­ed Ken­neth with any fur­ther ex­er­cise of his prophet­ic call­ing, that, in the an­guish of his flight, he solemn­ly re­nounced all com­mu­ni­ca­tion with its pow­er; and, as he ran along the mar­gin of Loch Ousie, he took out the won­der­ful peb­bles, and cast them in a fury in­to the wa­ter. Whether his evil ge­nius had now for­sak­en him, or his con­di­tion was bet­ter than that of his pur­suers, is un­known, but cer­tain it is, Ken­neth, af­ter the sac­ri­fice of the peb­bles, out­stripped his en­raged en­emies, and nev­er, so far as I have heard, made any at­tempt at prophe­cy from the hour of his es­cape.

Ken­neth Oer had a son, who was called Ian Dubh Mac Coin­nach (Black John, the son of Ken­neth), and lived in the vil­lage of Mil­toun, near Ding­wall. His chief oc­cu­pa­tion was brew­ing whisky; and he was killed in a fray at Mil­toun, ear­ly in the present cen­tu­ry. His ex­it would not have formed the catas­tro­phe of an epic po­em, and ap­pears to have been one of those events of which his fa­ther had no in­tel­li­gence, for it hap­pened in the fol­low­ing man­ner:--

Hav­ing fall­en in­to a dis­pute with a man with whom he had pre­vi­ous­ly been on friend­ly terms, they pro­ceed­ed to blows; in the scuf­fle, the boy, the son of Ian's ad­ver­sary, ob­serv­ing the two com­bat­ants locked in a close and firm gripe of ea­ger con­tention, and be­ing doubt­ful of the event, ran in­to the house and brought out the iron pot-​crook, with which he salut­ed the head of the un­for­tu­nate Ian so severe­ly, that he not on­ly re­lin­quished his com­bat, but de­part­ed this life on the en­su­ing morn­ing.

EL­PHIN IRV­ING.

THE FAIRIES' CUP­BEAR­ER.

"The la­dy kilt­ed her kir­tle green A lit­tle aboon her knee, The la­dy snood­ed her yel­low hair A lit­tle aboon her bree, And she's gane to the good green­wood As fast as she could hie.

And first she let the black steed pass, And syne she let the brown, And then she flew to the milk-​white steed, And pulled the rid­er down: Syne out then sang the queen o' the fairies, Frae midst a bank of broom, She that has won him, young Tam­lane, Has got­ten a gal­lant groom."

_Old Bal­lad_.

"The ro­man­tic vale of Cor­riewa­ter, in An­nan­dale, is re­gard­ed by the in­hab­itants, a pas­toral and un­min­gled peo­ple, as the last bor­der refuge of those beau­ti­ful and capri­cious be­ings, the fairies. Many old peo­ple yet liv­ing imag­ine they have had in­ter­course of good words and good deeds with the 'good folk'; and con­tin­ue to tell that in the an­cient days the fairies danced on the hill, and rev­elled in the glen, and showed them­selves, like the mys­te­ri­ous chil­dren of the de­ity of old, among the sons and daugh­ters of men. Their vis­its to the earth were pe­ri­ods of joy and mirth to mankind, rather than of sor­row and ap­pre­hen­sion. They played on mu­si­cal in­stru­ments of won­der­ful sweet­ness and va­ri­ety of note, spread un­ex­pect­ed feasts, the su­per­nat­ural flavour of which over­pow­ered on many oc­ca­sions the re­li­gious scru­ples of the Pres­by­te­ri­an shep­herds, per­formed won­der­ful deeds of horse­man­ship, and marched in mid­night pro­ces­sions, when the sound of their elfin min­strel­sy charmed youths and maid­ens in­to love for their per­sons and pur­suits; and more than one fam­ily of Cor­riewa­ter have the fame of aug­ment­ing the num­bers of the elfin chival­ry. Faces of friends and rel­atives, long since doomed to the bat­tle-​trench or the deep sea, have been recog­nised by those who dared to gaze on the fairy march. The maid has seen her lost lover, and the moth­er her stolen child; and the courage to plan and achieve their de­liv­er­ance has been pos­sessed by, at least, one bor­der maid­en. In the leg­ends of the peo­ple of Cor­rievale, there is a sin­gu­lar mix­ture of elfin and hu­man ad­ven­ture, and the tra­di­tion­al sto­ry of the Cup­bear­er to the Queen of the Fairies ap­peals alike to our do­mes­tic feel­ings and imag­ina­tion.

“In one of the lit­tle green loops or bends on the banks of Cor­riewa­ter, moul­dered walls, and a few stunt­ed wild plum-​trees and va­grant ros­es, still point out the site of a cot­tage and gar­den. A well of pure spring- wa­ter leaps out from an old tree-​root be­fore the door; and here the shep­herds, shad­ing them­selves in sum­mer from the in­flu­ence of the sun, tell to their chil­dren the wild tale of El­phin Irv­ing and his sis­ter Phemie; and, sin­gu­lar as the sto­ry seems, it has gained full cre­dence among the peo­ple where the scene is laid.”

“I ken the tale and the place weel,” in­ter­rupt­ed an old Scot­tish wom­an, who, from the pre­dom­inance of scar­let in her ap­par­el, seemed to have been a fol­low­er of the camp,--“I ken them weel, and the tale's as true as a bul­let to its aim and a spark to pow­der. O bon­nie Cor­riewa­ter, a thou­sand times have I pulled gowans on its banks wi' ane that lies stiff and stark on a for­eign shore in a bloody grave;” and, sob­bing au­di­bly, she drew the re­mains of a mil­itary cloak over her face, and al­lowed the sto­ry to pro­ceed.

"When El­phin Irv­ing and his sis­ter Phemie were in their six­teenth year, for tra­di­tion says they were twins, their fa­ther was drowned in Cor­riewa­ter, at­tempt­ing to save his sheep from a sud­den swell, to which all moun­tain streams are li­able; and their moth­er, on the day of her hus­band's buri­al, laid down her head on the pil­low, from which, on the sev­enth day, it was lift­ed to be dressed for the same grave. The in­her­itance left to the or­phans may be briefly de­scribed: sev­en­teen acres of plough and pas­ture land, sev­en milk cows, and sev­en pet sheep (many old peo­ple take de­light in odd num­bers); and to this may be added sev­en bon­net-​pieces of Scot­tish gold, and a broadsword and spear, which their an­ces­tor had wield­ed with such strength and courage in the bat­tle of Dryfe Sands, that the min­strel who sang of that deed of arms ranked him on­ly sec­ond to the Scotts and John­stones.

“The youth and his sis­ter grew in stature and in beau­ty. The brent bright brow, the clear blue eye, and frank and blithe de­port­ment of the for­mer gave him some in­flu­ence among the young wom­en of the val­ley; while the lat­ter was no less the ad­mi­ra­tion of the young men, and at fair and dance, and at bridal, hap­py was he who touched but her hand, or re­ceived the bene­dic­tion of her eye. Like all oth­er Scot­tish beau­ties, she was the theme of many a song; and while tra­di­tion is yet busy with the sin­gu­lar his­to­ry of her broth­er, song has tak­en all the care that rus­tic min­strel­sy can of the gen­tle­ness of her spir­it and the charms of her per­son.”

“Now I vow,” ex­claimed a wan­der­ing piper, “by mine own hon­oured in­stru­ment, and by all oth­er in­stru­ments that ev­er yield­ed mu­sic for the joy and de­light of mankind, that there are more bon­nie songs made about fair Phemie Irv­ing than about all oth­er dames of An­nan­dale, and many of them are both high and bon­nie. A proud lass maun she be if her spir­it hears; and men say the dust lies not in­sen­si­ble of beau­ti­ful verse; for her charms are breathed through a thou­sand sweet lips, and no fur­ther gone than yester­morn I heard a lass singing on a green hill­side what I shall not read­ily for­get. If ye like to lis­ten, ye shall judge; and it will not stay the sto­ry long, nor mar it much, for it is short, and about Phemie Irv­ing.” And, ac­cord­ing­ly, he chant­ed the fol­low­ing rude vers­es, not un­ac­com­pa­nied by his hon­oured in­stru­ment, as he called his pipe, which chimed in with great ef­fect, and gave rich­ness to a voice which felt bet­ter than it could ex­press:--

FAIR PHEMIE IRV­ING.

Gay is thy glen, Cor­rie, With all thy groves flow­er­ing; Green is thy glen, Cor­rie, When Ju­ly is show­er­ing; And sweet is yon wood where The small birds are bow­er­ing, And there dwells the sweet one Whom I am ador­ing.

Her round neck is whiter Than win­ter when snow­ing; Her meek voice is milder Than Ae in its flow­ing; The glad ground yields mu­sic Where she goes by the riv­er; One kind glance would charm me For ev­er and ev­er.

The proud and the wealthy To Phemie are bow­ing; No looks of love win they With sigh­ing or su­ing; Far away maun I stand With my rude woo­ing, She's a flow'ret too love­ly Too bloom for my pu'ing.

Oh were I yon vi­olet On which she is walk­ing; Oh were I yon small bird To which she is talk­ing; Or yon rose in her hand, With its ripe rud­dy blos­som; Or some pure gen­tle thought To be blest with her bo­som.

This min­strel in­ter­rup­tion, while it es­tab­lished Phemie Irv­ing's claim to grace and to beau­ty, gave me ad­di­tion­al con­fi­dence to pur­sue the sto­ry.

"But min­strel skill and true love-​tale seemed to want their usu­al in­flu­ence when they sought to win her at­ten­tion; she was on­ly ob­served to pay most re­spect to those youths who were most beloved by her broth­er; and the same hour that brought these twins to the world seemed to have breathed through them a sweet­ness and an af­fec­tion of heart and mind which noth­ing could di­vide. If, like the vir­gin queen of the im­mor­tal po­et, she walked 'in maid­en med­ita­tion fan­cy free,' her broth­er El­phin seemed alike un­touched with the charms of the fairest vir­gins in Cor­rie. He ploughed his field, he reaped his grain, he leaped, he ran, and wres­tled, and danced, and sang, with more skill and life and grace than all oth­er youths of the dis­trict; but he had no twi­light and stolen in­ter­views; when all oth­er young men had their loves by their side, he was sin­gle, though not un­sought, and his joy seemed nev­er per­fect save when his sis­ter was near him. If he loved to share his time with her, she loved to share her time with him alone, or with the beasts of the field, or the birds of the air. She watched her lit­tle flock late, and she tend­ed it ear­ly; not for the sor­did love of the fleece, un­less it was to make man­tles for her broth­er, but with the look of one who had joy in its com­pa­ny. The very wild crea­tures, the deer and the hares, sel­dom sought to shun her ap­proach, and the bird for­sook not its nest, nor stint­ed its song, when she drew nigh; such is the con­fi­dence which maid­en in­no­cence and beau­ty in­spire.

"It hap­pened one sum­mer, about three years af­ter they be­came or­phans, that rain had been for a while with­held from the earth, the hill­sides be­gan to parch, the grass in the vales to with­er, and the stream of Cor­rie was di­min­ished be­tween its banks to the size of an or­di­nary rill. The shep­herds drove their flocks to moor­lands, and marsh and tarn had their reeds in­vad­ed by the scythe to sup­ply the cat­tle with food. The sheep of his sis­ter were El­phin's con­stant care; he drove them to the moistest pas­tures dur­ing the day, and he of­ten watched them at mid­night, when flocks, tempt­ed by the sweet dewy grass, are known to browse ea­ger­ly, that he might guard them from the fox, and lead them to the choic­est herbage. In these noc­tur­nal watch­ings he some­times drove his lit­tle flock over the wa­ter of Cor­rie, for the fords were hard­ly an­kle- deep; or per­mit­ted his sheep to cool them­selves in the stream, and taste the grass which grew along the brink. All this time not a drop of rain fell, nor did a cloud ap­pear in the sky.

“One evening, dur­ing her broth­er's ab­sence with the flock, Phemie sat at her cot­tage-​door, lis­ten­ing to the bleat­ings of the dis­tant folds and the less­ened mur­mur of the wa­ter of Cor­rie, now scarce­ly au­di­ble be­yond its banks. Her eyes, weary with watch­ing along the ac­cus­tomed line of road for the re­turn of El­phin, were turned on the pool be­side her, in which the stars were glim­mer­ing fit­ful and faint. As she looked she imag­ined the wa­ter grew brighter and brighter; a wild il­lu­mi­na­tion present­ly shone up­on the pool, and leaped from bank to bank, and sud­den­ly chang­ing in­to a hu­man form, as­cend­ed the mar­gin, and, pass­ing her, glid­ed swift­ly in­to the cot­tage. The vi­sion­ary form was so like her broth­er in shape and air, that, start­ing up, she flew in­to the house, with the hope of find­ing him in his cus­tom­ary seat. She found him not, and, im­pressed with the ter­ror which a wraith or ap­pari­tion sel­dom fails to in­spire, she ut­tered a shriek so loud and so pierc­ing as to be heard at John­stone Bank, on the oth­er side of the vale of Cor­rie.”

An old wom­an now rose sud­den­ly from her seat in the win­dow-​sill, the liv­ing dread of shep­herds, for she trav­elled the coun­try with a bril­liant rep­uta­tion for witchcraft, and thus she broke in up­on the nar­ra­tive: “I vow, young man, ye tell us the truth up­set and down-​thrust. I heard my douce grand­moth­er say that on the night when El­phin Irv­ing dis­ap­peared--dis­ap­peared I shall call it, for the bairn can but be gone for a sea­son, to re­turn to us in his own ap­point­ed time--she was seat­ed at the fire­side at John­stone Bank; the laird had laid aside his bon­net to take the Book, when a shriek mair loud, be­lieve me, than a mere wom­an's shriek--and they can shriek loud enough, else they're sair wranged--came over the wa­ter of Cor­rie, so sharp and shrilling, that the pewter plates din­neled on the wall; such a shriek, my douce grand­moth­er said, as rang in her ear till the hour of her death, and she lived till she was aughty- and-​aught, forty full ripe years af­ter the event. But there is an­oth­er mat­ter, which, doubt­less, I can­not com­pel ye to be­lieve: it was the com­mon ru­mour that El­phin Irv­ing came not in­to the world like the oth­er sin­ful crea­tures of the earth, but was one of the kane-​bairns of the fairies, whilk they had to pay to the en­emy of man's sal­va­tion ev­ery sev­enth year. The poor la­dy-​fairy--a moth­er's aye a moth­er, be she elves' flesh or Eve's flesh--hid her elf son be­side the chris­tened flesh in Mar­ion Irv­ing's cra­dle, and the auld en­emy lost his prey for a time. Now, has­ten on with your sto­ry, which is not a bo­dle the waur for me. The maid­en saw the shape of her broth­er, fell in­to a faint, or a trance, and the neigh­bours came flock­ing in--gang on with your tale, young man, and din­na be af­front­ed be­cause an auld wom­an helped ye wi 't.”

“It is hard­ly known,” I re­sumed, "how long Phemie Irv­ing con­tin­ued in a state of in­sen­si­bil­ity. The morn­ing was far ad­vanced, when a neigh­bour­ing maid­en found her seat­ed in an old chair, as white as mon­umen­tal mar­ble; her hair, about which she had al­ways been so­lic­itous, loos­ened from its curls, and hang­ing dis­or­dered over her neck and bo­som, her hands and fore­head. The maid­en touched the one, and kissed the oth­er; they were as cold as snow; and her eyes, wide open, were fixed on her broth­er's emp­ty chair, with the in­ten­si­ty of gaze of one who had wit­nessed the ap­pear­ance of a spir­it. She seemed in­sen­si­ble of any one's pres­ence, and sat fixed and still and mo­tion­less. The maid­en, alarmed at her looks, thus ad­dressed her:--'Phemie, lass, Phemie Irv­ing! Dear me, but this be aw­ful! I have come to tell ye that sev­en of your pet sheep have es­caped drown­ing in the wa­ter; for Cor­rie, sae qui­et and sae gen­tle yestreen, is rolling and dash­ing frae bank to bank this morn­ing. Dear me, wom­an, din­na let the loss of the world's gear be­reave ye of your sens­es. I would rather make ye a present of a dozen mug-​ewes of the Tin­wald brood my­self; and now I think on 't, if ye'll send over El­phin, I will help him hame with them in the gloam­ing my­self. So, Phemie, wom­an, be com­fort­ed.'

"At the men­tion of her broth­er's name she cried out, 'Where is he? Oh, where is he?' gazed wild­ly round, and, shud­der­ing from head to foot, fell sense­less on the floor. Oth­er in­hab­itants of the val­ley, alarmed by the sud­den swell of the riv­er, which had aug­ment­ed to a tor­rent, deep and im­pass­able, now came in to in­quire if any loss had been sus­tained, for num­bers of sheep and teds of hay had been ob­served float­ing down about the dawn of the morn­ing. They as­sist­ed in re­claim­ing the un­hap­py maid­en from her swoon; but in­sen­si­bil­ity was joy com­pared to the sor­row to which she awak­ened. 'They have ta'en him away, they have ta'en him away,' she chant­ed, in a tone of deliri­ous pathos; 'him that was whiter and fair­er than the lily on Ly­ddal Lee. They have long sought, and they have long sued, and they had the pow­er to pre­vail against my prayers at last. They have ta'en him away; the flow­er is plucked from among the weeds, and the dove is slain amid a flock of ravens. They came with shout, and they came with song, and they spread the charm, and they placed the spell, and the bap­tised brow has been bowed down to the un­bap­tised hand. They have ta'en him away, they have ta'en him away; he was too love­ly, and too good, and too no­ble, to bless us with his con­tin­uance on earth; for what are the sons of men com­pared to him?--the light of the moon­beam to the morn­ing sun, the glow­worm to the east­ern star. They have ta'en him away, the in­vis­ible dwellers of the earth. I saw them come on him with shout­ing and with singing, and they charmed him where he sat, and away they bore him; and the horse he rode was nev­er shod with iron, nor owned be­fore the mas­tery of hu­man hand. They have ta'en him away over the wa­ter, and over the wood, and over the hill. I got but ae look of his bon­nie blue ee, but ae; ae look. But as I have en­dured what nev­er maid­en en­dured, so will I un­der­take what nev­er maid­en un­der­took, I will win him from them all. I know the in­vis­ible ones of the earth; I have heard their wild and won­drous mu­sic in the wild woods, and there shall a chris­tened maid­en seek him, and achieve his de­liv­er­ance.' She paused, and glanc­ing around a cir­cle of con­dol­ing faces, down which the tears were drop­ping like rain, said, in a calm and al­tered but still deliri­ous tone: 'Why do you weep, Mary Hal­li­day? and why do you weep, John Graeme? Ye think that El­phin Irv­ing--oh, it's a bon­nie, bon­nie name, and dear to many a maid­en's heart, as well as mine--ye think he is drowned in Cor­rie; and ye will seek in the deep, deep pools for the bon­nie, bon­nie corse, that ye may weep over it, as it lies in its last linen, and lay it, amid weep­ing and wail­ing in the dowie kirk­yard. Ye may seek, but ye shall nev­er find; so leave me to trim up my hair, and pre­pare my dwelling, and make my­self ready to watch for the hour of his re­turn to up­per earth.' And she re­sumed her house­hold labours with an alacrity which less­ened not the sor­row of her friends.

"Mean­while the ru­mour flew over the vale that El­phin Irv­ing was drowned in Cor­riewa­ter. Ma­tron and maid, old man and young, col­lect­ed sud­den­ly along the banks of the riv­er, which now be­gan to sub­side to its nat­ural sum­mer lim­its, and com­menced their search; in­ter­rupt­ed ev­ery now and then by call­ing from side to side, and from pool to pool, and by ex­cla­ma­tions of sor­row for this mis­for­tune. The search was fruit­less: five sheep, per­tain­ing to the flock which he con­duct­ed to pas­ture, were found drowned in one of the deep ed­dies; but the riv­er was still too brown, from the soil of its moor­land sources, to en­able them to see what its deep shelves, its pools, and its over­hang­ing and hazel­ly banks con­cealed. They re­mit­ted fur­ther search till the stream should be­come pure; and old man tak­ing old man aside, be­gan to whis­per about the mys­tery of the youth's dis­ap­pear­ance; old wom­en laid their lips to the ears of their co­evals, and talked of El­phin Irv­ing's fairy parent­age, and his hav­ing been dropped by an un­earth­ly hand in­to a Chris­tian cra­dle. The young men and maids con­versed on oth­er themes; they grieved for the loss of the friend and the lover, and while the for­mer thought that a heart so kind and true was not left in the vale, the lat­ter thought, as maid­ens will, on his hand­some per­son, gen­tle man­ners, and mer­ry blue eye, and spec­ulat­ed with a sigh on the time when they might have hoped a re­turn for their love. They were soon joined by oth­ers who had heard the wild and deliri­ous lan­guage of his sis­ter: the old be­lief was added to the new as­sur­ance, and both again com­ment­ed up­on by minds full of su­per­sti­tious feel­ing, and hearts full of su­per­nat­ural fears, till the youths and maid­ens of Cor­rievale held no more love trysts for sev­en days and nights, lest, like El­phin Irv­ing, they should be car­ried away to aug­ment the ranks of the unchris­tened chival­ry.

"It was cu­ri­ous to lis­ten to the spec­ula­tions of the peas­antry. 'For my part,' said a youth, 'if I were sure that poor El­phin es­caped from that per­ilous wa­ter, I would not give the fairies a pound of hiplock wool for their chance of him. There has not been a fairy seen in the land since Don­ald Cargil, the Camero­ni­an, con­jured them in­to the Sol­way for play­ing on their pipes dur­ing one of his noc­tur­nal preach­ings on the hip of the Burn­swark hill.'

"'Pre­serve me, bairn,' said an old wom­an, just­ly ex­as­per­at­ed at the in­creduli­ty of her nephew, 'if ye win­na be­lieve what I both heard and saw at the moon­light end of Craigy­burn­wood on a sum­mer night, rank af­ter rank of the fairy folk, ye'll at least be­lieve a douce man and a ghost­ly pro­fes­sor, even the late min­is­ter of Tin­wald­kirk. His on­ly son--I mind the lad weel, with his long yel­low locks and his bon­nie blue eyes--when I was but a gilpie of a lassie, _he_ was stolen away from off the horse at his fa­ther's el­bow, as they crossed that false and fear­some wa­ter, even Locher­brig­gflow, on the night of the Mid­sum­mer fair of Dum­fries. Ay, ay, who can doubt the truth of that? Have not the god­ly in­hab­itants of Alms­field­town and Tin­wald­kirk seen the sweet youth rid­ing at mid­night, in the midst of the un­hal­lowed troop, to the sound of flute and of dul­cimer, and though meik­le they prayed, nae­body tried to achieve his de­liv­er­ance?'

"'I have heard it said by douce folk and spon­si­ble,' in­ter­rupt­ed an­oth­er, 'that ev­ery sev­en years the elves and fairies pay kane, or make an of­fer­ing of one of their chil­dren, to the grand en­emy of sal­va­tion, and that they are per­mit­ted to pur­loin one of the chil­dren of men to present to the fiend--a more ac­cept­able of­fer­ing, I'll war­rant, than one of their own in­fer­nal brood that are Sa­tan's sib al­lies, and drink a drop of the deil's blood ev­ery May morn­ing. And touch­ing this lost lad, ye all ken his moth­er was a hawk of an un­can­ny nest, a sec­ond cousin of Kate Kim­mer, of Barfloshan, as rank a witch as ev­er rode on rag­wort. Ay, sirs, what's bred in the bone is ill to come out of the flesh.'

"On these and sim­ilar top­ics, which a peas­antry full of an­cient tra­di­tion and en­thu­si­asm and su­per­sti­tion read­ily as­so­ciate with the com­mon­est oc­cur­rences of life, the peo­ple of Cor­rievale con­tin­ued to con­verse till the fall of evening, when each, seek­ing their home, re­newed again the won­drous sub­ject, and il­lus­trat­ed it with all that pop­ular be­lief and po­et­ic imag­ina­tion could so abun­dant­ly sup­ply.

"The night which fol­lowed this melan­choly day was wild with wind and rain; the riv­er came down broad­er and deep­er than be­fore, and the light­ning, flash­ing by fits over the green woods of Cor­rie, showed the un­govern­able and per­ilous flood sweep­ing above its banks. It hap­pened that a farmer, re­turn­ing from one of the bor­der fairs, en­coun­tered the full swing of the storm; but mount­ed on an ex­cel­lent horse, and man­tled from chin to heel in a good grey plaid, be­neath which he had the fur­ther se­cu­ri­ty of a thick great­coat, he sat dry in his sad­dle, and pro­ceed­ed in the an­tic­ipat­ed joy of a sub­sid­ed tem­pest and a glow­ing morn­ing sun. As he en­tered the long grove, or rather re­mains of the old Gal­we­gian for­est, which lines for some space the banks of the Cor­riewa­ter, the storm be­gan to abate, the wind sighed milder and milder among the trees, and here and there a star, twin­kling mo­men­tar­ily through the sud­den rack of the clouds, showed the riv­er rag­ing from bank to brae. As he shook the mois­ture from his clothes, he was not with­out a wish that the day would dawn, and that he might be pre­served on a road which his imag­ina­tion be­set with greater per­ils than the rag­ing riv­er; for his su­per­sti­tious feel­ing let loose up­on his path elf and gob­lin, and the cur­rent tra­di­tions of the dis­trict sup­plied very large­ly to his ap­pre­hen­sion the ready ma­te­ri­als of fear.

"Just as he emerged from the wood, where a fine slop­ing bank, cov­ered with short greensward, skirts the lim­it of the for­est, his horse made a full pause, snort­ed, trem­bled, and start­ed from side to side, stooped his head, erect­ed his ears, and seemed to scru­ti­nise ev­ery tree and bush. The rid­er, too, it may be imag­ined, gazed round and round, and peered war­ily in­to ev­ery sus­pi­cious-​look­ing place. His dread of a su­per­nat­ural vis­ita­tion was not much al­layed when he ob­served a fe­male shape seat­ed on the ground at the root of a huge old oak-​tree, which stood in the cen­tre of one of those patch­es of ver­dant sward, known by the name of 'fairy rings,' and avoid­ed by all peas­ants who wish to pros­per. A long thin gleam of east­ern day­light en­abled him to ex­am­ine ac­cu­rate­ly the be­ing who, in this wild place and un­usu­al hour, gave ad­di­tion­al ter­ror to this haunt­ed spot. She was dressed in white from the neck to the knees; her arms, long and round and white, were per­fect­ly bare; her head, un­cov­ered, al­lowed her long hair to de­scend in ringlet suc­ceed­ing ringlet, till the half of her per­son was near­ly con­cealed in the fleece. Amidst the whole, her hands were con­stant­ly busy in shed­ding aside the tress­es which in­ter­posed be­tween her steady and un­in­ter­rupt­ed gaze down a line of old road which wound among the hills to an an­cient buri­al-​ground.

"As the trav­eller con­tin­ued to gaze, the fig­ure sud­den­ly rose, and, wring­ing the rain from her long locks, paced round and round the tree, chant­ing in a wild and melan­choly man­ner an equal­ly wild and deliri­ous song.

THE FAIRY OAK OF COR­RIEWA­TER.

The small bird's head is un­der its wing, The deer sleeps on the grass; The moon comes out, and the stars shine down, The dew gleams like the glass: There is no sound in the world so wide, Save the sound of the smit­ten brass, With the mer­ry cit­tern and the pipe Of the fairies as they pass. But oh! the fire maun burn and burn, And the hour is gone, and will nev­er re­turn.

The green hill cleaves, and forth, with a bound, Comes elf and elfin steed; The moon dives down in a gold­en cloud, The stars grow dim with dread; But a light is run­ning along the earth, So of heav­en's they have no need: O'er moor and moss with a shout they pass, And the word is spur and speed-- But the fire maun burn, and I maun quake, And the hour is gone that will nev­er come back.

And when they came to Craigy­burn­wood, The Queen of the Fairies spoke: “Come, bind your steeds to the rush­es so green, And dance by the haunt­ed oak: I found the acorn on Hes­hbon Hill, In the nook of a palmer's poke, A thou­sand years since; here it grows!” And they danced till the green­wood shook: But oh! the fire, the burn­ing fire, The longer it burns, it but blazes the high­er.

“I have won me a youth,” the Elf Queen said, “The fairest that earth may see; This night I have won young Elph Irv­ing My cup­bear­er to be. His ser­vice lasts but sev­en sweet years, And his wage is a kiss of me.” And mer­ri­ly, mer­ri­ly, laughed the wild elves Round Cor­ris's green­wood tree. But oh! the fire it glows in my brain, And the hour is gone, and comes not again.

The Queen she has whis­pered a se­cret word, “Come hith­er my El­phin sweet, And bring that cup of the charmed wine, Thy lips and mine to weet.” But a brown elf shout­ed a loud, loud shout, “Come, leap on your cours­ers fleet, For here comes the smell of some bap­tised flesh, And the sound­ing of bap­tised feet.” But oh! the fire that burns, and maun burn; For the time that is gone will nev­er re­turn.

On a steed as white as the new-​milked milk, The Elf Queen leaped with a bound, And young El­phin a steed like De­cem­ber snow 'Neath him at the word he found. But a maid­en came, and her chris­tened arms She linked her broth­er around, And called on God, and the steed with a snort Sank in­to the gap­ing ground. But the fire maun burn, and I maun quake, And the time that is gone will no more come back.

And she held her broth­er, and lo! he grew A wild bull waked in ire; And she held her broth­er, and lo! he changed To a riv­er roar­ing high­er; And she held her broth­er, and he be­came A flood of the rag­ing fire; She shrieked and sank, and the wild elves laughed Till the moun­tain rang and mire. But oh! the fire yet burns in my brain, And the hour is gone, and comes not again.

“O maid­en, why waxed thy faith so faint, Thy spir­it so slack and slaw? Thy courage kept good till the flame waxed wud, Then thy might be­gun to thaw; Had ye kissed him with thy chris­tened lip, Ye had wan him frae 'mang us a'. Now bless the fire, the elfin fire, That made thee faint and fa'; Now bless the fire, the elfin fire, The longer it burns it blazes the high­er.”

"At the close of this un­usu­al strain, the fig­ure sat down on the grass, and pro­ceed­ed to bind up her long and dis­or­dered tress­es, gaz­ing along the old and un­fre­quent­ed road. 'Now God be my helper,' said the trav­eller, who hap­pened to be the laird of John­stone Bank, 'can this be a trick of the fiend, or can it be bon­nie Phemie Irv­ing who chants this do­lor­ous sang? Some­thing sad has be­fall­en that makes her seek her seat in this eerie nook amid the dark­ness and tem­pest; through might from aboon I will go on and see.' And the horse, feel­ing some­thing of the own­er's re­viv­ing spir­it in the ap­pli­ca­tion of spur-​steel, bore him at once to the foot of the tree. The poor deliri­ous maid­en ut­tered a yell of pierc­ing joy as she be­held him, and, with the swift­ness of a crea­ture winged, linked her arms round the rid­er's waist, and shrieked till the woods rang. 'Oh, I have ye now, El­phin, I have ye now,' and she strained him to her bo­som with a con­vul­sive grasp. 'What ails ye, my bon­nie lass?' said the laird of John­stone Bank, his fears of the su­per­nat­ural van­ish­ing when he be­held her sad and be­wil­dered look. She raised her eyes at the sound, and see­ing a strange face, her arms slipped their hold, and she dropped with a groan on the ground.

"The morn­ing had now fair­ly broke; the flocks shook the rain from their sides, the shep­herds has­tened to in­spect their charges, and a thin blue smoke be­gan to stream from the cot­tages of the val­ley in­to the bright­en­ing air. The laird car­ried Phemie Irv­ing in his arms, till he ob­served two shep­herds as­cend­ing from one of the loops of Cor­riewa­ter, bear­ing the life­less body of her broth­er. They had found him whirling round and round in one of the nu­mer­ous ed­dies, and his hands, clutched and filled with wool, showed that he had lost his life in at­tempt­ing to save the flock of his sis­ter. A plaid was laid over the body, which, along with the un­hap­py maid­en in a half-​life­less state, was car­ried in­to a cot­tage, and laid in that apart­ment dis­tin­guished among the peas­antry by the name of the cham­ber. While the peas­ant's wife was left to take care of Phemie, old man and ma­tron and maid had col­lect­ed around the drowned youth, and each be­gan to re­late the cir­cum­stances of his death, when the door sud­den­ly opened, and his sis­ter, ad­vanc­ing to the corpse, with a look of deliri­ous seren­ity, broke out in­to a wild laugh and said: 'Oh, it is won­der­ful, it's tru­ly won­der­ful! That bare and death-​cold body, dragged from the dark­est pool of Cor­rie, with its hands filled with fine wool, wears the per­fect simil­itude of my own El­phin! I'll tell ye--the spir­itu­al dwellers of the earth, the fairy­folk of our evening tale, have stolen the liv­ing body, and fash­ioned this cold and inan­imate clod to mis­lead your pur­suit. In com­mon eyes this seems all that El­phin Irv­ing would be, had he sunk in Cor­riewa­ter; but so it seems not to me. Ye have sought the liv­ing soul, and ye have found on­ly its gar­ment. But oh, if ye had be­held him, as I be­held him to-​night, rid­ing among the elfin troop, the fairest of them all; had you clasped him in your arms, and wres­tled for him with spir­its and ter­ri­ble shapes from the oth­er world, till your heart quailed and your flesh was sub­dued, then would ye yield no cred­it to the sem­blance which this cold and ap­par­ent flesh bears to my broth­er. But hear­ken! On Hal­low­mass Eve, when the spir­itu­al peo­ple are let loose on earth for a sea­son, I will take my stand in the buri­al-​ground of Cor­rie; and when my El­phin and his unchris­tened troop come past, with the sound of all their min­strel­sy, I will leap on him and win him, or per­ish for ev­er.'

“All gazed aghast on the deliri­ous maid­en, and many of her au­di­tors gave more cre­dence to her dis­tem­pered speech than to the vis­ible ev­idence be­fore them. As she turned to de­part, she looked round, and sud­den­ly sank up­on the body, with tears stream­ing from her eyes, and sobbed out, 'My broth­er! Oh, my broth­er!' She was car­ried out in­sen­si­ble, and again re­cov­ered; but re­lapsed in­to her or­di­nary delir­ium, in which she con­tin­ued till the Hal­low Eve af­ter her broth­er's buri­al. She was found seat­ed in the an­cient buri­al-​ground, her back against a bro­ken grave­stone, her locks white with frost-​rime, watch­ing with in­ten­si­ty of look the road to the kirk­yard; but the spir­it which gave life to the fairest form of all the maids of An­nan­dale was fled for ev­er.”

Such is the sin­gu­lar sto­ry which the peas­ants know by the name of “El­phin Irv­ing, the Fairies' Cup­bear­er”; and the ti­tle, in its fullest and most su­per­nat­ural sense, still ob­tains cre­dence among the in­dus­tri­ous and vir­tu­ous dames of the ro­man­tic vale of Cor­rie.

THE GHOSTS OF CRAIG-​AULNA­IC.

Two cel­ebrat­ed ghosts ex­ist­ed, once on a time, in the wilds of Craig-​Aulna­ic, a ro­man­tic place in the dis­trict of Strath­down, Banff­shire. The one was a male and the oth­er a fe­male. The male was called Fhu­na Mhoir Ben Baynac, af­ter one of the moun­tains of Gle­navon, where at one time he resid­ed; and the fe­male was called Clash­nichd Aulna­ic, from her hav­ing had her abode in Craig-​Aulna­ic. But al­though the great ghost of Ben Baynac was bound by the com­mon ties of na­ture and of hon­our to pro­tect and cher­ish his weak­er com­pan­ion, Clash­nichd Aulna­ic, yet he of­ten treat­ed her in the most cru­el and un­feel­ing man­ner. In the dead of night, when the sur­round­ing ham­lets were buried in deep re­pose, and when noth­ing else dis­turbed the solemn still­ness of the mid­night scene, oft would the shrill shrieks of poor Clash­nichd burst up­on the slum­ber­er's ears, and awake him to any­thing but pleas­ant re­flec­tions.

But of all those who were in­com­mod­ed by the noisy and un­seem­ly quar­rels of these two ghosts, James Owre or Gray, the ten­ant of the farm of Bal­big of Delnabo, was the great­est suf­fer­er. From the prox­im­ity of his abode to their haunts, it was the mis­for­tune of him­self and fam­ily to be the night­ly au­di­ence of Clash­nichd's cries and lamen­ta­tions, which they con­sid­ered any­thing but agree­able en­ter­tain­ment.

One day as James Gray was on his rounds look­ing af­ter his sheep, he hap­pened to fall in with Clash­nichd, the ghost of Aulna­ic, with whom he en­tered in­to a long con­ver­sa­tion. In the course of it he took oc­ca­sion to re­mon­strate with her on the very dis­agree­able dis­tur­bance she caused him­self and fam­ily by her wild and un­earth­ly cries--cries which, he said, few mor­tals could rel­ish in the drea­ry hours of mid­night. Poor Clash­nichd, by way of apol­ogy for her con­duct, gave James Gray a sad ac­count of her us­age, de­tail­ing at full length the se­ries of cru­el­ties com­mit­ted up­on her by Ben Baynac. From this ac­count, it ap­peared that her liv­ing with the lat­ter was by no means a mat­ter of choice with Clash­nichd; on the con­trary, it seemed that she had, for a long time, lived apart with much com­fort, re­sid­ing in a snug dwelling, as al­ready men­tioned, in the wilds of Craig-​Aulna­ic; but Ben Baynac hav­ing un­for­tu­nate­ly tak­en in­to his head to pay her a vis­it, took a fan­cy, not to her­self, but her dwelling, of which, in his own name and au­thor­ity, he took im­me­di­ate pos­ses­sion, and soon af­ter he ex­pelled poor Clash­nichd, with many stripes, from her nat­ural in­her­itance. Not sat­is­fied with in­vad­ing and de­priv­ing her of her just rights, he was in the habit of fol­low­ing her in­to her pri­vate haunts, not with the view of of­fer­ing her any en­dear­ments, but for the pur­pose of in­flict­ing on her per­son ev­ery tor­ment which his brain could in­vent.

Such a mov­ing re­la­tion could not fail to af­fect the gen­er­ous heart of James Gray, who de­ter­mined from that mo­ment to risk life and limb in or­der to vin­di­cate the rights and avenge the wrongs of poor Clash­nichd, the ghost of Craig-​Aulna­ic. He, there­fore, took good care to in­ter­ro­gate his new _pro­tegee_ touch­ing the na­ture of her op­pres­sor's con­sti­tu­tion, whether he was of that _kil­lable_ species of ghost that could be shot with a sil­ver six­pence, or if there was any oth­er weapon that could pos­si­bly ac­com­plish his an­ni­hi­la­tion. Clash­nichd in­formed him that she had oc­ca­sion to know that Ben Baynac was whol­ly in­vul­ner­able to all the weapons of man, with the ex­cep­tion of a large mole on his left breast, which was no doubt pen­etra­ble by sil­ver or steel; but that, from the spec­imens she had of his per­son­al prowess and strength, it were vain for mere man to at­tempt to com­bat him. Con­fid­ing, how­ev­er, in his ex­pert­ness as an archer--for he was al­lowed to be the best marks­man of the age--James Gray told Clash­nichd he did not fear him with all his might,--that _he_ was a man; and de­sired her, more­over, next time the ghost chose to re­peat his in­ci­vil­ities to her, to ap­ply to him, James Gray, for re­dress.

It was not long ere he had an op­por­tu­ni­ty of ful­fill­ing his promis­es. Ben Baynac hav­ing one night, in the want of bet­ter amuse­ment, en­ter­tained him­self by in­flict­ing an in­hu­man cas­ti­ga­tion on Clash­nichd, she lost no time in wait­ing on James Gray, with a full and par­tic­ular ac­count of it. She found him smok­ing his _cut­ty_, for it was night when she came to him; but, notwith­stand­ing the in­con­ve­nience of the hour, James need­ed no great per­sua­sion to in­duce him to pro­ceed di­rect­ly along with Clash­nichd to hold a com­muning with their friend, Ben Baynac, the great ghost. Clash­nichd was stout and stur­dy, and un­der­stood the knack of trav­el­ling much bet­ter than our wom­en do. She ex­pressed a wish that, for the sake of ex­pe­di­tion, James Gray would suf­fer her to bear him along, a mo­tion to which the lat­ter agreed; and a few min­utes brought them close to the scene of Ben Baynac's res­idence. As they ap­proached his haunt, he came forth to meet them, with looks and ges­tures which did not at all in­di­cate a cor­dial wel­come. It was a fine moon­light night, and they could eas­ily ob­serve his ac­tions. Poor Clash­nichd was now sore­ly afraid of the great ghost. Ap­pre­hend­ing in­stant de­struc­tion from his fury, she ex­claimed to James Gray that they would be both dead peo­ple, and that im­me­di­ate­ly, un­less James Gray hit with an ar­row the mole which cov­ered Ben Baynac's heart. This was not so dif­fi­cult a task as James had hith­er­to ap­pre­hend­ed it. The mole was as large as a com­mon bon­net, and yet no­wise dis­pro­por­tioned to the nat­ural size of the ghost's body, for he cer­tain­ly was a great and a mighty ghost. Ben Baynac cried out to James Gray that he would soon make ea­gle's meat of him; and cer­tain it is, such was his in­ten­tion, had not the shep­herd so ef­fec­tu­al­ly stopped him from the ex­ecu­tion of it. Rais­ing his bow to his eye when with­in a few yards of Ben Baynac, he took de­lib­er­ate aim; the ar­row flew--it hit--a yell from Ben Baynac an­nounced the re­sult. A hideous howl re-​echoed from the sur­round­ing moun­tains, re­spon­sive to the groans of a thou­sand ghosts; and Ben Baynac, like the smoke of a shot, van­ished in­to air.

Clash­nichd, the ghost of Aulna­ic, now found her­self eman­ci­pat­ed from the most ab­ject state of slav­ery, and re­stored to free­dom and lib­er­ty, through the in­vin­ci­ble courage of James Gray. Over­pow­ered with grat­itude, she fell at his feet, and vowed to de­vote the whole of her time and tal­ents to­wards his ser­vice and pros­per­ity. Mean­while, be­ing anx­ious to have her re­main­ing goods and fur­ni­ture re­moved to her for­mer dwelling, whence she had been so in­iq­ui­tous­ly ex­pelled by Ben Baynac, the great ghost, she re­quest­ed of her new mas­ter the use of his hors­es to re­move them. James ob­serv­ing on the ad­ja­cent hill a flock of deer, and wish­ing to have a tri­al of his new ser­vant's sagac­ity or ex­pert­ness, told her those were his hors­es--she was wel­come to the use of them; de­sir­ing that when she had done with them, she would in­close them in his sta­ble. Clash­nichd then pro­ceed­ed to make use of the hors­es, and James Gray re­turned home to en­joy his night's rest.

Scarce had he reached his arm-​chair, and re­clined his cheek on his hand, to ru­mi­nate over the bold ad­ven­ture of the night, when Clash­nichd en­tered, with her “breath in her throat,” and vent­ing the bit­ter­est com­plaints at the un­ruli­ness of his hors­es, which had bro­ken one-​half of her fur­ni­ture, and caused her more trou­ble in the sta­bling of them than their ser­vices were worth.

“Oh! they are sta­bled, then?” in­quired James Gray. Clash­nichd replied in the af­fir­ma­tive. “Very well,” re­joined James, “they shall be tame enough to-​mor­row.”

From this spec­imen of Clash­nichd, the ghost of Craig-​Aulna­ic's ex­pert­ness, it will be seen what a valu­able ac­qui­si­tion her ser­vice proved to James Gray and his young fam­ily. They were, how­ev­er, speed­ily de­prived of her as­sis­tance by a most un­for­tu­nate ac­ci­dent. From the se­quel of the sto­ry, from which the fore­go­ing is an ex­tract, it ap­pears that poor Clash­nichd was deeply ad­dict­ed to propen­si­ties which at that time ren­dered her kin so ob­nox­ious to their hu­man neigh­bours. She was con­stant­ly in the habit of vis­it­ing her friends much of­ten­er than she was in­vit­ed, and, in the course of such vis­its, was nev­er very scrupu­lous in mak­ing free with any eat­ables which fell with­in the cir­cle of her ob­ser­va­tion.

One day, while en­gaged on a for­ag­ing ex­pe­di­tion of this de­scrip­tion, she hap­pened to en­ter the Mill of Delnabo, which was in­hab­it­ed in those days by the miller's fam­ily. She found his wife en­gaged in roast­ing a large grid­iron of fine savoury fish, the agree­able smell pro­ceed­ing from which per­haps oc­ca­sioned her vis­it. With the usu­al in­quiries af­ter the health of the miller and his fam­ily, Clash­nichd pro­ceed­ed with the great­est fa­mil­iar­ity and good-​hu­mour to make her­self com­fort­able at their ex­pense. But the miller's wife, en­raged at the loss of her fish, and not rel­ish­ing such un­wel­come fa­mil­iar­ity, pun­ished the un­for­tu­nate Clash­nichd rather too severe­ly for her free­dom. It hap­pened that there was at the time a large cal­dron of boil­ing wa­ter sus­pend­ed over the fire, and this cal­dron the en­raged wife over­turned in Clash­nichd's bo­som!

Scald­ed be­yond re­cov­ery, she fled up the wilds of Craig-​Aulna­ic, ut­ter­ing the most melan­choly lamen­ta­tions, nor has she been ev­er heard of since.

THE DOOMED RID­ER.

"The Co­nan is as bon­ny a riv­er as we hae in a' the north coun­try. There's mo­ny a sweet sun­ny spot on its banks, an' mo­ny a time an' aft hae I wad­ed through its shal­lows, whan a boy, to set my lit­tle scaut­ling-​line for the trouts an' the eels, or to gath­er the big pearl-​mus­sels that lie sae thick in the fords. But its bon­ny wood­ed banks are places for en­joy­ing the day in--no for pass­ing the nicht. I ken­na how it is; it's nane o' your wild streams that wan­der des­olate through a desert coun­try, like the Aven, or that come rush­ing down in foam and thun­der, ow­er bro­ken rocks, like the Foy­ers, or that wal­low in dark­ness, deep, deep in the bow­els o' the earth, like the fear­fu' Auld­graunt; an' yet no ane o' these rivers has mair or fright­fuller sto­ries con­nect­ed wi' it than the Co­nan. Ane can hard­ly saunter ow­er half-​a-​mile in its course, frae where it leaves Coutin till where it en­ters the sea, with­out pass­ing ow­er the scene o' some fright­ful auld leg­end o' the kelpie or the wa­ter­wraith. And ane o' the most fright­ful look­ing o' these places is to be found among the woods of Co­nan House. Ye en­ter a swampy mead­ow that waves wi' flags an' rush­es like a corn-​field in har­vest, an' see a hillock cov­ered wi' wil­lows ris­ing like an is­land in the midst. There are thick mirk-​woods on il­ka side; the riv­er, dark an' awe­some, an' whirling round an' round in mossy ed­dies, sweeps away be­hind it; an' there is an auld bury­ing-​ground, wi' the bro­ken ru­ins o' an auld Pa­pist kirk, on the tap. Ane can see amang the rougher stanes the rose-​wrought mul­lions of an arched win­dow, an' the trough that an­ce held the holy wa­ter. About twa hun­der years ago--a wee mair maybe, or a wee less, for ane can­na be very sure o' the date o' thae old sto­ries--the build­ing was en­tire; an' a spot near it, whar the wood now grows thick­est, was laid out in a corn-​field. The marks o' the fur­rows may still be seen amang the trees.

“A par­ty o' High­landers were busi­ly en­gaged, ae day in har­vest, in cut­ting down the corn o' that field; an' just aboot noon, when the sun shone bright­est an' they were bus­iest in the work, they heard a voice frae the riv­er ex­claim:--'The hour but not the man has come.' Sure enough, on look­ing round, there was the kelpie stan'in' in what they ca' a fause ford, just for­nent the auld kirk. There is a deep black pool baith aboon an' be­low, but i' the ford there's a bon­ny rip­ple, that shows, as ane might think, but lit­tle depth o' wa­ter; an' just i' the mid­dle o' that, in a place where a horse might swim, stood the kelpie. An' it again re­peat­ed its words:--'The hour but not the man has come,' an' then flash­ing through the wa­ter like a drake, it dis­ap­peared in the low­er pool. When the folk stood won­der­ing what the crea­ture might mean, they saw a man on horse­back come spurring down the hill in hot haste, mak­ing straight for the fause ford. They could then un­der­stand her words at an­ce; an' four o' the stoutest o' them sprang oot frae amang the corn to warn him o' his dan­ger, an' keep him back. An' sae they tauld him what they had seen an' heard, an' urged him ei­ther to turn back an' tak' anither road, or stay for an hour or sae where he was. But he just wad­na hear them, for he was baith un­be­liev­ing an' in haste, an' wauld hae taen the ford for a' they could say, had­na the High­landers, de­ter­mined on sav­ing him whether he would or no, gath­ered round him an' pulled him frae his horse, an' then, to mak' sure o' him, locked him up in the auld kirk. Weel, when the hour had gone by--the fa­tal hour o' the kelpie--they flung open the door, an' cried to him that he might noo gang on his jour­ney. Ah! but there was nae an­swer, though; an' sae they cried a sec­ond time, an' there was nae an­swer still; an' then they went in, an' found him ly­ing stiff an' cauld on the floor, wi' his face buried in the wa­ter o' the very stone trough that we may still see amang the ru­ins. His hour had come, an' he had fall­en in a fit, as 'twould seem, head-​fore­most amang the wa­ter o' the trough, where he had been smoth­ered,--an' sae ye see, the prophe­cy o' the kelpie availed naething.”

WHIP­PETY STOURIE.

There was once a gen­tle­man that lived in a very grand house, and he mar­ried a young la­dy that had been del­icate­ly brought up. In her hus­band's house she found ev­ery­thing that was fine--fine ta­bles and chairs, fine look­ing-​glass­es, and fine cur­tains; but then her hus­band ex­pect­ed her to be able to spin twelve han­ks o' thread ev­ery day, be­sides at­tend­ing to her house; and, to tell the even-​down truth, the la­dy could not spin a bit. This made her hus­band glunchy with her, and, be­fore a month had passed, she found hersel' very un­hap­py.

One day the hus­band gaed away up­on a jour­ney, af­ter telling her that he ex­pect­ed her, be­fore his re­turn, to have not on­ly learned to spin, but to have spun a hun­dred han­ks o' thread. Quite down­cast, she took a walk along the hill­side, till she cam' to a big flat stane, and there she sat down and grat. By and by she heard a strain o' fine sma' mu­sic, com­ing as it were frae aneath the stane, and, on turn­ing it up, she saw a cave be­low, where there were sit­ting six wee ladies in green gowns, ilk ane o' them spin­ning on a lit­tle wheel, and singing,

“Lit­tle kens my dame at hame That Whip­pety Stourie is my name.”

The la­dy walked in­to the cave, and was kind­ly asked by the wee bod­ies to take a chair and sit down, while they still con­tin­ued their spin­ning. She ob­served that ilk ane's mouth was thrawn away to ae side, but she did­na ven­ture to speer the rea­son. They asked why she looked so un­hap­py, and she telt them that it was she was ex­pect­ed by her hus­band to be a good spin­ner, when the plain truth was that she could not spin at all, and found her­self quite un­able for it, hav­ing been so del­icate­ly brought up; nei­ther was there any need for it, as her hus­band was a rich man.

“Oh, is that a'?” said the lit­tle wi­fies, speak­ing out of their cheeks alike.

“Yes, and is it not a very good a' too?” said the la­dy, her heart like to burst wi' dis­tress.

“We could eas­ily quit ye o' that trou­ble,” said the wee wom­en. “Just ask us a' to din­ner for the day when your hus­band is to come back. We'll then let you see how we'll man­age him.”

So the la­dy asked them all to dine with her­self and her hus­band, on the day when he was to come back.

When the gude­man came hame, he found the house so oc­cu­pied with prepa­ra­tions for din­ner, that he had nae time to ask his wife about her thread; and, be­fore ev­er he had an­ce spo­ken to her on the sub­ject, the com­pa­ny was an­nounced at the hall door. The six ladies all came in a coach-​and-​six, and were as fine as princess­es, but still wore their gowns of green. The gen­tle­man was very po­lite, and showed them up the stair with a pair of wax can­dles in his hand. And so they all sat down to din­ner, and con­ver­sa­tion went on very pleas­ant­ly, till at length the hus­band, be­com­ing fa­mil­iar with them, said--

“Ladies, if it be not an un­civ­il ques­tion, I should like to know how it hap­pens that all your mouths are turned away to one side?”

“Oh,” said ilk ane at an­ce, “it's with our con­stant _spin-​spin-​spin­ning_.”

“Is that the case?” cried the gen­tle­man; “then, John, Tam, and Dick, fie, go haste and burn ev­ery rock, and reel, and spin­ning-​wheel in the house, for I'll not have my wife to spoil her bon­nie face with _spin-​spin-​spin­ning_.”

And so the la­dy lived hap­pi­ly with her gude­man all the rest of her days.

THE WEIRD OF THE THREE AR­ROWS.

Sir James Dou­glas, the com­pan­ion of Bruce, and well known by his ap­pel­la­tion of the “Black Dou­glas,” was once, dur­ing the hottest pe­ri­od of the ex­ter­mi­nat­ing war car­ried on by him and his col­league Ran­dolph, against the En­glish, sta­tioned at Linthaugh­lee, near Jed­burgh. He was rest­ing, him­self and his men af­ter the toils of many days' fight­ing-​march­es through Teviot­dale; and, ac­cord­ing to his cus­tom, had walked round the tents, pre­vi­ous to re­tir­ing to the un­qui­et rest of a sol­dier's bed. He stood for a few min­utes at the en­trance to his tent con­tem­plat­ing the scene be­fore him, ren­dered more in­ter­est­ing by a clear moon, whose sil­ver beams fell, in the si­lence of a night with­out a breath of wind, calm­ly on the slum­bers of mor­tals des­tined to mix in the melee of dread­ful war, per­haps on the mor­row. As he stood gaz­ing, ir­res­olute whether to re­tire to rest or in­dulge longer in a train of thought not very suit­able to a war­rior who de­light­ed in the spir­it-​stir­ring scenes of his pro­fes­sion, his eye was at­tract­ed by the fig­ure of an old wom­an, who ap­proached him with a trem­bling step, lean­ing on a staff, and hold­ing in her left hand three En­glish cloth-​shaft ar­rows.

“You are he who is ca'ed the guid Sir James?” said the old wom­an.

“I am, good wom­an,” replied Sir James. “Why hast thou wan­dered from the sut­ler's camp?”

“I din­na be­lang to the camp o' the hoblers,” an­swered the wom­an. “I hae been a res­iden­ter in Linthaugh­lee since the day when King Alexan­der passed the door o' my cot­tage wi' his bon­ny French bride, wha was ter­ri­fied awa' frae Jed­burgh by the death's-​head whilk ap­peared to her on the day o' her mar­riage. What I hae suf­fered sin' that day” (look­ing at the ar­rows in her hand) “lies be­tween me an' heav­en.”

“Some of your sons have been killed in the wars, I pre­sume?” said Sir James.

“Ye hae guessed a pairt o' my waes,” replied the wom­an. “That ar­row” (hold­ing out one of the three) “car­ries on its point the blu­id o' my first born; that is stained wi' the stream that poured frae the heart o' my sec­ond; and that is red wi' the gore in which my youngest wel­tered, as he gae up the life that made me child­less. They were a' shot by En­glish hands, in dif­fer­ent armies, in dif­fer­ent bat­tles. I am an hon­est wom­an, and wish to re­turn to the En­glish what be­longs to the En­glish; but that in the same fash­ion in which they were sent. The Black Dou­glas has the strongest arm an' the surest ee in auld Scot­land; an' wha can ex­ecute my com­mis­sion bet­ter than he?”

“I do not use the bow, good wom­an,” replied Sir James. “I love the grasp of the dag­ger or the bat­tle-​axe. You must ap­ply to some oth­er in­di­vid­ual to re­turn your ar­rows.”

“I can­na tak' them hame again,” said the wom­an, lay­ing them down at the feet of Sir James. “Ye'll see me again on St. James' E'en.”

The old wom­an de­part­ed as she said these words.

Sir James took up the ar­rows, and placed them in an emp­ty quiver that lay amongst his bag­gage. He re­tired to rest, but not to sleep. The fig­ure of the old wom­an and her strange re­quest oc­cu­pied his thoughts, and pro­duced trains of med­ita­tion which end­ed in noth­ing but rest­less­ness and dis­qui­etude. Get­ting up at day­break, he met a mes­sen­ger at the en­trance of his tent, who in­formed him that Sir Thomas de Rich­mont, with a force of ten thou­sand men, had crossed the Bor­ders, and would pass through a nar­row de­file, which he men­tioned, where he could be at­tacked with great ad­van­tage. Sir James gave in­stant or­ders to march to the spot; and, with that ge­nius for schem­ing, for which he was so re­mark­able, com­mand­ed his men to twist to­geth­er the young birch-​trees on ei­ther side of the pas­sage to pre­vent the es­cape of the en­emy. This fin­ished, he con­cealed his archers in a hol­low way, near the gorge of the pass.

The en­emy came on; and when their ranks were em­bar­rassed by the nar­row­ness of the road, and it was im­pos­si­ble for the cav­al­ry to act with ef­fect, Sir James rushed up­on them at the head of his horse­men; and the archers, sud­den­ly dis­cov­er­ing them­selves, poured in a flight of ar­rows on the con­fused sol­diers, and put the whole army to flight. In the heat of the on­set, Dou­glas killed Sir Thomas de Rich­mont with his dag­ger.

Not long af­ter this, Ed­mund de Cailon, a knight of Gas­cony, and Gov­er­nor of Berwick, who had been heard to vaunt that he had sought the fa­mous Black Knight, but could not find him, was re­turn­ing to Eng­land, load­ed with plun­der, the fruit of an in­road on Teviot­dale. Sir James thought it a pity that a Gas­con's vaunt should be heard un­pun­ished in Scot­land, and made long forced march­es to sat­is­fy the de­sire of the for­eign knight, by giv­ing him a sight of the dark coun­te­nance he had made a sub­ject of re­proach. He soon suc­ceed­ed in grat­ify­ing both him­self and the Gas­con. Com­ing up in his ter­ri­ble man­ner, he called to Cailon to stop, and, be­fore he pro­ceed­ed in­to Eng­land, re­ceive the re­spects of the Black Knight he had come to find, but hith­er­to had not met. The Gas­con's vaunt was now changed; but shame sup­plied the place of courage, and he or­dered his men to re­ceive Dou­glas's at­tack. Sir James as­sid­uous­ly sought his en­emy. He at last suc­ceed­ed; and a sin­gle com­bat en­sued, of a most des­per­ate char­ac­ter. But who ev­er es­caped the arm of Dou­glas when fair­ly op­posed to him in sin­gle con­flict? Cailon was killed; he had met the Black Knight at last.

“So much,” cried Sir James, “for the vaunt of a Gas­con!”

Sim­ilar in ev­ery re­spect to the fate of Cailon, was that of Sir Ralph Neville. He, too, on hear­ing the great fame of Dou­glas's prowess, from some of Gal­lon's fugi­tive sol­diers, open­ly boast­ed that he would fight with the Scot­tish Knight, if he would come and show his ban­ner be­fore Berwick. Sir James heard the boast and re­joiced in it. He marched to that town, and caused his men to rav­age the coun­try in front of the bat­tle­ments, and burn the vil­lages. Neville left Berwick with a strong body of men; and, sta­tion­ing him­self on a high ground, wait­ed till the rest of the Scots should dis­perse to plun­der; but Dou­glas called in his de­tach­ment and at­tacked the knight. Af­ter a des­per­ate con­flict, in which many were slain, Dou­glas, as was his cus­tom, suc­ceed­ed in bring­ing the lead­er to a per­son­al en­counter, and the skill of the Scot­tish knight was again suc­cess­ful. Neville was slain, and his men ut­ter­ly dis­com­fit­ed.

Hav­ing re­tired one night to his tent to take some rest af­ter so much pain and toil, Sir James Dou­glas was sur­prised by the reap­pear­ance of the old wom­an whom he had seen at Linthaugh­lee.

“This is the feast o' St. James,” said she, as she ap­proached him. “I said I would see ye again this nicht, an' I'm as guid's my word. Hae ye re­turned the ar­rows I left wi' ye to the En­glish wha sent them to the hearts o' my sons?”

“No,” replied Sir James. “I told ye I did not fight with the bow. Where­fore do ye im­por­tune me thus?”

“Give me back the ar­rows then,” said the wom­an.

Sir James went to bring the quiver in which he had placed them. On tak­ing them out, he was sur­prised to find that they were all bro­ken through the mid­dle.

“How has this hap­pened?” said he. “I put these ar­rows in this quiver en­tire, and now they are bro­ken.”

“The weird is ful­filled!” cried the old wom­an, laugh­ing el­drich­ly, and clap­ping her hands. “That bro­ken shaft cam' frae a sol­dier o' Rich­mont's; that frae ane o' Cailon's, and that frae ane o' Neville's. They are a' dead, an' I am re­venged!”

The old wom­an then de­part­ed, scat­ter­ing, as she went, the bro­ken frag­ments of the ar­rows on the floor of the tent.

THE LAIRD OF BAL­MACHIE'S WIFE.

In the old­en times, when it was the fash­ion for gen­tle­men to wear swords, the Laird of Bal­machie went one day to Dundee, leav­ing his wife at home ill in bed. Rid­ing home in the twi­light, he had oc­ca­sion to leave the high road, and when cross­ing be­tween some lit­tle ro­man­tic knolls, called the Cur-​hills, in the neigh­bour­hood of Car­lungy, he en­coun­tered a troop of fairies sup­port­ing a kind of lit­ter, up­on which some per­son seemed to be borne. Be­ing a man of daunt­less courage, and, as he said, im­pelled by some in­ter­nal im­pulse, he pushed his horse close to the lit­ter, drew his sword, laid it across the ve­hi­cle, and in a firm tone ex­claimed--

“In the name of God, re­lease your cap­tive.”

The tiny troop im­me­di­ate­ly dis­ap­peared, drop­ping the lit­ter on the ground. The laird dis­mount­ed, and found that it con­tained his own wife, dressed in her bed­clothes. Wrap­ping his coat around her, he placed her on the horse be­fore him, and, hav­ing on­ly a short dis­tance to ride, ar­rived safe­ly at home.

Plac­ing her in an­oth­er room, un­der the care of an at­ten­tive friend, he im­me­di­ate­ly went to the cham­ber where he had left his wife in the morn­ing, and there to all ap­pear­ance she still lay, very sick of a fever. She was fret­ful, dis­con­tent­ed, and com­plained much of hav­ing been ne­glect­ed in his ab­sence, at all of which the laird af­fect­ed great con­cern, and pre­tend­ing much sym­pa­thy, in­sist­ed up­on her ris­ing to have her bed made. She said that she was un­able to rise, but her hus­band was peremp­to­ry, and hav­ing or­dered a large wood fire to warm the room, he lift­ed the im­pos­tor from the bed, and bear­ing her across the floor as if to a chair, which had been pre­vi­ous­ly pre­pared, he threw her on the fire, from which she bounced like a sky-​rock­et, and went through the ceil­ing, and out at the roof of the house, leav­ing a hole among the slates. He then brought in his own wife, a lit­tle re­cov­ered from her alarm, who said, that some­time af­ter sun­set, the nurse hav­ing left her for the pur­pose of prepar­ing a lit­tle can­dle, a mul­ti­tude of elves came in at the win­dow, throng­ing like bees from a hive. They filled the room, and hav­ing lift­ed her from the bed car­ried her through the win­dow, af­ter which she rec­ol­lect­ed noth­ing fur­ther, till she saw her hus­band stand­ing over her on the Cur-​hills, at the back of Car­lungy. The hole in the roof, by which the fe­male fairy made her es­cape, was mend­ed, but could nev­er be kept in re­pair, as a tem­pest of wind hap­pened al­ways once a year, which un­cov­ered that par­tic­ular spot, with­out in­jur­ing any oth­er part of the roof.

MICHAEL SCOTT.

In the ear­ly part of Michael Scott's life he was in the habit of em­igrat­ing an­nu­al­ly to the Scot­tish metropo­lis, for the pur­pose of be­ing em­ployed in his ca­pac­ity of ma­son. One time as he and two com­pan­ions were jour­ney­ing to the place of their des­ti­na­tion for a sim­ilar ob­ject, they had oc­ca­sion to pass over a high hill, the name of which is not men­tioned, but which is sup­posed to have been one of the Grampians, and be­ing fa­tigued with climb­ing, they sat down to rest them­selves. They had no soon­er done so than they were warned to take to their heels by the hiss­ing of a large ser­pent, which they ob­served re­volv­ing it­self to­wards them with great ve­loc­ity. Ter­ri­fied at the sight, Michael's two com­pan­ions fled, while he, on the con­trary, re­solved to en­counter the rep­tile. The ap­palling mon­ster ap­proached Michael Scott with dis­tend­ed mouth and forked tongue; and, throw­ing it­self in­to a coil at his feet, was rais­ing its head to in­flict a mor­tal sting, when Michael, with one stroke of his stick, sev­ered its body in­to three pieces. Hav­ing re­joined his af­fright­ed com­rades, they re­sumed their jour­ney; and, on ar­riv­ing at the next pub­lic-​house, it be­ing late, and the trav­ellers be­ing weary, they took up their quar­ters at it for the night. In the course of the night's con­ver­sa­tion, ref­er­ence was nat­ural­ly made to Michael's re­cent ex­ploit with the ser­pent, when the land­la­dy of the house, who was re­mark­able for her “arts,” hap­pened to be present. Her cu­rios­ity ap­peared much ex­cit­ed by the con­ver­sa­tion; and, af­ter mak­ing some in­quiries re­gard­ing the colour of the ser­pent, which she was told was white, she of­fered any of them that would pro­cure her the mid­dle piece such a tempt­ing re­ward, as in­duced one of the par­ty in­stant­ly to go for it. The dis­tance was not very great; and on reach­ing the spot, he found the mid­dle and tail piece in the place where Michael left them, but the head piece was gone.

The land­la­dy on re­ceiv­ing the piece, which still vi­brat­ed with life, seemed high­ly grat­ified at her ac­qui­si­tion; and, over and above the promised re­ward, re­galed her lodgers very plen­ti­ful­ly with the choic­est dain­ties in her house. Fired with cu­rios­ity to know the pur­pose for which the ser­pent was in­tend­ed, the wily Michael Scott was im­me­di­ate­ly seized with a se­vere fit of in­dis­po­si­tion, which caused him to pre­fer the re­quest that he might be al­lowed to sleep be­side the fire, the warmth of which, he af­firmed, was in the high­est de­gree ben­efi­cial to him.

Nev­er sus­pect­ing Michael Scott's hypocrisy, and nat­ural­ly sup­pos­ing that a per­son so severe­ly in­dis­posed would feel very lit­tle cu­rios­ity about the con­tents of any cook­ing uten­sils which might lie around the fire, the land­la­dy al­lowed his re­quest. As soon as the oth­er in­mates of the house were re­tired to bed, the land­la­dy re­sort­ed to her dar­ling oc­cu­pa­tion; and, in his feigned state of in­dis­po­si­tion, Michael had a favourable op­por­tu­ni­ty of watch­ing most scrupu­lous­ly all her ac­tions through the key­hole of a door lead­ing to the next apart­ment where she was. He could see the rites and cer­emonies with which the ser­pent was put in­to the oven, along with many mys­te­ri­ous in­gre­di­ents. Af­ter which the un­sus­pi­cious land­la­dy placed the dish by the fire­side, where lay the dis­tressed trav­eller, to stove till the morn­ing.

Once or twice in the course of the night the “wife of the change-​house,” un­der the pre­tence of in­quir­ing for her sick lodger, and ad­min­is­ter­ing to him some ren­ovat­ing cor­dials, the ben­efi­cial ef­fects of which he grate­ful­ly ac­knowl­edged, took oc­ca­sion to dip her fin­ger in her saucepan, up­on which the cock, perched on his roost, crowed aloud. All Michael's sick­ness could not pre­vent him con­sid­er­ing very in­quis­itive­ly the land­la­dy's cantrips, and par­tic­ular­ly the in­flu­ence of the sauce up­on the crow­ing of the cock. Nor could he dis­si­pate some in­ward de­sires he felt to fol­low her ex­am­ple. At the same time, he sus­pect­ed that Sa­tan had a hand in the pie, yet he thought he would like very much to be at the bot­tom of the con­cern; and thus his rea­son and his cu­rios­ity clashed against each oth­er for the space of sev­er­al hours. At length pas­sion, as is too of­ten the case, be­came the con­queror. Michael, too, dipped his fin­ger in the sauce, and ap­plied it to the tip of his tongue, and im­me­di­ate­ly the cock perched on the _spar­dan_ an­nounced the cir­cum­stance in a mourn­ful clar­ion. In­stant­ly his mind re­ceived a new light to which he was for­mer­ly a stranger, and the as­ton­ished dupe of a land­la­dy now found it her in­ter­est to ad­mit her saga­cious lodger in­to a knowl­edge of the re­main­der of her se­crets.

En­dowed with the knowl­edge of “good and evil,” and all the “sec­ond sights” that can be ac­quired, Michael left his lodg­ings in the morn­ing, with the philoso­pher's stone in his pock­et. By dai­ly per­fect­ing his su­per­nat­ural at­tain­ments, by new se­ries of dis­cov­er­ies, he be­came more than a match for Sa­tan him­self. Hav­ing se­duced some thou­sands of Sa­tan's best work­men in­to his em­ploy­ment, he trained them up so suc­cess­ful­ly to the ar­chi­tec­tive busi­ness, and in­spired them with such in­dus­tri­ous habits, that he was more than suf­fi­cient for all the ar­chi­tec­tural work of the em­pire. To es­tab­lish this as­ser­tion, we need on­ly re­fer to some re­mains of his work­man­ship still ex­ist­ing north of the Grampians, some of them, stu­pen­dous bridges built by him in one short night, with no oth­er vis­ible agents than two or three work­men.

On one oc­ca­sion work was get­ting scarce, as might have been nat­ural­ly ex­pect­ed, and his work­men, as they were wont, flocked to his doors, per­pet­ual­ly ex­claim­ing, “Work! work! work!” Con­tin­ual­ly an­noyed by their in­ces­sant en­treaties, he called out to them in de­ri­sion to go and make a dry road from Fortrose to Arder­seir, over the Moray Firth. Im­me­di­ate­ly their cry ceased, and as Scott sup­posed it whol­ly im­pos­si­ble for them to ex­ecute his or­der, he re­tired to rest, laugh­ing most hearti­ly at the chimeri­cal sort of em­ploy­ment he had giv­en to his in­dus­tri­ous work­men. Ear­ly in the morn­ing, how­ev­er, he got up and took a walk at the break of day down to the shore to di­vert him­self at the fruit­less labours of his zeal­ous work­men. But on reach­ing the spot, what was his as­ton­ish­ment to find the formidable piece of work al­lot­ted to them on­ly a few hours be­fore al­ready near­ly fin­ished. See­ing the great dam­age the com­mer­cial class of the com­mu­ni­ty would sus­tain from the op­er­ation, he or­dered the work­men to de­mol­ish the most part of their work; leav­ing, how­ev­er, the point of Fortrose to show the trav­eller to this day the won­der­ful ex­ploit of Michael Scott's fairies.

On be­ing thus again thrown out of em­ploy­ment, their for­mer clam­our was re­sumed, nor could Michael Scott, with all his sagac­ity, de­vise a plan to keep them in in­no­cent em­ploy­ment. He at length dis­cov­ered one. “Go,” says he, “and man­ufac­ture me ropes that will car­ry me to the back of the moon, of these ma­te­ri­als--_miller's-​sud­ds_ and sea-​sand.” Michael Scott here ob­tained rest from his ac­tive op­er­ators; for, when oth­er work failed them, he al­ways despatched them to their rope man­ufac­to­ry. But though these agents could nev­er make prop­er ropes of those ma­te­ri­als, their ef­forts to that ef­fect are far from be­ing con­temptible, for some of their ropes are seen by the sea-​side to this day.

We shall close our no­tice of Michael Scott by recit­ing one anec­dote of him in the lat­ter part of his life.

In con­se­quence of a vi­olent quar­rel which Michael Scott once had with a per­son whom he con­ceived to have caused him some in­jury, he re­solved, as the high­est pun­ish­ment he could in­flict up­on him, to send his ad­ver­sary to that evil place de­signed on­ly for Sa­tan and his black com­pan­ions. He ac­cord­ing­ly, by means of his su­per­nat­ural machi­na­tions, sent the poor un­for­tu­nate man thith­er; and had he been sent by any oth­er means than those of Michael Scott, he would no doubt have met with a warm re­cep­tion. Out of pure spite to Michael, how­ev­er, when Sa­tan learned who was his bil­let-​mas­ter, he would no more re­ceive him than he would re­ceive the Wife of Beth; and in­stead of treat­ing the un­for­tu­nate man with the harsh­ness char­ac­ter­is­tic of him, he showed him con­sid­er­able ci­vil­ities. In­tro­duc­ing him to his “Ben Taigh,” he di­rect­ed her to show the stranger any cu­riosi­ties he might wish to see, hint­ing very sig­nif­icant­ly that he had pro­vid­ed some ac­com­mo­da­tion for their mu­tu­al friend, Michael Scott, the sight of which might af­ford him some grat­ifi­ca­tion. The po­lite house­keep­er ac­cord­ing­ly con­duct­ed the stranger through the prin­ci­pal apart­ments in the house, where he saw fear­ful sights. But the bed of Michael Scott!--his great­est en­emy could not but feel sa­ti­at­ed with re­venge at the sight of it. It was a place too hor­rid to be de­scribed, filled promis­cu­ous­ly with all the aw­ful brutes imag­in­able. Toads and li­ons, lizards and leech­es, and, amongst the rest, not the least con­spic­uous, a large ser­pent gap­ing for Michael Scott, with its mouth wide open. This last sight hav­ing sat­is­fied the stranger's cu­rios­ity, he was led to the out­er gate, and came away. He reached his friends, and, among oth­er pieces of news touch­ing his trav­els, he was not back­ward in re­lat­ing the en­ter­tain­ment that await­ed his friend Michael Scott, as soon as he would “stretch his foot” for the oth­er world. But Michael did not at all ap­pear dis­con­cert­ed at his friend's in­tel­li­gence. He af­firmed that he would dis­ap­point all his en­emies in their ex­pec­ta­tions--in proof of which he gave the fol­low­ing signs: “When I am just dead,” says he, “open my breast and ex­tract my heart. Car­ry it to some place where the pub­lic may see the re­sult. You will then trans­fix it up­on a long pole, and if Sa­tan will have my soul, he will come in the like­ness of a black raven and car­ry it off; and if my soul will be saved it will be car­ried off by a white dove.”

His friends faith­ful­ly obeyed his in­struc­tions. Hav­ing ex­hib­it­ed his heart in the man­ner di­rect­ed, a large black raven was ob­served to come from the east with great fleet­ness, while a white dove came from the west with equal ve­loc­ity. The raven made a fu­ri­ous dash at the heart, miss­ing which, it was un­able to curb its force, till it was con­sid­er­ably past it; and the dove, reach­ing the spot at the same time, car­ried off the heart amidst the re­joic­ing and ejac­ula­tions of the spec­ta­tors.

THE MIN­IS­TER AND THE FAIRY.

Not long since, a pi­ous cler­gy­man was re­turn­ing home, af­ter ad­min­is­ter­ing spir­itu­al con­so­la­tion to a dy­ing mem­ber of his flock. It was late of the night, and he had to pass through a good deal of _un­can­ny_ land. He was, how­ev­er, a good and a con­sci­en­tious min­is­ter of the Gospel, and feared not all the spir­its in the coun­try. On his reach­ing the end of a lake which stretched along the road­side for some dis­tance, he was a good deal sur­prised at hear­ing the most melo­di­ous strains of mu­sic. Over­come by plea­sure and cu­rios­ity, the min­is­ter cool­ly sat down to lis­ten to the har­mo­nious sounds, and try what new dis­cov­er­ies he could make with re­gard to their na­ture and source. He had not sat many min­utes be­fore he could dis­tin­guish the ap­proach of the mu­sic, and al­so ob­serve a light in the di­rec­tion from whence it pro­ceed­ed glid­ing across the lake to­wards him. In­stead of tak­ing to his heels, as any faith­less wight would have done, the pas­tor fear­less­ly de­ter­mined to await the is­sue of the phe­nomenon. As the light and mu­sic drew near, the cler­gy­man could at length dis­tin­guish an ob­ject re­sem­bling a hu­man be­ing walk­ing on the sur­face of the wa­ter, at­tend­ed by a group of diminu­tive mu­si­cians, some of them bear­ing lights, and oth­ers in­stru­ments of mu­sic, from which they con­tin­ued to evoke those melo­di­ous strains which first at­tract­ed his at­ten­tion. The lead­er of the band dis­missed his at­ten­dants, land­ed on the beach, and af­ford­ed the min­is­ter the am­plest op­por­tu­ni­ties of ex­am­in­ing his ap­pear­ance. He was a lit­tle prim­itive-​look­ing grey-​head­ed man, clad in the most grotesque habit the cler­gy­man had ev­er seen, and such as led him at once to sus­pect his re­al char­ac­ter. He walked up to the min­is­ter, whom he salut­ed with great grace, of­fer­ing an apol­ogy for his in­tru­sion. The pas­tor re­turned his com­pli­ments, and, with­out fur­ther ex­pla­na­tion, in­vit­ed the mys­te­ri­ous stranger to sit down by his side. The in­vi­ta­tion was com­plied with, up­on which the min­is­ter pro­posed the fol­low­ing ques­tion:--“Who art thou, stranger, and from whence?”

To this ques­tion the fairy, with down­cast eye, replied that he was one of those some­times called _Doane Shee_, or men of peace, or good men, though the re­verse of this ti­tle was a more fit ap­pel­la­tion for them. Orig­inal­ly an­gel­ic in his na­ture and at­tributes, and once a shar­er of the in­de­scrib­able joys of the re­gions of light, he was se­duced by Sa­tan to join him in his mad con­spir­acies; and, as a pun­ish­ment for his trans­gres­sion, he was cast down from those re­gions of bliss, and was now doomed, along with mil­lions of fel­low-​suf­fer­ers, to wan­der through seas and moun­tains, un­til the com­ing of the Great Day. What their fate would be then they could not di­vine, but they ap­pre­hend­ed the worst. “And,” con­tin­ued he, turn­ing to the min­is­ter, with great anx­iety, “the ob­ject of my present in­tru­sion on you is to learn your opin­ion, as an em­inent di­vine, as to our fi­nal con­di­tion on that dread­ful day.” Here the ven­er­able pas­tor en­tered up­on a long con­ver­sa­tion with the fairy, touch­ing the prin­ci­ples of faith and re­pen­tance. Re­ceiv­ing rather un­sat­is­fac­to­ry an­swers to his ques­tions, the min­is­ter de­sired the “sheech” to re­peat af­ter him the Pa­ter­nos­ter, in at­tempt­ing to do which, it was not a lit­tle re­mark­able that he could not re­peat the word “art,” but said “_wert_,” in heav­en. In­fer­ring from ev­ery cir­cum­stance that their fate was ex­treme­ly pre­car­ious, the min­is­ter re­solved not to puff the fairies up with pre­sump­tu­ous, and, per­haps, ground­less ex­pec­ta­tions. Ac­cord­ing­ly, ad­dress­ing him­self to the un­hap­py fairy, who was all anx­iety to know the na­ture of his sen­ti­ments, the rev­erend gen­tle­man told him that he could not take it up­on him to give them any hopes of par­don, as their crime was of so deep a hue as scarce­ly to ad­mit of it. On this the un­hap­py fairy ut­tered a shriek of de­spair, plunged head­long in­to the loch, and the min­is­ter re­sumed his course to his home.

THE FISH­ER­MAN AND THE MER­MAN.

Of mer­men and mer­wom­en many strange sto­ries are told in the Shet­land Isles. Be­neath the depths of the ocean, ac­cord­ing to these sto­ries, an at­mo­sphere ex­ists adapt­ed to the res­pi­ra­to­ry or­gans of cer­tain be­ings, re­sem­bling, in form, the hu­man race, pos­sessed of sur­pass­ing beau­ty, of lim­it­ed su­per­nat­ural pow­ers, and li­able to the in­ci­dent of death. They dwell in a wide ter­ri­to­ry of the globe, far be­low the re­gion of fish­es, over which the sea, like the cloudy canopy of our sky, lofti­ly rolls, and they pos­sess habi­ta­tions con­struct­ed of the pearl and coral pro­duc­tions of the ocean. Hav­ing lungs not adapt­ed to a wa­tery medi­um, but to the na­ture of at­mo­spher­ic air, it would be im­pos­si­ble for them to pass through the vol­ume of wa­ters that in­ter­venes be­tween the sub­ma­rine and supra­ma­rine world, if it were not for the ex­traor­di­nary pow­er they in­her­it of en­ter­ing the skin of some an­imal ca­pa­ble of ex­ist­ing in the sea, which they are en­abled to oc­cu­py by a sort of de­mo­ni­acal pos­ses­sion. One shape they put on, is that of an an­imal hu­man above the waist, yet ter­mi­nat­ing be­low in the tail and fins of a fish, but the most favourite form is that of the larg­er seal or Haaf-​fish; for, in pos­sess­ing an am­phibi­ous na­ture, they are en­abled not on­ly to ex­ist in the ocean, but to land on some rock, where they fre­quent­ly light­en them­selves of their sea-​dress, re­sume their prop­er shape, and with much cu­rios­ity ex­am­ine the na­ture of the up­per world be­long­ing to the hu­man race. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, how­ev­er, each mer­man or mer­wom­an pos­sess­es but one skin, en­abling the in­di­vid­ual to as­cend the seas, and if, on vis­it­ing the abode of man, the garb be lost, the hap­less be­ing must un­avoid­ably be­come an in­hab­itant of the earth.

A sto­ry is told of a boat's crew who land­ed for the pur­pose of at­tack­ing the seals ly­ing in the hol­lows of the crags at one of the stacks. The men stunned a num­ber of the an­imals, and while they were in this state stripped them of their skins, with the fat at­tached to them. Leav­ing the car­cass­es on the rock, the crew were about to set off for the shore of Pa­pa Stour, when such a tremen­dous swell arose that ev­ery one flew quick­ly to the boat. All suc­ceed­ed in en­ter­ing it ex­cept one man, who had im­pru­dent­ly lin­gered be­hind. The crew were un­will­ing to leave a com­pan­ion to per­ish on the sker­ries, but the surge in­creased so fast, that af­ter many un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts to bring the boat close in to the stack the un­for­tu­nate wight was left to his fate. A stormy night came on, and the de­sert­ed Shet­lander saw no prospect be­fore him but that of per­ish­ing from cold and hunger, or of be­ing washed in­to the sea by the break­ers which threat­ened to dash over the rocks. At length, he per­ceived many of the seals, who, in their flight had es­caped the at­tack of the boat­men, ap­proach the sker­ry, dis­robe them­selves of their am­phibi­ous hides, and re­sume the shape of the sons and daugh­ters of the ocean. Their first ob­ject was to as­sist in the re­cov­ery of their friends, who hav­ing been stunned by clubs, had, while in that state, been de­prived of their skins. When the flayed an­imals had re­gained their sen­si­bil­ity, they as­sumed their prop­er form of mer­men or mer­wom­en, and be­gan to lament in a mourn­ful lay, wild­ly ac­com­pa­nied by the storm that was rag­ing around, the loss of their sea-​dress, which would pre­vent them from again en­joy­ing their na­tive azure at­mo­sphere, and coral man­sions that lay be­low the deep wa­ters of the At­lantic. But their chief lamen­ta­tion was for Ollav­it­inus, the son of Gio­ga, who, hav­ing been stripped of his seal's skin, would be for ev­er part­ed from his mates, and con­demned to be­come an out­cast in­hab­itant of the up­per world. Their song was at length bro­ken off, by ob­serv­ing one of their en­emies view­ing, with shiv­er­ing limbs and looks of com­fort­less de­spair, the wild waves that dashed over the stack. Gio­ga im­me­di­ate­ly con­ceived the idea of ren­der­ing sub­servient to the ad­van­tage of the son the per­ilous sit­ua­tion of the man. She ad­dressed him with mild­ness, propos­ing to car­ry him safe on her back across the sea to Pa­pa Stour, on con­di­tion of re­ceiv­ing the seal- skin of Ollav­it­inus. A bar­gain was struck, and Gio­ga clad her­self in her am­phibi­ous garb; but the Shet­lander, alarmed at the sight of the stormy main that he was to ride through, pru­dent­ly begged leave of the ma­tron, for his bet­ter preser­va­tion, that he might be al­lowed to cut a few holes in her shoul­ders and flanks, in or­der to pro­cure, be­tween the skin and the flesh, a bet­ter fas­ten­ing for his hands and feet. The re­quest be­ing com­plied with, the man grasped the neck of the seal, and com­mit­ting him­self to her care, she land­ed him safe­ly at Acres Gio in Pa­pa Stour; from which place he im­me­di­ate­ly re­paired to a skeo at Ham­na Voe, where the skin was de­posit­ed, and hon­ourably ful­filled his part of the con­tract, by af­ford­ing Gio­ga the means where­by her son could again re­vis­it the ethe­re­al space over which the sea spread its green man­tle.

THE LAIRD O' CO'.

In the days of yore, the pro­pri­etors of Colzean, in Ayr­shire (an­ces­tors of the Mar­quis of Ail­sa), were known in that coun­try by the ti­tle of Lairds o' Co', a name be­stowed on Colzean from some co's (or coves) in the rock be­neath the cas­tle.

One morn­ing, a very lit­tle boy, car­ry­ing a small wood­en can, ad­dressed the Laird near the cas­tle gate, beg­ging for a lit­tle ale for his moth­er, who was sick. The Laird di­rect­ed him to go to the but­ler and get his can filled; so away he went as or­dered. The but­ler had a bar­rel of ale on tap, but about half full, out of which he pro­ceed­ed to fill the boy's can; but to his ex­treme sur­prise he emp­tied the cask, and still the lit­tle can was not near­ly full. The but­ler was un­will­ing to broach an­oth­er bar­rel, but the lit­tle fel­low in­sist­ed on the ful­fil­ment of the Laird's or­der, and a ref­er­ence was made to the Laird by the but­ler, who stat­ed the mirac­ulous ca­pac­ity of the tiny can, and re­ceived in­stant or­ders to fill it if all the ale in the cel­lar would suf­fice. Obe­di­ent to this com­mand, he broached an­oth­er cask, but had scarce­ly drawn a drop when the can was full, and the dwarf de­part­ed with ex­pres­sions of grat­itude.

Some years af­ter­wards the Laird be­ing at the wars in Flan­ders was tak­en pris­on­er, and for some rea­son or oth­er (prob­ably as a spy) con­demned to die a felon's death. The night pri­or to the day for his ex­ecu­tion, be­ing con­fined in a dun­geon strong­ly bar­ri­cad­ed, the doors sud­den­ly flew open, and the dwarf reap­peared, say­ing--

“Laird o' Co', Rise an' go.”

a sum­mons too wel­come to re­quire rep­eti­tion.

On emerg­ing from prison, the boy caused him to mount on his shoul­ders, and in a short time set him down at his own gate, on the very spot where they had for­mer­ly met, say­ing--

“Ae gude turn de­serves anither-- Tak' ye that for be­ing sae kin' to my auld mither,”

and van­ished.

EWEN OF THE LIT­TLE HEAD.

About three hun­dred years ago, Ewen Maclaine of Lochbuy, in the is­land of Mull, hav­ing been en­gaged in a quar­rel with a neigh­bour­ing chief, a day was fixed for de­ter­min­ing the af­fair by the sword. Lochbuy, be­fore the day ar­rived, con­sult­ed a cel­ebrat­ed witch as to the re­sult of the feud. The witch de­clared that if Lochbuy's wife should on the morn­ing of that day give him and his men food unasked, he would be vic­to­ri­ous, but if not, the re­sult would be the re­verse. This was a dis­heart­en­ing re­sponse for the un­hap­py votary, his wife be­ing a not­ed shrew.

The fa­tal morn­ing ar­rived, and the hour for meet­ing the en­emy ap­proached, but there ap­peared no symp­toms of re­fresh­ment for Lochbuy and his men. At length the un­for­tu­nate man was com­pelled to ask his wife to sup­ply them with food. She set down be­fore them curds, but with­out spoons. When the hus­band in­quired how they were to eat them, she replied they should as­sume the bills of hens. The men ate the curds, as well as they could, with their hands; but Lochbuy him­self ate none. Af­ter be­hav­ing with the great­est brav­ery in the bloody con­flict which en­sued, he fell cov­ered with wounds, leav­ing his wife to the ex­ecra­tion of the peo­ple. She is still known in that dis­trict un­der the ap­pel­la­tion of Corr-​dhu, or the Black Crane.

But the mis­eries brought on the luck­less Lochbuy by his wife did not end with his life, for he died fast­ing, and his ghost is fre­quent­ly seen to this day rid­ing the very horse on which he was mount­ed when he was killed. It was a small, but very neat and ac­tive pony, dun or mouse-​coloured, to which the Laird was much at­tached, and on which he had rid­den for many years be­fore his death. Its ap­pear­ance is as ac­cu­rate­ly de­scribed in the is­land of Mull as any steed is at New­mar­ket. The prints of its shoes are dis­cerned by con­nois­seurs, and the rat­tling of its curb is recog­nised in the dark­est night. It is not par­tic­ular with re­gard to roads, for it goes up hill and down dale with equal ve­loc­ity. Its hard- fat­ed rid­er still wears the same green cloak which cov­ered him in his last bat­tle; and he is par­tic­ular­ly dis­tin­guished by the small size of his head, a pe­cu­liar­ity which, we sus­pect, the learned dis­ci­ples of Spurzheim have nev­er yet had the sagac­ity to dis­cov­er as in­dica­tive of an ex­traor­di­nary tal­ent and in­com­pa­ra­ble per­se­ver­ance in horse­man­ship.

It is now above three hun­dred years since Ewen-​a-​chin-​vig (_An­glice_, Hugh of the Lit­tle Head) fell in the field of hon­our; but nei­ther the vigour of the horse nor of the rid­er is yet di­min­ished. His mourn­ful du­ty has al­ways been to at­tend the dy­ing mo­ments of ev­ery mem­ber of his own tribe, and to es­cort the de­part­ed spir­it on its long and ar­du­ous jour­ney. He has been seen in the re­motest of the He­brides; and he has found his way to Ire­land on these oc­ca­sions long be­fore steam nav­iga­tion was in­vent­ed. About a cen­tu­ry ago he took a fan­cy for a young man of his own race, and fre­quent­ly did him the hon­our of plac­ing him be­hind him­self on horse­back. He en­tered in­to con­ver­sa­tion with him, and fore­told many cir­cum­stances con­nect­ed with the fate of his suc­ces­sors, which have un­doubt­ed­ly since come to pass.

Many a long win­ter night have I lis­tened to the feats of Ewen-​a-​chin-​vig, the faith­ful and in­de­fati­ga­ble guardian of his an­cient fam­ily, in the hour of their last and great­est tri­al, af­ford­ing an ex­am­ple wor­thy the im­ita­tion of ev­ery chief,--per­haps not be­neath the no­tice of Glen­gar­ry him­self.

About a dozen years since some symp­toms of Ewen's de­cay gave very gen­er­al alarm to his friends. He ac­cost­ed one of his own peo­ple (in­deed he nev­er has been known to no­tice any oth­er), and, shak­ing him cor­dial­ly by the hand, he at­tempt­ed to place him on the sad­dle be­hind him, but the un­cour­te­ous dog de­clined the hon­our. Ewen strug­gled hard, but the clown was a great, strong, clum­sy fel­low, and stuck to the earth with all his might. He can­did­ly ac­knowl­edged, how­ev­er, that his chief would have pre­vailed, had it not been for a birch-​tree which stood by, and which he got with­in the fold of his left arm. The con­test be­came very warm in­deed, and the tree was cer­tain­ly twist­ed like an osier, as thou­sands can tes­ti­fy who saw it as well as my­self. At length, how­ev­er, Ewen lost his seat for the first time, and the in­stant the pony found he was his own mas­ter, he set off with the fleet­ness of light­ning. Ewen im­me­di­ate­ly pur­sued his steed, and the wea­ried rus­tic sped his way home­ward. It was the gen­er­al opin­ion that Ewen found con­sid­er­able dif­fi­cul­ty in catch­ing the horse; but I am hap­py to learn that he has been late­ly seen rid­ing the old mouse-​coloured pony with­out the least change in ei­ther the horse or the rid­er. Long may he con­tin­ue to do so!

Those who from mo­tives of piety or cu­rios­ity have vis­it­ed the sa­cred is­land of Iona, must re­mem­ber to have seen the guide point out the tomb of Ewen, with his fig­ure on horse­back, very el­egant­ly sculp­tured in al­to- re­lie­vo, and many of the above facts are on such oc­ca­sions re­lat­ed.

JOCK AND HIS MOTH­ER.

Ye see, there was a wife had a son, and they called him Jock; and she said to him, “You are a lazy fel­low; ye maun gang awa' and do some­thing for to help me.” “Weel,” says Jock, “I'll do that.” So awa' he gangs, and fa's in wi' a pack­man. Says the pack­man, “If you car­ry my pack a' day, I'll gie you a nee­dle at night.” So he car­ried the pack, and got the nee­dle; and as he was gaun awa' hame to his mither, he cuts a bur­den o' brack­ens, and put the nee­dle in­to the heart o' them. Awa' he gaes hame. Says his mither, “What hae ye made o' yoursel' the day?” Says Jock, “I fell in wi' a pack­man, and car­ried his pack a' day, and he gae me a nee­dle for't, and ye may look for it amang the brack­ens.” “Hout,” quo' she, “ye daft gowk, you should hae stuck it in­to your bon­net, man.” “I'll mind that again,” quo' Jock.

Next day he fell in wi' a man car­ry­ing plough socks. “If ye help me to car­ry my socks a' day, I'll gie ye ane to yersel' at night.” “I'll do that,” quo' Jock. Jock car­ried them a' day, and got a sock, which he stuck in his bon­net. On the way hame, Jock was dry, and gaed away to take a drink out o' the burn; and wi' the weight o' the sock, his bon­net fell in­to the riv­er, and gaed out o' sight. He gaed hame, and his mither says, “Weel, Jock, what hae you been do­ing a' day?” And then he tells her. “Hout,” quo' she, “you should hae tied the string to it, and trailed it be­hind you.” “Weel,” quo' Jock, “I'll mind that again.”

Awa' he sets, and he fa's in wi' a flesh­er. “Weel,” says the flesh­er, “if ye'll be my ser­vant a' day, I'll gie ye a leg o' mut­ton at night.” “I'll be that,” quo' Jock. He got a leg o' mut­ton at night. He ties a string to it, and trails it be­hind him the hale road hame. “What hae ye been do­ing?” said his mither. He tells her. “Hout, you fool, ye should hae car­ried it on your shouther.” “I'll mind that again,” quo' Jock.

Awa' he gaes next day, and meets a horse-​deal­er. He says, “If you will help me wi' my hors­es a' day, I'll give you ane to yoursel' at night.” “I'll do that,” quo' Jock. So he served him, and got his horse, and he ties its feet; but as he was not able to car­ry it on his back, he left it ly­ing on the road­side. Hame he comes, and tells his mither. “Hout, ye daft gowk, ye'll ne'er turn wise! Could ye no hae loupen on it, and rid­den it?” “I'll mind that again,” quo' Jock.

Aweel, there was a grand gen­tle­man, wha had a daugh­ter wha was very sub­ject to melan­choly; and her fa­ther gae out that whaev­er should mak' her laugh would get her in mar­riage. So it hap­pened that she was sit­ting at the win­dow ae day, mus­ing in her melan­choly state, when Jock, ac­cord­ing to the ad­vice o' his mither, cam' fly­ing up on a cow's back, wi' the tail over his shouther. And she burst out in­to a fit o' laugh­ter. When they made in­quiry wha made her laugh, it was found to be Jock rid­ing on the cow. Ac­cord­ing­ly, Jock was sent for to get his bride. Weel, Jock was mar­ried to her, and there was a great sup­per pre­pared. Amongst the rest o' the things, there was some hon­ey, which Jock was very fond o'. Af­ter sup­per, they all re­tired, and the auld priest that mar­ried them sat up a' night by the kitchen fire­side. So Jock waukens in the night-​time, and says, “Oh, wad ye gie me some o' yon nice sweet hon­ey that we got to our sup­per last night?” “Oh ay,” says his wife, “rise and gang in­to the press, and ye'll get a pig fou o 't.” Jock rose, and thrust his hand in­to the hon­ey-​pig for a nieve­fu' o 't, and he could not get it out. So he cam' awa' wi' the pig in his hand, like a ma­son's mell, and says, “Oh, I can­na get my hand out.” “Hoot,” quo' she, “gang awa' and break it on the cheek-​stane.” By this time, the fire was dark, and the auld priest was ly­ing snor­ing wi' his head against the chim­ney- piece, wi' a huge white wig on. Jock gaes awa', and gae him a whack wi' the hon­ey-​pig on the head, think­ing it was the cheek-​stane, and knocks it a' in bits. The auld priest roars out, “Mur­der!” Jock tak's doun the stair as hard as he could bick­er, and hides him­sel' amang the bees' skeps.

That night, as luck wad have it, some thieves cam' to steal the bees' skeps, and in the hur­ry o' tum­bling them in­to a large grey plaid, they tum­bled Jock in alang wi' them. So aff they set, wi' Jock and the skeps on their backs. On the way, they had to cross the burn where Jock lost his bon­net. Ane o' the thieves cries, “Oh, I hae fand a bon­net!” and Jock, on hear­ing that, cries out, “Oh, that's mine!” They thocht they had got the deil on their backs. So they let a' fa' in the burn; and Jock, be­ing tied in the plaid, could­na get out; so he and the bees were a' drowned the­git­her.

If a' tales be true, that's nae lee.

SAINT COLUM­BA.

Soon af­ter Saint Colum­ba es­tab­lished his res­idence in Iona, tra­di­tion says that he paid a vis­it to a great sem­inary of Druids, then in the vicin­ity, at a place called Ca­mus­nan Ceul, or Bay of Cells, in the dis­trict of Ard­na­mur­chan. Sev­er­al re­mains of Druidi­cal cir­cles are still to be seen there, and on that bay and the neigh­bour­hood many places are still named af­ter their rites and cer­emonies; such as _Ardin­tib­ert_, the Mount of Sac­ri­fice, and oth­ers. The fame of the Saint had been for some time well known to the peo­ple, and his in­ten­tion of in­struct­ing them in the doc­trines of Chris­tian­ity was an­nounced to them. The an­cient priest­hood made ev­ery ex­er­tion to dis­suade the in­hab­itants from hear­ing the pow­er­ful elo­quence of Colum­ba, and in this they were sec­ond­ed by the prin­ci­pal man then in that coun­try, whose name was Don­ald, a son of Con­nal.

The Saint had no soon­er made his ap­pear­ance, how­ev­er, than he was sur­round­ed by a vast mul­ti­tude, anx­ious to hear so cel­ebrat­ed a preach­er; and af­ter the ser­mon was end­ed, many per­sons ex­pressed a de­sire to be bap­tized, in spite of the re­mon­strances of the Druids. Colum­ba had made choice of an em­inence cen­tral­ly sit­uat­ed for per­form­ing wor­ship; but there was no wa­ter near the spot, and the son of Con­nal threat­ened with pun­ish­ment any who should dare to pro­cure it for his pur­pose. The Saint stood with his back lean­ing on a rock; af­ter a short prayer, he struck the rock with his foot, and a stream of wa­ter is­sued forth in great abun­dance. The mir­acle had a pow­er­ful ef­fect on the minds of his hear­ers, and many be­came con­verts to the new re­li­gion. This foun­tain is still dis­tin­guished by the name of Colum­ba, and is con­sid­ered of su­pe­ri­or ef­fi­ca­cy in the cure of dis­eases. When the Catholic form of wor­ship pre­vailed in that coun­try it was great­ly re­sort­ed to, and old per­sons yet re­mem­ber to have seen of­fer­ings left at the foun­tain in grat­itude for ben­efits re­ceived from the be­nig­nant in­flu­ence of the Saint's bless­ing on the wa­ter. At length it is said that a daugh­ter of Don­ald, the son of Con­nal, ex­pressed a wish to be bap­tized, and the fa­ther re­strained her by vi­olence. He al­so, with the aid of the Druids, forced Colum­ba to take refuge in his boat, and the holy man de­part­ed for Iona, af­ter warn­ing the in­hos­pitable Cale­do­nian to pre­pare for an­oth­er world, as his life would soon ter­mi­nate.

The Saint was at sea dur­ing the whole night, which was stormy; and when ap­proach­ing the shores of his own sa­cred is­land the fol­low­ing morn­ing, a vast num­ber of ravens were ob­served fly­ing over the boat, chas­ing an­oth­er of ex­traor­di­nary large size. The croak­ing of the ravens awoke the Saint, who had been sleep­ing; and he in­stant­ly ex­claimed that the son of Con­nal had just ex­pired, which was af­ter­wards as­cer­tained to be true.

A very large Chris­tian es­tab­lish­ment ap­pears to have been af­ter­wards formed in the Bay of Cells; and the re­mains of a chapel, ded­icat­ed to Saint Kiaran, are still to be seen there. It is the favourite place of in­ter­ment among the Catholics of this day. In­deed, Colum­ba and many of his suc­ces­sors seem to have adopt­ed the pol­icy of en­graft­ing their in­sti­tu­tions on those which had for­mer­ly ex­ist­ed in the coun­try. Of this there are in­nu­mer­able in­stances, at least we ob­serve the ru­ins of both still vis­ible in many places; even in Iona we find the bury­ing-​ground of the Druids known at the present day. This prac­tice may have had ad­van­tages at the time, but it must have been ul­ti­mate­ly pro­duc­tive of many cor­rup­tions; and, in a great mea­sure, ac­counts for many su­per­sti­tious and ab­surd cus­toms which pre­vailed among that peo­ple to a very re­cent pe­ri­od, and which are not yet en­tire­ly ex­tinct. In a very an­cient fam­ily in that coun­try two round balls of coarse glass have been care­ful­ly pre­served from time im­memo­ri­al, and to these have been as­cribed many virtues--amongst oth­ers, the cure of any ex­traor­di­nary dis­ease among cat­tle. The balls were im­mersed in cold wa­ter for three days and nights, and the wa­ter was af­ter­wards sprin­kled over all the cat­tle; this was ex­pect­ed to cure those af­fect­ed, and to pre­vent the dis­ease in the rest. From the names and ap­pear­ance of these balls, there is no doubt that they had been sym­bols used by the Arch­druids.

With­in a short dis­tance of the Bay of Cells there is a cave very re­mark­able in its ap­pear­ance, and still more so from the pur­pos­es to which it has been ap­pro­pri­at­ed. Saint Colum­ba, on one of his many voy­ages among the He­brides, was be­night­ed on this rocky coast, and the mariners were alarmed for their own safe­ty. The Saint as­sured them that nei­ther he nor his crew would ev­er be drowned. They un­ex­pect­ed­ly dis­cov­ered a light at no great dis­tance, and to that they di­rect­ed their course. Colum­ba's boat con­sist­ed of a frame of osiers, which was cov­ered with hides of leather, and it was re­ceived in­to a very nar­row creek close to this cave. Af­ter re­turn­ing thanks for their es­cape, the Saint and his peo­ple had great dif­fi­cul­ty in climb­ing up to the cave, which is el­evat­ed con­sid­er­ably above sea. They at length got sight of the fire which had first at­tract­ed their at­ten­tion. Sev­er­al per­sons sat around it, and their ap­pear­ance was not much cal­cu­lat­ed to please the holy man. Their as­pects were fierce, and they had on the fire some flesh roast­ing over the coals. The Saint gave them his bene­dic­tion; and he was in­vit­ed to sit down among them and to share their hur­ried repast, with which he glad­ly com­plied. They were free­boot­ers, who lived by plun­der and rob­bery, and this Colum­ba soon dis­cov­ered. He ad­vised them to for­sake that course, and to be con­vert­ed to his doc­trines, to which they all as­sent­ed, and in the morn­ing they ac­com­pa­nied the Saint on his voy­age home­ward. This cir­cum­stance cre­at­ed a high ven­er­ation for the cave among the dis­ci­ples and suc­ces­sors of Colum­ba, and that ven­er­ation still con­tin­ues, in some de­gree. In one side of it there was a cleft of the rock, where lay the wa­ter with which the free­boot­ers had been bap­tized; and this was af­ter­wards formed by art in­to a basin, which is sup­plied with wa­ter by drops from the roof of the cave. It is al­leged nev­er to be emp­ty or to over­flow, and the most salu­bri­ous qual­ities are as­cribed to it. To ob­tain the ben­efit of it, how­ev­er, the votaries must un­der­go a very se­vere or­deal. They must be in the cave be­fore day­light; they stand on the spot where the Saint first land­ed his boat, and nine waves must dash over their heads; they must af­ter­wards pass through nine open­ings in the walls of the cave; and, last­ly, they must swal­low nine mouth­fuls out of the holy basin. Af­ter in­vok­ing the aid of the Saint, the votaries with­in three weeks are ei­ther re­lieved by death or by re­cov­ery. Of­fer­ings are left in a cer­tain place ap­pro­pri­at­ed for that pur­pose; and these are some­times of con­sid­er­able val­ue, nor are they ev­er ab­stract­ed. Strangers are al­ways in­formed that a young man, who had wan­ton­ly tak­en away some of these not many years since, broke his leg be­fore he got home, and this af­fords the prop­er­ty of the Saint am­ple pro­tec­tion.

THE MER­MAID WIFE.

A sto­ry is told of an in­hab­itant of Un­st, who, in walk­ing on the sandy mar­gin of a voe, saw a num­ber of mer­men and mer­maids danc­ing by moon­light, and sev­er­al seal-​skins strewed be­side them on the ground. At his ap­proach they im­me­di­ate­ly fled to se­cure their garbs, and, tak­ing up­on them­selves the form of seals, plunged im­me­di­ate­ly in­to the sea. But as the Shet­lander per­ceived that one skin lay close to his feet, he snatched it up, bore it swift­ly away, and placed it in con­ceal­ment. On re­turn­ing to the shore he met the fairest damsel that was ev­er gazed up­on by mor­tal eyes, lament­ing the rob­bery, by which she had be­come an ex­ile from her sub­ma­rine friends, and a ten­ant of the up­per world. Vain­ly she im­plored the resti­tu­tion of her prop­er­ty; the man had drunk deeply of love, and was in­ex­orable; but he of­fered her pro­tec­tion be­neath his roof as his be­trothed spouse. The mer­la­dy, per­ceiv­ing that she must be­come an in­hab­itant of the earth, found that she could not do bet­ter than ac­cept of the of­fer. This strange at­tach­ment sub­sist­ed for many years, and the cou­ple had sev­er­al chil­dren. The Shet­lander's love for his mer­wife was un­bound­ed, but his af­fec­tion was cold­ly re­turned. The la­dy would of­ten steal alone to the desert strand, and, on a sig­nal be­ing giv­en, a large seal would make his ap­pear­ance, with whom she would hold, in an un­known tongue, an anx­ious con­fer­ence. Years had thus glid­ed away, when it hap­pened that one of the chil­dren, in the course of his play, found con­cealed be­neath a stack of corn a seal's skin; and, de­light­ed with the prize, he ran with it to his moth­er. Her eyes glis­tened with rap­ture--she gazed up­on it as her own--as the means by which she could pass through the ocean that led to her na­tive home. She burst forth in­to an ec­sta­sy of joy, which was on­ly mod­er­at­ed when she be­held her chil­dren, whom she was now about to leave; and, af­ter hasti­ly em­brac­ing them, she fled with all speed to­wards the sea-​side. The hus­band im­me­di­ate­ly re­turned, learned the dis­cov­ery that had tak­en place, ran to over­take his wife, but on­ly ar­rived in time to see her trans­for­ma­tion of shape com­plet­ed--to see her, in the form of a seal, bound from the ledge of a rock in­to the sea. The large an­imal of the same kind with whom she had held a se­cret con­verse soon ap­peared, and ev­ident­ly con­grat­ulat­ed her, in the most ten­der man­ner, on her es­cape. But be­fore she dived to un­known depths, she cast a part­ing glance at the wretched Shet­lander, whose de­spair­ing looks ex­cit­ed in her breast a few tran­sient feel­ings of com­mis­er­ation.

“Farewell!” said she to him, “and may all good at­tend you. I loved you very well when I resid­ed up­on earth, but I al­ways loved my first hus­band much bet­ter.”

THE FID­DLER AND THE BOGLE OF BO­GAN­DO­RAN.

"Late one night, as my grand-​un­cle, Lach­lan Dhu Macpher­son, who was well known as the best fid­dler of his day, was re­turn­ing home from a ball, at which he had act­ed as a mu­si­cian, he had oc­ca­sion to pass through the once-​haunt­ed Bog of Tor­rans. Now, it hap­pened at that time that the bog was fre­quent­ed by a huge bogle or ghost, who was of a most mis­chievous dis­po­si­tion, and took par­tic­ular plea­sure in abus­ing ev­ery trav­eller who had oc­ca­sion to pass through the place be­twixt the twi­light at night and cock-​crow­ing in the morn­ing. Sus­pect­ing much that he would al­so come in for a share of his abuse, my grand-​un­cle made up his mind, in the course of his progress, to re­turn the ghost any _ci­vil­ities_ which he might think meet to of­fer him. On ar­riv­ing on the spot, he found his sus­pi­cions were too well ground­ed; for whom did he see but the ghost of Bo­gan­do­ran ap­par­ent­ly ready wait­ing him, and seem­ing by his ghast­ly grin not a lit­tle over­joyed at the meet­ing. March­ing up to my grand-​un­cle, the bogle clapped a huge club in­to his hand, and fur­nish­ing him­self with one of the same di­men­sions, he put a spit­tle in his hand, and de­lib­er­ate­ly com­menced the com­bat. My grand-​un­cle re­turned the salute with equal spir­it, and so ably did both par­ties ply their ba­tons that for a while the is­sue of the com­bat was ex­treme­ly doubt­ful. At length, how­ev­er, the fid­dler could eas­ily dis­cov­er that his op­po­nent's vigour was much in the fag­ging or­der. Pick­ing up re­newed courage in con­se­quence, he plied the ghost with re­newed force, and af­ter a stout re­sis­tance, in the course of which both par­ties were se­ri­ous­ly han­dled, the ghost of Bo­gan­do­ran thought it pru­dent to give up the night.

"At the same time, filled no doubt with great in­dig­na­tion at this sig­nal de­feat, it seems the ghost re­solved to re-​en­gage my grand-​un­cle on some oth­er oc­ca­sion, un­der more favourable cir­cum­stances. Not long af­ter, as my grand-​un­cle was re­turn­ing home quite unat­tend­ed from an­oth­er ball in the Braes of the coun­try, he had just en­tered the hol­low of Auldichoish, well known for its 'eerie' prop­er­ties, when, lo! who pre­sent­ed him­self to his view on the ad­ja­cent em­inence but his old friend of Bo­gan­do­ran, ad­vanc­ing as large as the gable of a house, and putting him­self in the most threat­en­ing and fight­ing at­ti­tudes.

"Look­ing at the very dan­ger­ous na­ture of the ground where they had met, and feel­ing no anx­iety for a sec­ond en­counter with a com­bat­ant of his weight, in a sit­ua­tion so lit­tle de­sir­able, the fid­dler would have will­ing­ly de­ferred the set­tle­ment of their dif­fer­ences till a more con­ve­nient sea­son. He, ac­cord­ing­ly, as­sum­ing the most sub­mis­sive as­pect in the world, en­deav­oured to pass by his cham­pi­on in peace, but in vain. Long­ing, no doubt, to re­trieve the dis­grace of his late dis­com­fi­ture, the bogle in­stant­ly seized the fid­dler, and at­tempt­ed with all his might to pull the lat­ter down the precipice, with the di­abol­ical in­ten­tion, it is sup­posed, of drown­ing him in the riv­er Avon be­low. In this pi­ous de­sign the bogle was hap­pi­ly frus­trat­ed by the in­ter­ven­tion of some trees which grew on the precipice, and to which my un­hap­py grand-​un­cle clung with the zeal of a drown­ing man. The en­raged ghost, find­ing it im­pos­si­ble to ex­tri­cate him from those friend­ly trees, and re­solv­ing, at all events, to be re­venged up­on him, fell up­on mal­treat­ing the fid­dler with his hands and feet in the most in­hu­man man­ner.

“Such gross in­dig­ni­ties my wor­thy grand-​un­cle was not ac­cus­tomed to, and be­ing in­censed be­yond all mea­sure at the lib­er­ties tak­en by Bo­gan­do­ran, he re­solved again to try his met­tle, whether life or death should be the con­se­quence. Hav­ing no oth­er weapon where­with to de­fend him­self but his _biodag_, which, con­sid­er­ing the na­ture of his op­po­nent's con­sti­tu­tion, he sus­pect­ed much would be of lit­tle avail to him--I say, in the ab­sence of any oth­er weapon, he sheathed the _biodag_ three times in the ghost of Bo­gan­do­ran's body. And what was the con­se­quence? Why, to the great as­ton­ish­ment of my coura­geous fore­fa­ther, the ghost fell down cold dead at his feet, and was nev­er more seen or heard of.”

THOMAS THE RHYMER.

Thomas, of Er­cil­doun, in Laud­erdale, called the Rhymer, on ac­count of his pro­duc­ing a po­et­ical ro­mance on the sub­ject of Tristrem and Yseult, which is cu­ri­ous as the ear­li­est spec­imen of En­glish verse known to ex­ist, flour­ished in the reign of Alexan­der III. of Scot­land. Like oth­er men of tal­ent of the pe­ri­od, Thomas was sus­pect­ed of mag­ic. He was al­so said to have the gift of prophe­cy, which was ac­count­ed for in the fol­low­ing pe­cu­liar man­ner, re­fer­ring en­tire­ly to the Elfin su­per­sti­tion.

As Thomas lay on Hunt­ly Bank (a place on the de­scent of the Eil­don Hills, which raise their triple crest above the cel­ebrat­ed monastery of Mel­rose), he saw a la­dy so ex­treme­ly beau­ti­ful that he imag­ined she must be the Vir­gin Mary her­self. Her ap­point­ments, how­ev­er, were those rather of an ama­zon, or god­dess of the woods. Her steed was of the high­est beau­ty, and at its mane hung thir­ty sil­ver bells and nine, which were mu­sic to the wind as she paced along. Her sad­dle was of “roy­al bone” (ivory), laid over with “or­fever­ie” (gold­smith's work). Her stir­rups, her dress, all cor­re­spond­ed with her ex­treme beau­ty and the mag­nif­icence of her ar­ray. The fair huntress had her bow in hand, and her ar­rows at her belt. She led three grey­hounds in a leash, and three raches, or hounds of scent, fol­lowed her close­ly.

She re­ject­ed and dis­claimed the homage which Thomas de­sired to pay her; so that, pass­ing from one ex­trem­ity to the oth­er, Thomas be­came as bold as he had at first been hum­ble. The la­dy warned him he must be­come her slave if he wished to pros­ecute his suit. Be­fore their in­ter­view ter­mi­nat­ed, the ap­pear­ance of the beau­ti­ful la­dy was changed in­to that of the most hideous hag in ex­is­tence. A witch from the spi­tal or almshouse would have been a god­dess in com­par­ison to the late beau­ti­ful huntress. Hideous as she was, Thomas felt that he had placed him­self in the pow­er of this hag, and when she bade him take leave of the sun, and of the leaf that grew on the tree, he felt him­self un­der the ne­ces­si­ty of obey­ing her. A cav­ern re­ceived them, in which, fol­low­ing his fright­ful guide, he for three days trav­elled in dark­ness, some­times hear­ing the boom­ing of a dis­tant ocean, some­times walk­ing through rivers of blood, which crossed their sub­ter­ranean path. At length they emerged in­to day­light, in a most beau­ti­ful or­chard. Thomas, al­most faint­ing for want of food, stretched out his hand to­wards the good­ly fruit which hung around him, but was for­bid­den by his con­duc­tress, who in­formed him that these were the fa­tal ap­ples which were the cause of the fall of man. He per­ceived al­so that his guide had no soon­er en­tered this mys­te­ri­ous ground and breathed its mag­ic air than she was re­vived in beau­ty, equipage, and splen­dour, as fair or fair­er than he had first seen her on the moun­tain. She then pro­ceed­ed to ex­plain to him the char­ac­ter of the coun­try.

“Yon­der right-​hand path,” she says, “con­veys the spir­its of the blest to par­adise. Yon down­ward and well-​worn way leads sin­ful souls to the place of ev­er­last­ing pun­ish­ment. The third road, by yon­der dark brake, con­ducts to the milder place of pain, from which prayer and mass may re­lease of­fend­ers. But see you yet a fourth road, sweep­ing along the plain to yon­der splen­did cas­tle? Yon­der is the road to Elfland, to which we are now bound. The lord of the cas­tle is king of the coun­try, and I am his queen; and when we en­ter yon­der cas­tle, you must ob­serve strict si­lence, and an­swer no ques­tion that is asked you, and I will ac­count for your si­lence by say­ing I took your speech when I brought you from mid­dle earth.”

Hav­ing thus in­struct­ed him, they jour­neyed on to the cas­tle, and, en­ter­ing by the kitchen, found them­selves in the midst of such a fes­tive scene as might be­come the man­sion of a great feu­dal lord or prince.

Thir­ty car­cass­es of deer were ly­ing on the mas­sive kitchen board, un­der the hands of nu­mer­ous cooks, who toiled to cut them up and dress them, while the gi­gan­tic grey­hounds which had tak­en the spoil lay lap­ping the blood, and en­joy­ing the sight of the slain game. They came next to the roy­al hall, where the king re­ceived his lov­ing con­sort; knights and ladies, danc­ing by threes, oc­cu­pied the floor of the hall; and Thomas, the fa­tigue of his jour­ney from the Eil­don Hills for­got­ten, went for­ward and joined in the rev­el­ry. Af­ter a pe­ri­od, how­ev­er, which seemed to him a very short one, the queen spoke with him apart, and bade him pre­pare to re­turn to his own coun­try.

“Now,” said the queen, “how long think you that you have been here?”

“Certes, fair la­dy,” an­swered Thomas, “not above these sev­en days.”

“You are de­ceived,” an­swered the queen; “you have been sev­en years in this cas­tle, and it is full time you were gone. Know, Thomas, that the arch­fiend will come to this cas­tle to-​mor­row to de­mand his trib­ute, and so hand­some a man as you will at­tract his eye. For all the world would I not suf­fer you to be be­trayed to such a fate; there­fore up, and let us be go­ing.”

This ter­ri­ble news rec­on­ciled Thomas to his de­par­ture from Elfin­land; and the queen was not long in plac­ing him up­on Hunt­ly Bank, where the birds were singing. She took leave of him, and to en­sure his rep­uta­tion be­stowed on him the tongue which _could not lie_. Thomas in vain ob­ject­ed to this in­con­ve­nient and in­vol­un­tary ad­he­sion to ve­rac­ity, which would make him, as he thought, un­fit for church or for mar­ket, for king's court or for la­dy's bow­er. But all his re­mon­strances were dis­re­gard­ed by the la­dy; and Thomas the Rhymer, when­ev­er the dis­course turned on the fu­ture, gained the cred­it of a prophet whether he would or not, for he could say noth­ing but what was sure to come to pass.

Thomas re­mained sev­er­al years in his own tow­er near Er­cil­doun, and en­joyed the fame of his pre­dic­tions, sev­er­al of which are cur­rent among the coun­try peo­ple to this day. At length, as the prophet was en­ter­tain­ing the Earl of March in his dwelling, a cry of as­ton­ish­ment arose in the vil­lage, on the ap­pear­ance of a hart and hind, which left the for­est, and, con­trary to their shy na­ture, came qui­et­ly on­ward, travers­ing the vil­lage to­wards the dwelling of Thomas. The prophet in­stant­ly rose from the board, and ac­knowl­edg­ing the prodi­gy as the sum­mons of his fate, he ac­com­pa­nied the hart and hind in­to the for­est, and though oc­ca­sion­al­ly seen by in­di­vid­uals to whom he has cho­sen to show him­self, he has nev­er again mixed fa­mil­iar­ly with mankind.

FAIRY FRIENDS.

It is a good thing to be­friend the fairies, as the fol­low­ing sto­ries show:--

There have been from time im­memo­ri­al at Haw­ick, dur­ing the two or three last weeks of the year, mar­kets once a week, for the dis­pos­al of sheep for slaugh­ter, at which the greater num­ber of peo­ple, both in the mid­dle and poor­er class­es of life, have been ac­cus­tomed to pro­vide them­selves with their _marts_. A poor man from Jed­burgh who was on his way to Haw­ick for the pur­pose of at­tend­ing one of these mar­kets, as he was pass­ing over that side of Ru­bis­law which is near­est the Teviot, was sud­den­ly alarmed by a fright­ful and un­ac­count­able noise. The sound, as he sup­posed, pro­ceed­ed from an im­mense num­ber of fe­male voic­es, but no ob­jects whence it could come were vis­ible. Amidst howl­ing and wail­ing were mixed shouts of mirth and jol­li­ty, but he could gath­er noth­ing ar­tic­ulate ex­cept the fol­low­ing words--

“O there's a bairn born, but there's naething to pit on 't.”

The oc­ca­sion of this elfish con­cert, it seemed, was the birth of a fairy child, at which the fairies, with the ex­cep­tion of two or three who were dis­com­posed at hav­ing noth­ing to cov­er the lit­tle in­no­cent with, were en­joy­ing them­selves with that jovi­al­ity usu­al­ly char­ac­ter­is­tic of such an event. The as­ton­ished rus­tic find­ing him­self amongst a host of in­vis­ible be­ings, in a wild moor­land place, and far from any hu­man as­sis­tance, should as­sis­tance be re­quired, full of the great­est con­ster­na­tion, im­me­di­ate­ly on hear­ing this ex­pres­sion again and again vo­cif­er­at­ed, stripped off his plaid, and threw it on the ground. It was in­stant­ly snatched up by an in­vis­ible hand, and the wail­ings im­me­di­ate­ly ceased, but the shouts of mirth were con­tin­ued with in­creased vigour. Be­ing of opin­ion that what he had done had sat­is­fied his in­vis­ible friends, he lost no time in mak­ing off, and pro­ceed­ed on his road to Haw­ick, mus­ing on his sin­gu­lar ad­ven­ture. He pur­chased a sheep, which turned out a re­mark­ably good bar­gain, and re­turned to Jed­burgh. He had no cause to re­gret his gen­eros­ity in be­stow­ing his plaid on the fairies, for ev­ery day af­ter­wards his wealth mul­ti­plied, and he con­tin­ued till the day of his death a rich and pros­per­ous man.

* * * * *

About the be­gin­ning of har­vest, there hav­ing been a want of meal for _shear­ers_' bread in the farm­house of Bedrule, a small quan­ti­ty of bar­ley (be­ing all that was yet ripe) was cut down, and con­vert­ed in­to meal. Mrs. Buck­ham, the farmer's wife, rose ear­ly in the morn­ing to bake the bread, and, while she was en­gaged in bak­ing, a lit­tle wom­an in green cos­tume came in, and, with much po­lite­ness, asked for a loan of a cap­ful of meal. Mrs. Buck­ham thought it pru­dent to com­ply with her re­quest. In a short time af­ter­wards the wom­an in green re­turned with an equal quan­ti­ty of meal, which Mrs. Buck­ham put in­to the _meal-​ark_. This meal had such a last­ing qual­ity, that from it alone the gudewife of Bedrule baked as much bread as served her own fam­ily and the reapers through­out the har­vest, and when har­vest was over it was not ex­haust­ed.

THE SEAL-​CATCH­ER'S AD­VEN­TURE.

There was once up­on a time a man who lived up­on the north­ern coasts, not far from “Taigh Jan Crot Cal­low” (John-​o'-Groat's House), and he gained his liveli­hood by catch­ing and killing fish, of all sizes and de­nom­ina­tions. He had a par­tic­ular lik­ing for the killing of those won­der­ful beasts, half dog half fish, called “Roane,” or seals, no doubt be­cause he got a long price for their skins, which are not less cu­ri­ous than they are valu­able. The truth is, that the most of these an­imals are nei­ther dogs nor cods, but down­right fairies, as this nar­ra­tion will show; and, in­deed, it is easy for any man to con­vince him­self of the fact by a sim­ple ex­am­ina­tion of his _to­bac­co-​spluich­dan_, for the dead skins of those be­ings are nev­er the same for four-​and-​twen­ty hours to­geth­er. Some­times the _spluich­dan_ will erect its bris­tles al­most per­pen­dic­ular­ly, while, at oth­er times, it re­clines them even down; one time it re­sem­bles a bristly sow, at an­oth­er time a _sleek­it cat_; and what dead skin, ex­cept it­self, could per­form such cantrips? Now, it hap­pened one day, as this no­table fish­er had re­turned from the pros­ecu­tion of his call­ing, that he was called up­on by a man who seemed a great stranger, and who said he had been despatched for him by a per­son who wished to con­tract for a quan­ti­ty of seal-​skins, and that the fish­er must ac­com­pa­ny him (the stranger) im­me­di­ate­ly to see the per­son who wished to con­tract for the skins, as it was nec­es­sary that he should be served that evening. Hap­py in the prospect of mak­ing a good bar­gain, and nev­er sus­pect­ing any du­plic­ity, he in­stant­ly com­plied. They both mount­ed a steed be­long­ing to the stranger, and took the road with such ve­loc­ity that, al­though the di­rec­tion of the wind was to­wards their backs, yet the fleet­ness of their move­ment made it ap­pear as if it had been in their faces. On reach­ing a stu­pen­dous precipice which over­hung the sea, his guide told him they had now reached their des­ti­na­tion.

“Where is the per­son you spoke of!” in­quired the as­ton­ished seal-​killer.

“You shall see that present­ly,” replied the guide. With that they im­me­di­ate­ly alight­ed, and, with­out al­low­ing the seal-​killer much time to in­dulge the fright­ful sus­pi­cions that be­gan to per­vade his mind, the stranger seized him with ir­re­sistible force, and plunged head­long with him in­to the sea. Af­ter sink­ing down, down, no­body knows how far, they at length reached a door, which, be­ing open, led them in­to a range of apart­ments, filled with in­hab­itants--not peo­ple, but seals, who could nev­er­the­less speak and feel like hu­man folk; and how much was the seal- killer sur­prised to find that he him­self had been un­con­scious­ly trans­formed in­to the like im­age. If it were not so, he would prob­ably have died from the want of breath. The na­ture of the poor fish­er's thoughts may be more eas­ily con­ceived than de­scribed. Look­ing at the na­ture of the quar­ters in­to which he had land­ed, all hopes of es­cape from them ap­peared whol­ly chimeri­cal, whilst the de­gree of com­fort, and length of life which the bar­ren scene promised him were far from be­ing flat­ter­ing. The “Roane,” who all seemed in very low spir­its, ap­peared to feel for him, and en­deav­oured to soothe the dis­tress which he evinced by the am­plest as­sur­ances of per­son­al safe­ty. In­volved in sad med­ita­tion on his evil fate, he was quick­ly roused from his stu­por by his guide's pro­duc­ing a huge gul­ly or joc­ta­leg, the ob­ject of which he sup­posed was to put an end to all his earth­ly cares. For­lorn as was his sit­ua­tion, how­ev­er, he did not wish to be killed; and, ap­pre­hend­ing in­stant de­struc­tion, he fell down, and earnest­ly im­plored for mer­cy. The poor gen­er­ous an­imals did not mean him any harm, how­ev­er much his for­mer con­duct de­served it, and he was ac­cord­ing­ly de­sired to paci­fy him­self, and cease his cries.

“Did you ev­er see that knife be­fore?” said the stranger to the fish­er.

The lat­ter in­stant­ly recog­nised his own knife, which he had that day stuck in­to a seal, and with which it had es­caped, and ac­knowl­edged it was for­mer­ly his own, for what would be the use of deny­ing it?

“Well,” re­joined the guide, “the ap­par­ent seal which made away with it is my fa­ther, who has lain dan­ger­ous­ly ill ev­er since, and no means can stay his fleet­ing breath with­out your aid. I have been obliged to re­sort to the ar­ti­fice I have prac­tised to bring you hith­er, and I trust that my fil­ial du­ty to my fa­ther will read­ily ex­cuse me.”

Hav­ing said this, he led in­to an­oth­er apart­ment the trem­bling seal-​killer, who ex­pect­ed ev­ery minute to be pun­ished for his own ill- treat­ment of the fa­ther. There he found the iden­ti­cal seal with which he had had the en­counter in the morn­ing, suf­fer­ing most grievous­ly from a tremen­dous cut in its hind-​quar­ter. The seal-​killer was then de­sired, with his hand, to ci­ca­trise the wound, up­on do­ing which it im­me­di­ate­ly healed, and the seal arose from its bed in per­fect health. Up­on this the scene changed from mourn­ing to re­joic­ing--all was mirth and glee. Very dif­fer­ent, how­ev­er, were the feel­ings of the un­for­tu­nate seal-​catch­er, who ex­pect­ed no doubt to be meta­mor­phosed in­to a seal for the re­main­der of his life. How­ev­er, his late guide ac­cost­ing him, said--

“Now, sir, you are at lib­er­ty to re­turn to your wife and fam­ily, to whom I am about to con­duct you; but it is on this ex­press con­di­tion, to which you must bind your­self by a solemn oath, viz. that you will nev­er maim or kill a seal in all your life­time here­after.”

To this con­di­tion, hard as it was, he joy­ful­ly ac­ced­ed; and the oath be­ing ad­min­is­tered in all due form, he bade his new ac­quain­tance most hearti­ly and sin­cere­ly a long farewell. Tak­ing hold of his guide, they is­sued from the place and swam up, till they re­gained the sur­face of the sea, and, land­ing at the said stu­pen­dous pin­na­cle, they found their for­mer steed ready for a sec­ond can­ter. The guide breathed up­on the fish­er, and they be­came like men. They mount­ed their horse, and fleet as had been their course to­wards the precipice, their re­turn from it was dou­bly swift; and the hon­est seal-​killer was laid down at his own door- cheek, where his guide made him such a present as would have al­most rec­on­ciled him to an­oth­er sim­ilar ex­pe­di­tion, such as ren­dered his loss of pro­fes­sion, in so far as re­gard­ed the seals, a far less in­tol­er­able hard­ship than he had at first con­sid­ered it.

THE FAIRIES OF MER­LIN'S CRAIG.

Ear­ly in the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, John Smith, a barn-​man at a farm, was sent by his mas­ter to cast div­ots (turf) on the green im­me­di­ate­ly be­hind Mer­lin's Craig. Af­ter hav­ing laboured for a con­sid­er­able time, there came round from the front of the rock a lit­tle wom­an, about eigh­teen inch­es in height, clad in a green gown and red stock­ings, with long yel­low hair hang­ing down to her waist, who asked the as­ton­ished op­er­ator how he would feel were she to send her hus­band to _tir_ (un­cov­er) his house, at the same time com­mand­ing him to place ev­ery _div­ot_ he had cast _in statu quo_. John obeyed with fear and trem­bling, and, re­turn­ing to his mas­ter, told what had hap­pened. The farmer laughed at his creduli­ty, and, anx­ious to cure him of such idle su­per­sti­tion, or­dered him to take a cart and fetch home the _div­ots_ im­me­di­ate­ly.

John obeyed, al­though with much re­luc­tance. Noth­ing hap­pened to him in con­se­quence till that day twelve months, when he left his mas­ter's work at the usu­al hour in the evening, with a small _stoup_ of milk in his hand, but he did not reach home, nor was he ev­er heard of for years (I have for­got­ten how many), when, up­on the an­niver­sary of that un­for­tu­nate day, John walked in­to his house at the usu­al hour, with the milk-​stoup in his hand.

The ac­count that he gave of his cap­tiv­ity was that, on the evening of that event­ful day, re­turn­ing home from his labour, when pass­ing Mer­lin's Craig, he felt him­self sud­den­ly tak­en ill, and sat down to rest a lit­tle. Soon af­ter he fell asleep, and awoke, as he sup­posed, about mid­night, when there was a troop of male and fe­male fairies danc­ing round him. They in­sist­ed up­on his join­ing in the sport, and gave him the finest girl in the com­pa­ny as a part­ner. She took him by the hand; they danced three times round in a fairy ring, af­ter which he be­came so hap­py that he felt no in­cli­na­tion to leave his new as­so­ciates. Their amuse­ments were pro­tract­ed till he heard his mas­ter's cock crow, when the whole troop im­me­di­ate­ly rushed for­ward to the front of the craig, hur­ry­ing him along with them. A door opened to re­ceive them, and he con­tin­ued a pris­on­er un­til the evening on which he re­turned, when the same wom­an who had first ap­peared to him when cast­ing _div­ots_ came and told him that the grass was again green on the roof of her house, which he had _tirred_, and if he would swear an oath, which she dic­tat­ed, nev­er to dis­cov­er what he had seen in fairy­land, he should be at lib­er­ty to re­turn to his fam­ily. John took the oath, and ob­served it most re­li­gious­ly, al­though sad­ly teased and ques­tioned by his help­mate, par­tic­ular­ly about the “bon­nie lassie” with whom he danced on the night of his de­par­ture. He was al­so ob­served to walk a mile out of his way rather than pass Mer­lin's Craig when the sun was be­low the hori­zon.

On a sub­se­quent oc­ca­sion the tiny in­hab­itants of Mer­lin's Craig sur­prised a shep­herd when watch­ing his fold at night; he was asleep, and his bon­net had fall­en off and rolled to some lit­tle dis­tance. He was awak­ened by the fairies danc­ing round him in a cir­cle, and was in­duced to join them; but rec­ol­lect­ing the fate of John Smith, he would not al­low his fe­male com­pan­ion to take hold of his hands. In the midst of their gam­bols they came close to the hillock where the shep­herd's bon­net lay,--he af­fect­ed to stum­ble, fell up­on his bon­net, which he im­me­di­ate­ly seized, clap­ping it on his head, when the whole troop in­stant­ly van­ished. This ex­or­cism was pro­duced by the tal­is­man­ic pow­er of a Cat­echism con­tain­ing the Lord's Prayer and the Apos­tles' Creed, which the shep­herd most for­tu­nate­ly rec­ol­lect­ed was de­posit­ed in the crown of his bon­net.

RO­RY MACGILLIVRAY.

Once up­on a time a ten­ant in the neigh­bour­hood of Cairn­gorm, in Strath­spey, em­igrat­ed with his fam­ily and cat­tle to the for­est of Gle­navon, which is well known to be in­hab­it­ed by many fairies as well as ghosts. Two of his sons be­ing out late one night in search of some of their sheep which had strayed, had oc­ca­sion to pass a fairy tur­ret, or dwelling, of very large di­men­sions; and what was their as­ton­ish­ment on ob­serv­ing streams of the most re­ful­gent light shin­ing forth through in­nu­mer­able crevices in the rock--crevices which the sharpest eye in the coun­try had nev­er seen be­fore. Cu­rios­ity led them to­wards the tur­ret, when they were charmed by the most exquisite sounds ev­er emit­ted by a fid­dle-​string, which, joined to the sportive mirth and glee ac­com­pa­ny­ing it, rec­on­ciled them in a great mea­sure to the scene, al­though they knew well enough the in­hab­itants of the nook were fairies. Nay, over­pow­ered by the en­chant­ing jigs played by the fid­dler, one of the broth­ers had even the hardi­hood to pro­pose that they should pay the oc­cu­pants of the tur­ret a short vis­it. To this mo­tion the oth­er broth­er, fond as he was of danc­ing, and an­imat­ed as he was by the mu­sic, would by no means con­sent, and he earnest­ly de­sired his broth­er to re­strain his cu­rios­ity. But ev­ery new jig that was played, and ev­ery new reel that was danced, in­spired the ad­ven­tur­ous broth­er with ad­di­tion­al ar­dour, and at length, com­plete­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by the en­chant­ing rev­el­ry, leav­ing all pru­dence be­hind, at one leap he en­tered the “Shi­an.” The poor for­lorn broth­er was now left in a most un­com­fort­able sit­ua­tion. His grief for the loss of a broth­er whom he dear­ly loved sug­gest­ed to him more than once the des­per­ate idea of shar­ing his fate by fol­low­ing his ex­am­ple. But, on the oth­er hand, when he cool­ly con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­ity of shar­ing very dif­fer­ent en­ter­tain­ment from that which rang up­on his ears, and re­mem­bered, too, the com­forts and con­ve­nience of his fa­ther's fire­side, the idea im­me­di­ate­ly ap­peared to him any­thing but pru­dent. Af­ter a long and dis­agree­able al­ter­ca­tion be­tween his af­fec­tion for his broth­er and his re­gard for him­self, he came to the res­olu­tion to take a mid­dle course, that is, to shout in at the win­dow a few re­mon­strances to his broth­er, which, if he did not at­tend to, let the con­se­quences be up­on his own head. Ac­cord­ing­ly, tak­ing his sta­tion at one of the crevices, and call­ing up­on his broth­er three sev­er­al times by name, as use is, he ut­tered the most mov­ing pieces of elo­cu­tion he could think of, im­plor­ing him, as he val­ued his poor par­ents' life and bless­ing, to come forth and go home with him, Don­ald Macgillivray, his thrice af­fec­tion­ate and un­hap­py broth­er. But whether it was the dancer could not hear this elo­quent ha­rangue, or, what is more prob­able, that he did not choose to at­tend to it, cer­tain it is that it proved to­tal­ly in­ef­fec­tu­al to ac­com­plish its ob­ject, and the con­se­quence was that Don­ald Macgillivray found it equal­ly his du­ty and his in­ter­est to re­turn home to his fam­ily with the melan­choly tale of poor Ro­ry's fate. All the pre­scribed cer­emonies cal­cu­lat­ed to res­cue him from the fairy do­min­ion were re­sort­ed to by his mourn­ing rel­atives with­out ef­fect, and Ro­ry was sup­posed lost for ev­er, when a “wise man” of the day hav­ing learned the cir­cum­stance, dis­cov­ered to his friends a plan by which they might de­liv­er him at the end of twelve months from his en­try.

“Re­turn,” says the _Duin Glichd_ to Don­ald, “to the place where you lost your broth­er a year and a day from the time. You will in­sert in your gar­ment a _Rowan Cross_, which will pro­tect you from the fairies' in­ter­po­si­tion. En­ter the tur­ret bold­ly and res­olute­ly in the name of the High­est, claim your broth­er, and, if he does not ac­com­pa­ny you vol­un­tar­ily, seize him and car­ry him off by force--none dare in­ter­fere with you.”

The ex­per­iment ap­peared to the cau­tious con­tem­pla­tive broth­er as one that was fraught with no or­di­nary dan­ger, and he would have most will­ing­ly de­clined the promi­nent char­ac­ter al­lot­ted to him in the per­for­mance but for the im­por­tu­nate en­treaty of his friends, who im­plored him, as he val­ued their bless­ing, not to slight such ex­cel­lent ad­vice. Their en­treaties, to­geth­er with his con­fi­dence in the virtues of the _Rowan Cross_, over­came his scru­ples, and he at length agreed to put the ex­per­iment in prac­tice, what­ev­er the re­sult might be.

Well, then, the im­por­tant day ar­rived, when the fa­ther of the two sons was des­tined ei­ther to re­cov­er his lost son, or to lose the on­ly son he had, and, anx­ious as the fa­ther felt, Don­ald Macgillivray, the in­tend­ed ad­ven­tur­er, felt no less so on the oc­ca­sion. The hour of mid­night ap­proached when the dra­ma was to be act­ed, and Don­ald Macgillivray, load­ed with all the charms and bene­dic­tions in his coun­try, took mourn­ful leave of his friends, and pro­ceed­ed to the scene of his in­tend­ed en­ter­prise. On ap­proach­ing the well-​known tur­ret, a rep­eti­tion of that mirth and those rav­ish­ing sounds, that had been the source of so much sor­row to him­self and fam­ily, once more at­tract­ed his at­ten­tion, with­out at all cre­at­ing in his mind any ex­traor­di­nary feel­ings of sat­is­fac­tion. On the con­trary, he ab­horred the sounds most hearti­ly, and felt much greater in­cli­na­tion to re­cede than to ad­vance. But what was to be done? Courage, char­ac­ter, and ev­ery­thing dear to him were at stake, so that to ad­vance was his on­ly al­ter­na­tive. In short, he reached the “Shi­an,” and, af­ter twen­ty fruit­less at­tempts, he at length en­tered the place with trem­bling foot­steps, and amidst the bril­liant and jovial scene the not least grat­ify­ing spec­ta­cle which pre­sent­ed it­self to Don­ald was his broth­er Ro­ry earnest­ly en­gaged at the High­land fling on the floor, at which, as might have been ex­pect­ed, he had great­ly im­proved. With­out los­ing much time in sat­is­fy­ing his cu­rios­ity by ex­am­in­ing the qual­ity of the com­pa­ny, Don­ald ran to his broth­er, re­peat­ing, most ve­he­ment­ly, the words pre­scribed to him by the “wise man,” seized him by the col­lar, and in­sist­ed on his im­me­di­ate­ly ac­com­pa­ny­ing him home to his poor af­flict­ed par­ents. Ro­ry as­sent­ed, pro­vid­ed he would al­low him to fin­ish his sin­gle reel, as­sur­ing Don­ald, very earnest­ly, that he had not been half an hour in the house. In vain did the lat­ter as­sure him that, in­stead of half an hour, he had ac­tu­al­ly re­mained twelve months. Nor would he have be­lieved his over­joyed friends when his broth­er at length got him home, did not the calves, now grown in­to stots, and the new-​born babes, now trav­el­ling the house, at length con­vince him that in his sin­gle reel he had danced for a twelve­month and a day.

THE HAUNT­ED SHIPS.

“Though my mind's not Hood­winked with rus­tic mar­vels, I do think There are more things in the grove, the air, the flood, Yea, and the char­nelled earth, than what wise man, Who walks so proud as if his form alone Filled the wide tem­ple of the uni­verse, Will let a frail mind say. I'd write i' the creed O' the sagest head alive, that fear­ful forms, Holy or repro­bate, do page men's heels; That shapes, too hor­rid for our gaze, stand o'er The mur­der­er's dust, and for re­venge glare up, Even till the stars weep fire for very pity.”

Along the sea of Sol­way, ro­man­tic on the Scot­tish side, with its wood­land, its bays, its cliffs, and head­lands; and in­ter­est­ing on the En­glish side, with its many beau­ti­ful towns with their shad­ows on the wa­ter, rich pas­tures, safe har­bours, and nu­mer­ous ships, there still linger many tra­di­tion­al sto­ries of a mar­itime na­ture, most of them con­nect­ed with su­per­sti­tions sin­gu­lar­ly wild and un­usu­al. To the cu­ri­ous these tales af­ford a rich fund of en­ter­tain­ment, from the many di­ver­si­ties of the same sto­ry; some dry and bar­ren, and stripped of all the em­bel­lish­ments of po­et­ry; oth­ers dressed out in all the rich­es of a su­per­sti­tious be­lief and haunt­ed imag­ina­tion. In this they re­sem­ble the in­land tra­di­tions of the peas­ants; but many of the oral trea­sures of the Gal­we­gian or the Cum­bri­an coast have the stamp of the Dane and the Norse­man up­on them, and claim but a re­mote or faint affin­ity with the le­git­imate leg­ends of Cale­do­nia. Some­thing like a rude pro­sa­ic out­line of sev­er­al of the most not­ed of the north­ern bal­lads, the ad­ven­tures and depre­da­tions of the old ocean kings, still lends life to the evening tale; and, among oth­ers, the sto­ry of the Haunt­ed Ships is still pop­ular among the mar­itime peas­antry.

One fine har­vest evening I went on board the shal­lop of Richard Faul­der, of Al­lan­bay, and, com­mit­ting our­selves to the wa­ters, we al­lowed a gen­tle wind from the east to waft us at its plea­sure to­wards the Scot­tish coast. We passed the sharp promon­to­ry of Sid­dick, and, skirt­ing the land with­in a stonecast, glid­ed along the shore till we came with­in sight of the ru­ined Abbey of Sweet­heart. The green moun­tain of Cri­ffel as­cend­ed be­side us; and the bleat of the flocks from its sum­mit, to­geth­er with the wind­ing of the evening horn of the reapers, came soft­ened in­to some­thing like mu­sic over land and sea. We pushed our shal­lop in­to a deep and wood­ed bay, and sat silent­ly look­ing on the serene beau­ty of the place. The moon glim­mered in her ris­ing through the tall shafts of the pines of Caerlave­rock; and the sky, with scarce a cloud, show­ered down on wood and head­land and bay the twin­kling beams of a thou­sand stars, ren­der­ing ev­ery ob­ject vis­ible. The tide, too, was com­ing with that swift and silent swell ob­serv­able when the wind is gen­tle; the woody curves along the land were fill­ing with the flood, till it touched the green branch­es of the droop­ing trees; while in the cen­tre cur­rent the roll and the plunge of a thou­sand pel­locks told to the ex­pe­ri­enced fish­er­man that salmon were abun­dant.

As we looked, we saw an old man emerg­ing from a path that wound to the shore through a grove of dod­dered hazel; he car­ried a halve-​net on his back, while be­hind him came a girl, bear­ing a small har­poon, with which the fish­ers are re­mark­ably dex­ter­ous in strik­ing their prey. The se­nior seat­ed him­self on a large grey stone, which over­looked the bay, laid aside his bon­net, and sub­mit­ted his bo­som and neck to the re­fresh­ing sea breeze, and, tak­ing his har­poon from his at­ten­dant, sat with the grav­ity and com­po­sure of a spir­it of the flood, with his min­is­ter­ing nymph be­hind him. We pushed our shal­lop to the shore, and soon stood at their side.

“This is old Mark Mac­moran the mariner, with his grand­daugh­ter Bar­bara,” said Richard Faul­der, in a whis­per that had some­thing of fear in it; “he knows ev­ery creek and cav­ern and quick­sand in Sol­way; has seen the Spec­tre Hound that haunts the Isle of Man; has heard him bark, and at ev­ery bark has seen a ship sink; and he has seen, too, the Haunt­ed Ships in full sail; and, if all tales be true, he has sailed in them him­self;--he's an aw­ful per­son.”

Though I per­ceived in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of my friend some­thing of the su­per­sti­tion of the sailor, I could not help think­ing that com­mon ru­mour had made a hap­py choice in sin­gling out old Mark to main­tain her in­ter­course with the in­vis­ible world. His hair, which seemed to have re­fused all in­ter­course with the comb, hung mat­ted up­on his shoul­ders; a kind of man­tle, or rather blan­ket, pinned with a wood­en skew­er round his neck, fell mid-​leg down, con­ceal­ing all his nether gar­ments as far as a pair of hose, darned with yarn of all con­ceiv­able colours, and a pair of shoes, patched and re­paired till noth­ing of the orig­inal struc­ture re­mained, and clasped on his feet with two massy sil­ver buck­les. If the dress of the old man was rude and sor­did, that of his grand­daugh­ter was gay, and even rich. She wore a bodice of fine wool, wrought round the bo­som with al­ter­nate leaf and lily, and a kir­tle of the same fab­ric, which, al­most touch­ing her white and del­icate an­kle, showed her snowy feet, so fairy-​light and round that they scarce­ly seemed to touch the grass where she stood. Her hair, a nat­ural or­na­ment which wom­an seeks much to im­prove, was of bright glossy brown, and en­cum­bered rather than adorned with a snood, set thick with ma­rine pro­duc­tions, among which the small clear pearl found in the Sol­way was con­spic­uous. Na­ture had not trust­ed to a hand­some shape and a sylph-​like air for young Bar­bara's in­flu­ence over the heart of man, but had be­stowed a pair of large bright blue eyes, swim­ming in liq­uid light, so full of love and gen­tle­ness and joy, that all the sailors from An­nan­wa­ter to far Saint Bees ac­knowl­edged their pow­er, and sang songs about the bon­nie lass of Mark Mac­moran. She stood hold­ing a small gaff-​hook of pol­ished steel in her hand, and seemed not dis­sat­is­fied with the glances I be­stowed on her from time to time, and which I held more than re­quit­ed by a sin­gle glance of those eyes which re­tained so many capri­cious hearts in sub­jec­tion.

The tide, though rapid­ly aug­ment­ing, had not yet filled the bay at our feet. The moon now streamed fair­ly over the tops of Caerlave­rock pines, and showed the ex­panse of ocean dim­pling and swelling, on which sloops and shal­lops came danc­ing, and dis­play­ing at ev­ery turn their ex­tent of white sail against the beam of the moon. I looked on old Mark the mariner, who, seat­ed mo­tion­less on his grey stone, kept his eye fixed on the in­creas­ing wa­ters with a look of se­ri­ous­ness and sor­row, in which I saw lit­tle of the cal­cu­lat­ing spir­it of a mere fish­er­man. Though he looked on the com­ing tide, his eyes seemed to dwell par­tic­ular­ly on the black and de­cayed hulls of two ves­sels, which, half im­mersed in the quick­sand, still ad­dressed to ev­ery heart a tale of ship­wreck and des­ola­tion. The tide wheeled and foamed around them, and, creep­ing inch by inch up the side, at last fair­ly threw its wa­ters over the top, and a long and hol­low ed­dy showed the re­sis­tance which the liq­uid el­ement re­ceived.

The mo­ment they were fair­ly buried in the wa­ter, the old man clasped his hands to­geth­er, and said: “Blessed be the tide that will break over and bury ye for ev­er! Sad to mariners, and sor­row­ful to maids and moth­ers, has the time been you have choked up this deep and bon­nie bay. For evil were you sent, and for evil have you con­tin­ued. Ev­ery sea­son finds from you its song of sor­row and wail, its fu­ner­al pro­ces­sions, and its shroud­ed cors­es. Woe to the land where the wood grew that made ye! Cursed be the axe that hewed ye on the moun­tains, the hands that joined ye to­geth­er, the bay that ye first swam in, and the wind that waft­ed ye here! Sev­en times have ye put my life in per­il, three fair sons have ye swept from my side, and two bon­nie grand-​bairns; and now, even now, your wa­ters foam and flash for my de­struc­tion, did I ven­ture my in­firm limbs in quest of food in your dead­ly bay. I see by that rip­ple and that foam, and hear by the sound and singing of your surge, that ye yearn for an­oth­er vic­tim; but it shall not be me nor mine.”

Even as the old mariner ad­dressed him­self to the wrecked ships, a young man ap­peared at the south­ern ex­trem­ity of the bay, hold­ing his halve-​net in his hand, and has­ten­ing in­to the cur­rent. Mark rose and shout­ed, and waved him back from a place which, to a per­son un­ac­quaint­ed with the dan­gers of the bay, re­al and su­per­sti­tious, seemed suf­fi­cient­ly per­ilous; his grand­daugh­ter, too, added her voice to his, and waved her white hands; but the more they strove, the faster ad­vanced the peas­ant, till he stood to his mid­dle in the wa­ter, while the tide in­creased ev­ery mo­ment in depth and strength. “An­drew, An­drew,” cried the young wom­an, in a voice qua­ver­ing with emo­tion, “turn, turn, I tell you! O the Ships, the Haunt­ed Ships!” But the ap­pear­ance of a fine run of fish had more in­flu­ence with the peas­ant than the voice of bon­nie Bar­bara, and for­ward he dashed, net in hand. In a mo­ment he was borne off his feet, and min­gled like foam with the wa­ter, and hur­ried to­wards the fa­tal ed­dies which whirled and roared round the sunken ships. But he was a pow­er­ful young man, and an ex­pert swim­mer; he seized on one of the pro­ject­ing ribs of the near­est hulk, and cling­ing to it with the grasp of de­spair, ut­tered yell af­ter yell, sus­tain­ing him­self against the prodi­gious rush of the cur­rent.

From a sheal­ing of turf and straw, with­in the pitch of a bar from the spot where we stood, came out an old wom­an bent with age, and lean­ing on a crutch. “I heard the voice of that lad An­drew Lam­mie; can the chield be drown­ing that he skirls sae un­can­ni­ly?” said the old wom­an, seat­ing her­self on the ground, and look­ing earnest­ly at the wa­ter. “Ou, ay,” she con­tin­ued, “he's doomed, he's doomed; heart and hand can nev­er save him; boats, ropes, and man's strength and wit, all vain! vain!--he's doomed, he's doomed!”

By this time I had thrown my­self in­to the shal­lop, fol­lowed re­luc­tant­ly by Richard Faul­der, over whose courage and kind­ness of heart su­per­sti­tion had great pow­er, and with one push from the shore, and some ex­er­tion in sculling, we came with­in a quoit­cast of the un­for­tu­nate fish­er­man. He stayed not to prof­it by our aid; for, when he per­ceived us near, he ut­tered a pierc­ing shriek of joy, and bound­ed to­wards us through the ag­itat­ed el­ement the full length of an oar. I saw him for a sec­ond on the sur­face of the wa­ter, but the ed­dy­ing cur­rent sucked him down; and all I ev­er be­held of him again was his hand held above the flood, and clutch­ing in agony at some imag­inary aid. I sat gaz­ing in hor­ror on the va­cant sea be­fore us; but a breath­ing-​time be­fore, a hu­man be­ing, full of youth and strength and hope, was there; his cries were still ring­ing in my ears, and echo­ing in the woods; and now noth­ing was seen or heard save the tur­bu­lent ex­panse of wa­ter, and the sound of its chaf­ing on the shores. We pushed back our shal­lop, and re­sumed our sta­tion on the cliff be­side the old mariner and his de­scen­dant.

“Where­fore sought ye to per­il your own lives fruit­less­ly,” said Mark, “in at­tempt­ing to save the doomed? Whoso touch­es those in­fer­nal ships nev­er sur­vives to tell the tale. Woe to the man who is found nigh them at mid­night when the tide has sub­sid­ed, and they arise in their for­mer beau­ty, with fore­cas­tle, and deck, and sail, and pen­non, and shroud! Then is seen the stream­ing of lights along the wa­ter from their cab­in win­dows, and then is heard the sound of mirth and the clam­our of tongues, and the in­fer­nal whoop and hal­loo and song, ring­ing far and wide. Woe to the man who comes nigh them!”

To all this my Al­lan­bay com­pan­ion lis­tened with a breath­less at­ten­tion. I felt some­thing touched with a su­per­sti­tion to which I part­ly be­lieved I had seen one vic­tim of­fered up; and I in­quired of the old mariner, “How and when came these Haunt­ed Ships there? To me they seem but the melan­choly relics of some un­hap­py voy­agers, and much more like­ly to warn peo­ple to shun de­struc­tion than en­tice and de­lude them to it.”

“And so,” said the old man with a smile, which had more of sor­row in it than of mirth; "and so, young man, these black and shat­tered hulks seem to the eye of the mul­ti­tude. But things are not what they seem: that wa­ter, a kind and con­ve­nient ser­vant to the wants of man, which seems so smooth and so dim­pling and so gen­tle, has swal­lowed up a hu­man soul even now; and the place which it cov­ers, so fair and so lev­el, is a faith­less quick­sand, out of which none es­cape. Things are oth­er­wise than they seem. Had you lived as long as I have had the sor­row to live; had you seen the storms, and braved the per­ils, and en­dured the dis­tress­es which have be­fall­en me; had you sat gaz­ing out on the drea­ry ocean at mid­night on a haunt­ed coast; had you seen com­rade af­ter com­rade, broth­er af­ter broth­er, and son af­ter son, swept away by the mer­ci­less ocean from your very side; had you seen the shapes of friends, doomed to the wave and the quick­sand, ap­pear­ing to you in the dreams and vi­sions of the night, then would your mind have been pre­pared for cred­it­ing the mar­itime leg­ends of mariners; and the two haunt­ed Dan­ish ships would have had their ter­rors for you, as they have for all who so­journ on this coast.

“Of the time and the cause of their de­struc­tion,” con­tin­ued the old man, "I know noth­ing cer­tain; they have stood as you have seen them for un­count­ed time; and while all oth­er ships wrecked on this un­hap­py coast have gone to pieces, and rot­ted and sunk away in a few years, these two haunt­ed hulks have nei­ther sunk in the quick­sand, nor has a sin­gle spar or board been dis­placed. Mar­itime leg­end says that two ships of Den­mark hav­ing had per­mis­sion, for a time, to work deeds of dark­ness and do­lor on the deep, were at last con­demned to the whirlpool and the sunken rock, and were wrecked in this bon­nie bay, as a sign to sea­men to be gen­tle and de­vout. The night when they were lost was a har­vest evening of un­com­mon mild­ness and beau­ty: the sun had new­ly set; the moon came brighter and brighter out; and the reapers, lay­ing their sick­les at the root of the stand­ing corn, stood on rock and bank, look­ing at the in­creas­ing mag­ni­tude of the wa­ters, for sea and land were vis­ible from Saint Bees to Barn­hourie. The sails of two ves­sels were soon seen bent for the Scot­tish coast; and, with a speed out­run­ning the swiftest ship, they ap­proached the dan­ger­ous quick­sands and head­land of Bor­ran­point. On the deck of the fore­most ship not a liv­ing soul was seen, or shape, un­less some­thing in dark­ness and form, re­sem­bling a hu­man shad­ow could be called a shape, which flit­ted from ex­trem­ity to ex­trem­ity of the ship, with the ap­pear­ance of trim­ming the sails, and di­rect­ing the ves­sel's course. But the decks of its com­pan­ion were crowd­ed with hu­man shapes; the cap­tain and mate, and sailor and cab­in-​boy, all seemed there; and from them the sound of mirth and min­strel­sy echoed over land and wa­ter. The coast which they skirt­ed along was one of ex­treme dan­ger, and the reapers shout­ed to warn them to be­ware of sand­bank and rock; but of this friend­ly coun­sel no no­tice was tak­en, ex­cept that a large and fam­ished dog, which sat on the prow, an­swered ev­ery shout with a long, loud, and melan­choly howl. The deep sand­bank of Carsethorn was ex­pect­ed to ar­rest the ca­reer of these des­per­ate nav­iga­tors; but they passed, with the celer­ity of wa­ter-​fowl, over an ob­struc­tion which had wrecked many pret­ty ships.

“Old men shook their heads and de­part­ed, say­ing, 'We have seen the fiend sail­ing in a bot­tom­less ship; let us go home and pray;' but one young and wil­ful man said, 'Fiend! I'll war­rant it's nae fiend, but douce Janet With­er­shins the witch, hold­ing a carouse with some of her Cum­ber­land cum­mers, and mick­le red wine will be spilt atween them. Dod I would glad­ly have a tooth­fu'! I'll war­rant it's nane o' your cauld sour slae- wa­ter like a bot­tle of Bailie Skrinkie's port, but right drap-​o'-my-​heart's-​blood stuff, that would wak­en a body out of their last linen. I won­der where the cum­mers will an­chor their craft?' 'And I'll vow,' said an­oth­er rus­tic, 'the wine they quaff is none of your vi­sion­ary drink, such as a drouthie body has dished out to his lips in a dream; nor is it shad­owy and un­sub­stan­tial, like the ves­sels they sail in, which are made out of a cock­el-​shell or a cast-​off slip­per, or the par­ing of a sea­man's right thumb-​nail. I once got a hansel out of a witch's quaigh my­self--auld Mar­ion Math­ers, of Dustiefoot, whom they tried to bury in the old kirk­yard of Dun­score; but the cum­mer raise as fast as they laid her down, and nae­where else would she lie but in the bon­nie green kirk­yard of Ki­er, among douce and spon­si­ble fowk. So I'll vow that the wine of a witch's cup is as fell liquor as ev­er did a kind­ly turn to a poor man's heart; and be they fiends, or be they witch­es, if they have red wine as­teer, I'll risk a drouket sark for ae glo­ri­ous tout on't.”

"'Si­lence, ye sin­ners,' said the min­is­ter's son of a neigh­bour­ing parish, who unit­ed in his own per­son his fa­ther's lack of de­vo­tion with his moth­er's love of liquor. 'Whist!--speak as if ye had the fear of some­thing holy be­fore ye. Let the ves­sels run their own way to de­struc­tion: who can stay the east­ern wind, and the cur­rent of the Sol­way sea? I can find ye Scrip­ture war­rant for that; so let them try their strength on Blawhooly rocks, and their might on the broad quick­sand. There's a surf run­ning there would knock the ribs to­geth­er of a gal­ley built by the imps of the pit, and com­mand­ed by the Prince of Dark­ness. Bon­ni­ly and brave­ly they sail away there, but be­fore the blast blows by they'll be wrecked; and red wine and strong brandy will be as rife as dyke-​wa­ter, and we'll drink the health of bon­nie Bell Black­ness out of her left-​foot slip­per.'

“The speech of the young prof­li­gate was ap­plaud­ed by sev­er­al of his com­pan­ions, and away they flew to the bay of Blawhooly, from whence they nev­er re­turned. The two ves­sels were ob­served all at once to stop in the bo­som of the bay, on the spot where their hulls now ap­pear; the mirth and the min­strel­sy waxed loud­er than ev­er, and the forms of maid­ens, with in­stru­ments of mu­sic and wine-​cups in their hands, thronged the decks. A boat was low­ered; and the same shad­owy pi­lot who con­duct­ed the ships made it start to­wards the shore with the ra­pid­ity of light­ning, and its head knocked against the bank where the four young men stood who longed for the un­blest drink. They leaped in with a laugh, and with a laugh were they wel­comed on deck; wine-​cups were giv­en to each, and as they raised them to their lips the ves­sels melt­ed away be­neath their feet, and one loud shriek, min­gled with laugh­ter still loud­er, was heard over land and wa­ter for many miles. Noth­ing more was heard or seen till the morn­ing, when the crowd who came to the beach saw with fear and won­der the two Haunt­ed Ships, such as they now seem, masts and tack­le gone; nor mark, nor sign, by which their name, coun­try, or des­ti­na­tion could be known, was left re­main­ing. Such is the tra­di­tion of the mariners; and its truth has been at­test­ed by many fam­ilies whose sons and whose fa­thers have been drowned in the haunt­ed bay of Blawhooly.”

“And trow ye,” said the old wom­an, who, at­tract­ed from her hut by the drown­ing cries of the young fish­er­man, had re­mained an au­di­tor of the mariner's leg­end,--"And trow ye, Mark Mac­moran, that the tale of the Haunt­ed Ships is done? I can say no to that. Mick­le have mine ears heard; but more mine eyes have wit­nessed since I came to dwell in this hum­ble home by the side of the deep sea. I mind the night weel; it was on Hal­low­mas Eve; the nuts were cracked, and the ap­ples were eat­en, and spell and charm were tried at my fire­side; till, wea­ried with div­ing in­to the dark waves of fu­tu­ri­ty, the lads and lass­es fair­ly took to the more vis­ible bless­ings of kind words, ten­der clasps, and gen­tle courtship. Soft words in a maid­en's ear, and a kind­ly kiss o' her lip were old-​world mat­ters to me, Mark Mac­moran; though I mean not to say that I have been free of the fol­ly of dauner­ing and daf­fin with a youth in my day, and keep­ing tryst with him in dark and lone­ly places. How­ev­er, as I say, these times of en­joy­ment were passed and gone with me--the mair's the pity that plea­sure should fly sae fast away--and as I could­na make sport I thought I should not mar any; so out I saun­tered in­to the fresh cold air, and sat down be­hind that old oak, and looked abroad on the wide sea. I had my ain sad thoughts, ye may think, at the time: it was in that very bay my blythe good-​man per­ished, with sev­en more in his com­pa­ny; and on that very bank where ye see the waves leap­ing and foam­ing, I saw sev­en state­ly cors­es streeked, but the dear­est was the eighth. It was a wo­ful sight to me, a wid­ow, with four bon­nie boys, with nought to sup­port them but these twa hands, and God's bless­ing, and a cow's grass. I have nev­er liked to live out of sight of this bay since that time; and mo­ny's the moon­light night I sit look­ing on these wa­tery moun­tains and these waste shores; it does my heart good, what­ev­er it may do to my head. So ye see it was Hal­low­mas Night, and look­ing on sea and land sat I; and my heart wan­der­ing to oth­er thoughts soon made me for­get my youth­ful com­pa­ny at hame. It might be near the howe hour of the night. The tide was mak­ing, and its singing brought strange old-​world sto­ries with it, and I thought on the dan­gers that sailors en­dure, the fates they meet with, and the fear­ful forms they see. My own blythe good­man had seen sights that made him grave enough at times, though he aye tried to laugh them away.

“Aweel, atween that very rock aneath us and the com­ing tide, I saw, or thought I saw--for the tale is so dream­like that the whole might pass for a vi­sion of the night,--I saw the form of a man; his plaid was grey, his face was grey; and his hair, which hung low down till it near­ly came to the mid­dle of his back, was as white as the white sea-​foam. He be­gan to howk and dig un­der the bank; an' God be near me, thought I, this maun be the un­blessed spir­it of auld Adam Gowd­gow­pin the miser, who is doomed to dig for ship­wrecked trea­sure, and count how many mil­lions are hid­den for ev­er from man's en­joy­ment. The form found some­thing which in shape and hue seemed a left-​foot slip­per of brass; so down to the tide he marched, and, plac­ing it on the wa­ter, whirled it thrice round, and the in­fer­nal slip­per di­lat­ed at ev­ery turn, till it be­came a bon­nie barge with its sails bent, and on board leaped the form, and scud­ded swift­ly away. He came to one of the Haunt­ed Ships, and strik­ing it with his oar, a fair ship, with mast and can­vas and mariners, start­ed up; he touched the oth­er Haunt­ed Ship, and pro­duced the like trans­for­ma­tion; and away the three spec­tre ships bound­ed, leav­ing a track of fire be­hind them on the bil­lows which was long un­ex­tin­guished. Now was­na that a bon­nie and fear­ful sight to see be­neath the light of the Hal­low­mas moon? But the tale is far frae fin­ished, for mariners say that once a year, on a cer­tain night, if ye stand on the Bor­ran Point, ye will see the in­fer­nal shal­lops com­ing snor­ing through the Sol­way; ye will hear the same laugh and song and mirth and min­strel­sy which our an­ces­tors heard; see them bound over the sand­banks and sunken rocks like sea-​gulls, cast their an­chor in Blawhooly Bay, while the shad­owy fig­ure low­ers down the boat, and aug­ments their num­bers with the four un­hap­py mor­tals to whose mem­ory a stone stands in the kirk­yard, with a sink­ing ship and a shore­less sea cut up­on it. Then the spec­tre ships van­ish, and the drown­ing shriek of mor­tals and the re­joic­ing laugh of fiends are heard, and the old hulls are left as a memo­ri­al that the old spir­itu­al king­dom has not de­part­ed from the earth. But I maun away, and trim my lit­tle cot­tage fire, and make it burn and blaze up bon­nie, to warm the crick­ets and my cold and crazy bones that maun soon be laid aneath the green sod in the eerie kirk­yard.” And away the old dame tot­tered to her cot­tage, se­cured the door on the in­side, and soon the hearth-​flame was seen to glim­mer and gleam through the key­hole and win­dow.

“I'll tell ye what,” said the old mariner, in a sub­dued tone, and with a shrewd and sus­pi­cious glance of his eye af­ter the old sibyl, “it's a word that may not very well be ut­tered, but there are many mis­takes made in evening sto­ries if old Moll Moray there, where she lives, knows not mick­le more than she is will­ing to tell of the Haunt­ed Ships and their un­hal­lowed mariners. She lives can­ni­ly and qui­et­ly; no one knows how she is fed or sup­port­ed; but her dress is aye whole, her cot­tage ev­er smokes, and her ta­ble lacks nei­ther of wine, white and red, nor of fowl and fish, and white bread and brown. It was a dear scoff to Jock Math­eson, when he called old Moll the un­can­ny car­line of Blawhooly: his boat ran round and round in the cen­tre of the Sol­way--ev­ery­body said it was en­chant­ed--and down it went head fore­most; and had­na Jock been a swim­mer equal to a shel­drake, he would have fed the fish. But I'll war­rant it sobered the lad's speech; and he nev­er reck­oned him­self safe till he made old Moll the present of a new kir­tle and a stone of cheese.”

“O fa­ther!” said his grand­daugh­ter Bar­bara, "ye sure­ly wrong poor old Mary Moray; what use could it be to an old wom­an like her, who has no wrongs to re­dress, no mal­ice to work out against mankind, and noth­ing to seek of en­joy­ment save a can­ny hour and a qui­et grave--what use could the fel­low­ship of fiends and the com­mu­nion of evil spir­its be to her? I know Jen­ny Prim­rose puts rowan-​tree above the door-​head when she sees old Mary com­ing; I know the good-​wife of Kit­tle­naket wears rowan-​berry leaves in the head­band of her blue kir­tle, and all for the sake of avert­ing the un­son­sie glance of Mary's right ee; and I know that the auld Laird of Burn­trout­wa­ter drives his sev­en cows to their pas­ture with a wand of witch-​tree, to keep Mary from milk­ing them. But what has all that to do with haunt­ed shal­lops, vi­sion­ary mariners, and bot­tom­less boats? I have heard my­self as pleas­ant a tale about the Haunt­ed Ships and their un­world­ly crews as any one would wish to hear in a win­ter evening. It was told me by young Ben­jie Macharg, one sum­mer night, sit­ting on Ar­bigland-​bank: the lad in­tend­ed a sort of love meet­ing; but all that he could talk of was about smear­ing sheep and shear­ing sheep, and of the wife which the Nor­way elves of the Haunt­ed Ships made for his un­cle Sandie Macharg. And I shall tell ye the tale as the hon­est lad told it to me.

"Alexan­der Macharg, be­sides be­ing the laird of three acres of peat­moss, two kale gar­dens, and the own­er of sev­en good milch cows, a pair of hors­es, and six pet sheep, was the hus­band of one of the hand­somest wom­en in sev­en parish­es. Many a lad sighed the day he was brid­ed; and a Niths­dale laird and two An­nan­dale moor­land farm­ers drank them­selves to their last linen, as well as their last shilling, through sor­row for her loss. But mar­ried was the dame; and home she was car­ried, to bear rule over her home and her hus­band, as an hon­est wom­an should. Now ye maun ken that though the flesh-​and-​blood lovers of Alexan­der's bon­nie wife all ceased to love and to sue her af­ter she be­came an­oth­er's, there were cer­tain ad­mir­ers who did not con­sid­er their claim at all abat­ed, or their hopes less­ened by the kirk's fa­mous ob­sta­cle of mat­ri­mo­ny. Ye have heard how the de­vout min­is­ter of Tin­wald had a fair son car­ried away, and wed­ded against his lik­ing to an unchris­tened bride, whom the elves and the fairies pro­vid­ed; ye have heard how the bon­nie bride of the drunk­en Laird of Souk­it­up was stolen by the fairies out at the back-​win­dow of the bridal cham­ber, the time the bride­groom was grop­ing his way to the cham­ber door; and ye have heard--but why need I mul­ti­ply cas­es? Such things in the an­cient days were as com­mon as can­dle-​light. So ye'll no hin­der cer­tain wa­ter elves and sea fairies, who some­times keep fes­ti­val and sum­mer mirth in these old haunt­ed hulks, from falling in love with the weel-​fau­red wife of Laird Macharg; and to their plots and con­trivances they went how they might ac­com­plish to sun­der man and wife; and sun­der­ing such a man and such a wife was like sun­der­ing the green leaf from the sum­mer, or the fra­grance from the flow­er.

"So it fell on a time that Laird Macharg took his halve-​net on his back, and his steel spear in his hand, and down to Blawhooly Bay gaed he, and in­to the wa­ter he went right be­tween the two haunt­ed hulks, and plac­ing his net await­ed the com­ing of the tide. The night, ye maun ken, was mirk, and the wind lowne, and the singing of the in­creas­ing wa­ters among the shells and the pee­bles was heard for sundry miles. All at once light be­gan to glance and twin­kle on board the two Haunt­ed Ships from ev­ery hole and seam, and present­ly the sound as of a hatch­et em­ployed in squar­ing tim­ber echoed far and wide. But if the toil of these un­earth­ly work­men amazed the laird, how much more was his amaze­ment in­creased when a sharp shrill voice called out, 'Ho, broth­er! what are you do­ing now?' A voice still shriller re­spond­ed from the oth­er haunt­ed ship, 'I'm mak­ing a wife to Sandie Macharg!' And a loud qua­ver­ing laugh run­ning from ship to ship, and from bank to bank, told the joy they ex­pect­ed from their labour.

"Now the laird, be­sides be­ing a de­vout and a God-​fear­ing man, was shrewd and bold; and in plot and con­trivance, and skill in con­duct­ing his de­signs, was fair­ly an over­match for any dozen land elves; but the wa­ter elves are far more sub­tle; be­sides their haunts and their dwellings be­ing in the great deep, pur­suit and de­tec­tion is hope­less if they suc­ceed in car­ry­ing their prey to the waves. But ye shall hear. Home flew the laird, col­lect­ed his fam­ily around the hearth, spoke of the signs and the sins of the times, and talked of mor­ti­fi­ca­tion and prayer for avert­ing calami­ty; and, fi­nal­ly, tak­ing his fa­ther's Bible, brass clasps, black print, and cov­ered with calf-​skin, from the shelf, he pro­ceed­ed with­out let or stint to per­form do­mes­tic wor­ship. I should have told ye that he bolt­ed and locked the door, shut up all in­let to the house, threw salt in­to the fire, and pro­ceed­ed in ev­ery way like a man skil­ful in guard­ing against the plots of fairies and fiends. His wife looked on all this with won­der; but she saw some­thing in her hus­band's looks that hin­dered her from in­trud­ing ei­ther ques­tion or ad­vice, and a wise wom­an was she.

"Near the mid-​hour of the night the rush of a horse's feet was heard, and the sound of a rid­er leap­ing from its back, and a heavy knock came to the door, ac­com­pa­nied by a voice, say­ing, 'The cum­mer drink's hot, and the knave bairn is ex­pect­ed at Laird Lau­rie's to-​night; sae mount, good-​wife, and come.'

"'Pre­serve me!' said the wife of Sandie Macharg, 'that's news in­deed; who could have thought it? The laird has been heir­less for sev­en­teen years! Now, Sandie, my man, fetch me my skirt and hood.'

"But he laid his arm round his wife's neck, and said, 'If all the lairds in Gal­loway go heir­less, over this door thresh­old shall you not stir to- night; and I have said, and I have sworn it; seek not to know why or where­fore--but, Lord, send us thy blessed morn­light.' The wife looked for a mo­ment in her hus­band's eyes, and de­sist­ed from fur­ther en­treaty.

"'But let us send a civ­il mes­sage to the gos­sips, Sandy; and had­na ye bet­ter say I am sair laid with a sud­den sick­ness? though it's sin­ful-​like to send the poor mes­sen­ger a mile agate with a lie in his mouth with­out a glass of brandy.'

"'To such a mes­sen­ger, and to those who sent him, no apol­ogy is need­ed,' said the aus­tere laird; 'so let him de­part.' And the clat­ter of a horse's hoofs was heard, and the mut­tered im­pre­ca­tions of its rid­er on the churl­ish treat­ment he had ex­pe­ri­enced.

“'Now, Sandie, my lad,' said his wife, lay­ing an arm par­tic­ular­ly white and round about his neck as she spoke, 'are you not a queer man and a stern? I have been your wed­ded wife now these three years; and, be­side my dow­er, have brought you three as bon­nie bairns as ev­er smiled aneath a sum­mer sun. O man, you a douce man, and fit­ter to be an el­der than even Willie Greer him­self, I have the min­is­ter's ain word for 't, to put on these hard-​heart­ed looks, and gang wav­ing your arms that way, as if ye said, ”I win­na take the coun­sel of sic a hempie as you;" I'm your ain leal wife, and will and maun have an ex­pla­na­tion.'

“To all this Sandie Macharg replied, 'It is writ­ten, ”Wives, obey your hus­bands"; but we have been stayed in our de­vo­tion, so let us pray;' and down he knelt: his wife knelt al­so, for she was as de­vout as bon­nie; and be­side them knelt their house­hold, and all lights were ex­tin­guished.

"'Now this beats a',' mut­tered his wife to her­self; 'how­ev­er, I shall be obe­di­ent for a time; but if I din­na ken what all this is for be­fore the morn by sun­ket-​time, my tongue is nae langer a tongue, nor my hands worth wear­ing.'

"The voice of her hus­band in prayer in­ter­rupt­ed this men­tal so­lil­oquy; and ar­dent­ly did he be­seech to be pre­served from the wiles of the fiends and the snares of Sa­tan; from witch­es, ghosts, gob­lins, elves, fairies, spunkies, and wa­ter-​kelpies; from the spec­tre shal­lop of Sol­way; from spir­its vis­ible and in­vis­ible; from the Haunt­ed Ships and their un­earth­ly ten­ants; from mar­itime spir­its that plot­ted against god­ly men, and fell in love with their wives--'

"'Nay, but His pres­ence be near us!' said his wife, in a low tone of dis­may. 'God guide my gude­man's wits: I nev­er heard such a prayer from hu­man lips be­fore. But, Sandie, my man, Lord's sake, rise. What fear­ful light is this? Barn and byre and sta­ble maun be in a blaze; and Hawkie, and Hur­ley, Dod­die, and Cher­rie, and Damson­plum will be smoored with reek, and scorched with flame.'

“And a flood of light, but not so gross as a com­mon fire, which as­cend­ed to heav­en and filled all the court be­fore the house, am­ply jus­ti­fied the good-​wife's sus­pi­cions. But to the ter­rors of fire Sandie was as im­mov­able as he was to the imag­inary groans of the bar­ren wife of Laird Lau­rie; and he held his wife, and threat­ened the weight of his right hand--and it was a heavy one--to all who ven­tured abroad, or even un­bolt­ed the door. The neigh­ing and pranc­ing of hors­es, and the bel­low­ing of cows, aug­ment­ed the hor­rors of the night; and to any one who on­ly heard the din, it seemed that the whole on­stead was in a blaze, and hors­es and cat­tle per­ish­ing in the flame. All wiles, com­mon or ex­traor­di­nary, were put in prac­tice to en­tice or force the hon­est farmer and his wife to open the door; and when the like suc­cess at­tend­ed ev­ery new stratagem, si­lence for a lit­tle while en­sued, and a long, loud, and shrilling laugh wound up the dra­mat­ic ef­forts of the night. In the morn­ing, when Laird Macharg went to the door, he found stand­ing against one of the pi­lasters a piece of black ship oak, rude­ly fash­ioned in­to some­thing like hu­man form, and which skil­ful peo­ple de­clared would have been clothed with seem­ing flesh and blood, and palmed up­on him by elfin adroit­ness for his wife, had he ad­mit­ted his vis­itants. A syn­od of wise men and wom­en sat up­on the wom­an of tim­ber, and she was fi­nal­ly or­dered to be de­voured by fire, and that in the open air. A fire was soon made, and in­to it the elfin sculp­ture was tossed from the prongs of two pairs of pitch­forks. The blaze that arose was aw­ful to be­hold; and hiss­ings and burst­ings and loud crack­lings and strange nois­es were heard in the midst of the flame; and when the whole sank in­to ash­es, a drink­ing-​cup of some pre­cious met­al was found; and this cup, fash­ioned no doubt by elfin skill, but ren­dered harm­less by the pu­rifi­ca­tion with fire, the sons and daugh­ters of Sandie Macharg and his wife drink out of to this very day. Bless all bold men, say I, and obe­di­ent wives!”

THE BROWN­IE.

The Scot­tish Brown­ie formed a class of be­ing dis­tinct in habit and dis­po­si­tion from the freak­ish and mis­chievous elves. He was mea­gre, shag­gy, and wild in his ap­pear­ance. Thus Cle­land, in his satire against the High­landers, com­pares them to

“Faunes, or Brown­ies, if ye will, Or Satyres come from At­las Hill.”

In the day-​time he lurked in re­mote re­cess­es of the old hous­es which he de­light­ed to haunt, and in the night sed­ulous­ly em­ployed him­self in dis­charg­ing any la­bo­ri­ous task which he thought might be ac­cept­able to the fam­ily to whose ser­vice he had de­vot­ed him­self. But the Brown­ie does not drudge from the hope of rec­om­pense. On the con­trary, so del­icate is his at­tach­ment that the of­fer of re­ward, but par­tic­ular­ly of food, in­fal­li­bly oc­ca­sions his dis­ap­pear­ance for ev­er. It is told of a Brown­ie, who haunt­ed a bor­der fam­ily now ex­tinct, that the la­dy hav­ing fall­en un­ex­pect­ed­ly ill, and the ser­vant, who was or­dered to ride to Jed­burgh for the _sage-​femme_, show­ing no great alert­ness in set­ting out, the fa­mil­iar spir­it slipped on the great­coat of the lin­ger­ing do­mes­tic, rode to the town on the laird's best horse, and re­turned with the mid­wife _en croupe_. Dur­ing the short space of his ab­sence, the Tweed, which they must nec­es­sar­ily ford, rose to a dan­ger­ous height. Brown­ie, who trans­port­ed his charge with all the ra­pid­ity of the ghost­ly lover of Lenore, was not to be stopped by the ob­sta­cle. He plunged in with the ter­ri­fied old la­dy, and land­ed her in safe­ty where her ser­vices were want­ed. Hav­ing put the horse in­to the sta­ble (where it was af­ter­wards found in a wo­ful plight), he pro­ceed­ed to the room of the ser­vant, whose du­ty he had dis­charged, and find­ing him just in the act of draw­ing on his boots, he ad­min­is­tered to him a most mer­ci­less drub­bing with his own horse­whip. Such an im­por­tant ser­vice ex­cit­ed the grat­itude of the laird, who, un­der­stand­ing that Brown­ie had been heard to ex­press a wish to have a green coat, or­dered a vest­ment of the colour to be made, and left in his haunts. Brown­ie took away the green coat, but was nev­er seen more. We may sup­pose that, tired of his do­mes­tic drudgery, he went in his new liv­ery to join the fairies.

The last Brown­ie known in Et­trick For­est resid­ed in Bods­beck, a wild and soli­tary spot, near the head of Mof­fat Wa­ter, where he ex­er­cised his func­tions undis­turbed, till the scrupu­lous de­vo­tion of an old la­dy in­duced her to “hire him away,” as it was termed, by plac­ing in his haunt a por­ringer of milk and a piece of mon­ey. Af­ter re­ceiv­ing this hint to de­part, he was heard the whole night to howl and cry, “Farewell to bon­nie Bods­beck!” which he was com­pelled to aban­don for ev­er.

MAUNS' STANE.

In the lat­ter end of the au­tumn of 18--, I set out by my­self on an ex­cur­sion over the north­ern part of Scot­land, and dur­ing that time my chief amuse­ment was to ob­serve the lit­tle changes of man­ners, lan­guage, etc., in the dif­fer­ent dis­tricts. Af­ter hav­ing viewed on my re­turn the prin­ci­pal cu­riosi­ties in Buchan, I made a lit­tle ale-​house, or “pub­lic,” my head-​quar­ters for the night. Hav­ing dis­cussed my sup­per in soli­tude, I called up mine host to en­able me to dis­cuss my bot­tle, and to give me a sta­tis­ti­cal ac­count of the coun­try around me. Seat­ed in the “blue” end, and well sup­plied with the home­ly but sat­is­fy­ing lux­uries which the place af­ford­ed, I was in an ex­cel­lent mood for en­joy­ing the com­mu­nica­tive­ness of my land­lord; and, af­ter speak­ing about the cave of Slaines, the state of the crops, and the neigh­bour­ing franklins, edged him, by de­grees, to speak about the Abbey of Deer, an in­ter­est­ing ru­in which I had ex­am­ined in the course of the day, for­mer­ly the stronghold of the once pow­er­ful fam­ily of Cum­min.

“It's doot­less a bon­nie place about the abbey,” said he, “but naething like what it was when the great Sir James the Rose came to hide i' the Buchan woods wi' a' the Gra­hames ram­pa­gin' at his tail, whilk you that's a beuk-​learned man 'ill hae read o', an' may be ye'll hae heard o' the saugh­en bush where he for­gath­ered wi' his jo; or aib­lins ye may have seen 't, for it's stand­ing yet just at the cor­ner o' gauk­it Jamie Jamieson's peat-​stack. Ay, ay, the abbey was a brave place once; but a' thing, ye ken, comes till an end.” So say­ing, he nod­ded to me, and brought his glass to an end.

“This place, then, must have been famed in days of yore, my friend?”

“Ye may tak my word for that,” said he, “'Od, it _was_ a place! Sic a sight o' fechtin' as they had about it! But gin ye'll gan up the trap- stair to the laft, an' open Jen­ny's kist, ye'll see sic a sto­ry about it, print­ed by ane o' your learned Ab­erdeen's fouk, Mais­ter Kei­th, I think; she coft it in Ab­erdeen for tw­al' pen­nies, lang ago, an' bat­tered it to the lid o' her kist. But gang up the stair can­ny, for fear that you should wauken her, puir thing; or, bide, I'll just wauken Jamie Fleep, an' gar him help me down wi't, for our stair's no just that can­ny for them 't's no ac­quaint wi't, let alane a frail man wi' your in­fir­mi­ty.”

I as­sured him that I would nei­ther dis­turb the young la­dy's slum­ber nor Jamie Fleep's, and begged him to give me as much in­for­ma­tion as he could about this cas­tle.

“Weel, wishin' your guid health again.--Our min­is­ter an­ce said that Solomon's Tem­ple was a' in ru­ins, wi' whin bush­es, an' broom and this­tles growin' ow­er the bon­nie carved wark an' the cedar wa's, just like our ain abbey. Noo, I judge that the Abbey o' Deer was just the mar­row o 't, or the min­is­ter wad­na hae said that. But when it was big­git, Lord kens, for I din­na. It was just as you see it, lang afore your hon­our was born, an' aib­lins, as the by-​word says, may be sae af­ter ye're hanged. But that's nei­ther here nor there. The Cum­mins o' Buchan were a dour and surly race; and, for a fear­fu' time, nane near han' nor far awa could ding them, an' yet mo­ny a ane tried it. The fouk on their ain lan' lik­it them weel enough; but the Craw­fords, an' the Gra­hames, an' the Mars, an' the Lo­vats, were aye try­ing to comb them against the hair, an' mo­ny a weary kempin' had they wi' them. But some way or ither they could nev­er ding them; an' fouk said that they gaed and learned the black art frae the Pope o' Room, wha, I my­self heard the min­is­ter say, had aye a col­league wi' the Auld Chiel. I din­na ken fou it was, in the tail o' the day, the hale coun­try raise up against them, an' be­sieged them in the Abbey o' Deer. Ye'll see, my frien'” (by this time mine host con­sid­ered me as one of his cronies), "tho' we ca' it the abbey, it had naething to do wi' pa­pistry; na, na, no sae bad as a' that ei­ther, but just a no­ble's cas­tle, where they keep­it sodgers gaun about in airn an' scar­let, wi' their swords an' guns, an' beg­nets, an' sen­try-​box­es, like the lo­cal mili­tia in the bar­racks o' Ab­erdeen.

“Weel, ye see, they sur­round­ed the cas­tle, an' lang did they be­siege it; but there was a vast o' meat in the cas­tle, an' the Buchan fouk fought like the ve­ra deil. They took their horse through a mis­cel­la­neous pas­sage, half a mile long, aneath the hill o' Saplin­brae, an' wa­tered them in the burn o' Pul­mer. But a' wad­na do; they took the cas­tle at last, and a ter­ri­ble slaugh­ter they made amo' them; but they were sair dis­ap­point­ed in ae par­tic'ler, for Cum­min's fouk sank a' their goud an' siller in a draw-​wall, an' syne filled it up wi' stanes. They got naething in the way of spulzie to speak o'; sae out o' spite they dang doon the cas­tle, an' it's nev­er been big­git to this day. But the Cum­mins were no sae bad as the Lairds o' Fed­er­at, af­ter a'.”

“And who were these Fed­er­ats?” I in­quired.

“The Lairds o' Fed­er­at?” said he, moist­en­ing his mouth again as a pream­ble to his ora­tion. “Troth, frae their deeds ane would maist think that they had a drap o' the deil's blude, like the pyets. Gin a' tales be true, they hae the warmest place at his bink this ve­ra minute. I din­na ken ve­ra muck­le about them though, but the auldest fouk said they were just by­ous wi' cru­el­ty. Mo­ny a good man did they hing up i' their ha', just for their ain sport; ye'll see the ring to the fore yet in the roof o 't. Did ye nev­er hear o' Mauns' Stane, nee­bour?”

“Mauns' what?” said I.

"Ou, Mauns' Stane. But it's no like­ly. Ye see it was just a queer clump o' a roun'-about hea­then, wagh­lin' may be twa tons or there­by. It was­na like ony o' the stanes in our coun­tra, an' it was as roun' as a fit-​ba'; I'm sure it wad ding Pro­fes­sor Cou­plan him­sel' to tell what way it cam' there. Noo, fouk aye thought there was some­thing un­can­ny about it, an' some gaed the length o' say­ing that the deil used to bake gin­sh­bread up­on't; and, as sure as ye're sit­ting there, frien', there was knuck­le- marks up­on 't, for my ain fa­ther has seen them as af­ten as I have taes an' fin­gers. Aweel, ye see, Mauns Craw­ford, the last o' the Lairds o' Fed­er­at, an' the deil had coost out (may be be­cause the laird was just as wicked an' as clever as he was him­sel'), an' ye per­ceive the evil ane wan­tit to play him a trick. Noo, Mauns Craw­ford was ae day lookin' ow­er his cas­tle wa', and he saw a stal­wart car­le, in black claes, ridin' up the loanin'. He stopped at this chuck­ie o' a stane, an' loutin' him­sel', he took it up in his arms, and lift­ed it three times to his sad­dle-​bow, an' syne he rade awa out o' sight, nev­er comin' near the cas­tle, as Mauns thought he would hae done. 'Noo,' says the baron till him­sel', says he, 'I did­na think that there was ony ane in a' the land that could hae played sic a ploy; but deil fetch me if I din­na lift it as weel as he did!' Sae aff he gaed, for there was­na sic a man for birr in a' the coun­tra, an' he kent it as weel, for he nev­er met wi' his match. Weel, he tried, and tugged, and bet­ter than tugged at the stane, but he coud­na mudge it ava; an' when he looked about, he saw a man at his il­buck, a' smeared wi' smid­dy-​coom, snightern an' laugh­in' at him. The laird d---d him, an' bade him lift it, whilk he did as gin 't had been a lit­tle pin­nin. The laird was like to burst wi' rage at be­ing fick­led by sic a hag-​ma-​hush car­le, and he took to the stane in a fury, and lift­ed it till his knee; but the weight o 't amaist ground his banes to smash. He held the stane till his een-​strings crack­it, when he was as blin' as a moudi­wort. He was blin' till the day o' his death,--that's to say, if ev­er he died, for there were queer say­ings about it--ve­ra queer! ve­ra queer! The stane was ca'd Mauns' Stane ev­er af­ter; an' it was no thought that can­ny to be near it af­ter gloam­ing; for what says the Psalm--hem!--I mean the sang--

'Tween En­net­butts an' Mauns' Stane Il­ka night there walks ane!

“There nev­er was a chief of the fam­ily af­ter; the men were scat­tered, an' the cas­tle de­mol­ished. The doo and the hood­ie-​craw nes­tle i' their tow­ers, and the hare mak's her form on their grassy hearth-​stane.”

“Is this stone still to be seen?”

“Ou, na. Ye see, it was just up­on Johnie Forbes's craft, an' fouk cam' far an' near to leuk at it, an' trampit down a' the puir cot­tar-​body's corn; sae he houk­it a hole just aside it, and tum­bled it in­til 't; by that means nae­body sees't noo, but its weel kent that it's there, for they're livin' yet wha've seen it.”

“But the well at the Abbey--did no one feel a de­sire to en­rich him­self with the gold and sil­ver buried there?”

“Hoot, ay; mo­ny a ane tried to find out whaur it was, and, for that mat­ter, I've may be done as fool­ish a thing my­self; but nane ev­er made it out. There was a schol­ar, like yoursel', that gaed ae night down to the Abbey, an', ye see, he sum­moned up the deil.”

“The deuce he did!” said I.

“Weel, weel, the deuce, gin ye like it bet­ter,” said he. “An' he was gaun to ques­tion him where the trea­sure was, but he had eneuch to do to get him laid with­out deav­ing him wi' ques­tions, for a' the deils cam' about him, like bees big­gin' out o' a byke. He nev­er coured the fright he gat, but cried out, 'Help! help!' till his very en­emy wad hae been wae to see him; and sae he cried till he died, which was no that lang af­ter. Fouk sud­na med­dle wi' sic ploys!”

“Most won­der­ful! And do you be­lieve that Beelze­bub ac­tu­al­ly ap­peared to him?”

“Be­lieve it! What for no?” said he, con­se­quen­tial­ly tap­ping the lid of his snuff-​horn. “Did­na my ain fa­ther see the evil ane i' the schule o' Auld Deer?”

“In­deed!”

“Weel, I wot he did that. A wheen idle callants, when the do­minie was out at his tw­al'-hours, read the Lord's Prayer back­lans, an' raised him, but could­na lay him again, for he three­pit ow­er them that he wad­na gang awa un­less he gat ane o' them wi' him. Ye may be sure this put them in an aw­fu' swith­er. They were a' squallin' an' crawl­in' and sprawl­in' amo' the cou­ples to get out o' his grips. Ane o' them gat out an' tauld the mais­ter about it, an' when he cam' down, the melt­ed lead was run­nin' aff the roof o' the house wi' the heat, sae, flingin' to the black thief a young bit kit­tlen o' the schule-​mis­tress's, he sank through the floor wi' an aw­some roar. I my­sel' have heard the mis­tress mis­ca'in her man about of­fer­ing up the puir thing, baith saul and body, to Baal. But troth, I'm no clear to speak o' the like o' this at sic a time o' night; sae if your hon­our be­na for an­oth­er jug, I'll e'en wus you a gude-​night, for it's wearin' late, an I maun awa' to Skip­py­fair i' the mornin'.”

I as­sent­ed to this, and quick­ly lost in sleep the re­mem­brance of all these tales of the old­en times.

“HORSE AND HAT­TOCK.”

The pow­er of the fairies was not con­fined to unchris­tened chil­dren alone; it was sup­posed fre­quent­ly to be ex­tend­ed to full-​grown peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly such as in an un­lucky hour were de­vot­ed to the dev­il by the ex­ecra­tions of par­ents and of mas­ters; or those who were found asleep un­der a rock, or on a green hill, be­long­ing to the fairies, af­ter sun­set, or, fi­nal­ly, to those who un­war­ily joined their or­gies. A tra­di­tion ex­ist­ed, dur­ing the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, con­cern­ing an an­ces­tor of the no­ble fam­ily of Duf­fers, who, “walk­ing abroad in the fields near to his own house, was sud­den­ly car­ried away, and found the next day at Paris, in the French king's cel­lar, with a sil­ver cup in his hand. Be­ing brought in­to the king's pres­ence, and ques­tioned by him who he was, and how he came thith­er, he told his name, his coun­try, and the place of his res­idence, and that on such a day of the month, which proved to be the day im­me­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing, be­ing in the fields, he heard a noise of a whirl­wind, and of voic­es cry­ing 'Horse and hat­tock!' (this is the word which the fairies are said to use when they re­move from any place), where­upon he cried 'Horse and hat­tock!' al­so, and was im­me­di­ate­ly caught up and trans­port­ed through the air by the fairies to that place, where, af­ter he had drunk hearti­ly, he fell asleep, and be­fore he woke the rest of the com­pa­ny were gone, and had left him in the pos­ture where­in he was found. It is said the king gave him a cup which was found in his hand, and dis­missed him.” The nar­ra­tor af­firms “that the cup was still pre­served, and known by the name of the fairy cup.” He adds that Mr. Stew­ard, tu­tor to the then Lord Duf­fers, had in­formed him that, “when a boy at the school of For­res, he and his school-​fel­lows were once up­on a time whip­ping their tops in the church­yard, be­fore the door of the church, when, though the day was calm, they heard a noise of a wind, and at some dis­tance saw the small dust be­gin to rise and turn round, which mo­tion con­tin­ued ad­vanc­ing till it came to the place where they were, where­upon they be­gan to bless them­selves; but one of their num­ber be­ing, it seems, a lit­tle more bold and con­fi­dent than his com­pan­ion, said, 'Horse and hat­tock with my top!' and im­me­di­ate­ly they all saw the top lift­ed up from the ground, but could not see which way it was car­ried, by rea­son of a cloud of dust which was raised at the same time. They sought for the top all about the place where it was tak­en up, but in vain; and it was found af­ter­wards in the church­yard, on the oth­er side of the church.” This leg­end is con­tained in a let­ter from a learned gen­tle­man in Scot­land to Mr. Aubrey, dat­ed 15th March 1695, pub­lished in _Aubrey's Mis­cel­la­nies_.

SE­CRET COM­MON­WEALTH.

_By_ MR. ROBERT KIRK, _Min­is­ter of Aber­foyle_, 1691.

The Siths, or Fairies, they call _Slu­agh Maith_, or the Good­peo­ple, it would seem, to pre­vent the dint of their ill at­tempts (for the Irish used to bless all they fear harm of), and are said to be of a mid­dle na­ture be­twixt man and an­gel, as were demons thought to be of old, of in­tel­li­gent stu­dious spir­its, and light change­able bod­ies (like those called as­tral), some­what of the na­ture of a con­densed cloud, and best seen in twi­light. These bod­ies be so pli­able through the sub­tle­ty of the spir­its that ag­itate them, that they can make them ap­pear or dis­ap­pear at plea­sure. Some have bod­ies or ve­hi­cles so spon­geous, thin, and defe­cat [pure] that they are fed by on­ly suck­ing in­to some fine spir­itu­ous liquors, that pierce like pure air and oil; oth­ers feed more gross on the foyson [abun­dance] or sub­stance of corn and liquors, or corn it­self that grows on the sur­face of the earth, which these fairies steal away, part­ly in­vis­ible, part­ly prey­ing on the grain, as do crows and mice; where­fore in this same age they are some­times heard to break bread, strike ham­mers, and to do such like ser­vices with­in the lit­tle hillocks they most do haunt; some where­of of old, be­fore the Gospel dis­pelled Pa­gan­ism, and in some bar­barous places as yet, en­ter hous­es af­ter all are at rest, and set the kitchens in or­der, cleans­ing all the ves­sels. Such drags go un­der the name of Brown­ies. When we have plen­ty, they have scarci­ty at their homes; and, on the con­trary (for they are not em­pow­ered to catch as much prey ev­ery­where as they please), their rob­beries, notwith­stand­ing, oft­times oc­ca­sion great ricks of corn not to bleed so well (as they call it), or prove so co­pi­ous by very far as was ex­pect­ed by the own­er.

Their bod­ies of con­gealed air are some­times car­ried aloft, oth­er whiles grov­el in dif­fer­ent shapes, and en­ter in­to any cran­ny or clift of the earth where air en­ters, to their or­di­nary dwellings; the earth be­ing full of cav­ities and cells, and there be­ing no place, no crea­ture, but is sup­posed to have oth­er an­imals (greater or less­er) liv­ing in or up­on it as in­hab­itants; and no such thing as a pure wilder­ness in the whole uni­verse.

We then (the more ter­res­tri­al kind have now so nu­mer­ous­ly plant­ed all coun­tries) do labour for that ab­struse peo­ple, as well as for our­selves. Al­beit, when sev­er­al coun­tries were un­in­hab­it­ed by us, these had their easy tillage above ground, as we now. The print of those fur­rows do yet re­main to be seen on the shoul­ders of very high hills, which was done when the cam­paign ground was wood and for­est.

They re­move to oth­er lodg­ings at the be­gin­ning of each quar­ter of the year, so travers­ing till dooms­day, be­ing im­po­tent of stay­ing in one place, and find­ing some ease by so purn­ing [jour­ney­ing] and chang­ing habi­ta­tions. Their chameleon-​like bod­ies swim in the air near the earth with bag and bag­gage; and at such rev­olu­tion of time, seers, or men of the sec­ond sight (fe­males be­ing sel­dom so qual­ified) have very ter­ri­fy­ing en­coun­ters with them, even on high­ways; who, there­fore, aw­ful­ly shun to trav­el abroad at these four sea­sons of the year, and there­by have made it a cus­tom to this day among the Scot­tish-​Irish to keep church du­ly ev­ery first Sun­day of the quar­ter to _se­un_ or hal­low them­selves, their corn and cat­tle, from the shots and stealth of these wan­der­ing tribes; and many of these su­per­sti­tious peo­ple will not be seen in church again till the next quar­ter be­gins, as if no du­ty were to be learnt or done by them, but all the use of wor­ship and ser­mons were to save them from these ar­rows that fly in the dark.

They are dis­tribut­ed in tribes and or­ders, and have chil­dren, nurs­es, mar­riages, deaths, and buri­als in ap­pear­ance, even as we (un­less they so do for a mock-​show, or to prog­nos­ti­cate some such things among us).

They are clear­ly seen by these men of the sec­ond sight to eat at fu­ner­als [and] ban­quets. Hence many of the Scot­tish-​Irish will not taste meat at these meet­ings, lest they have com­mu­nion with, or be poi­soned by, them. So are they seen to car­ry the bier or cof­fin with the corpse among the mid­dle-​earth men to the grave. Some men of that ex­alt­ed sight (whether by art or na­ture) have told me they have seen at these meet­ings a dou­ble man, or the shape of some man in two places; that is a su­per-​ter­ranean and a sub­ter­ranean in­hab­itant, per­fect­ly re­sem­bling one an­oth­er in all points, whom he, notwith­stand­ing, could eas­ily dis­tin­guish one from an­oth­er by some se­cret to­kens and op­er­ations, and so go and speak to the man, his neigh­bour and fa­mil­iar, pass­ing by the ap­pari­tion or re­sem­blance of him. They avouch that ev­ery el­ement and dif­fer­ent state of be­ing has an­imals re­sem­bling those of an­oth­er el­ement; as there be fish­es some­times at sea re­sem­bling monks of late or­der in all their hoods and dress­es; so as the Ro­man in­ven­tion of good and bad demons, and guardian an­gels par­tic­ular­ly as­signed, is called by them an ig­no­rant mis­take, sprung on­ly from this orig­inal. They call this re­flex man a co-​walk­er, ev­ery way like the man, as a twin broth­er and com­pan­ion, haunt­ing him as his shad­ow, as is oft seen and known among men (re­sem­bling the orig­inal), both be­fore and af­ter the orig­inal is dead; and was of­ten seen of old to en­ter a house, by which the peo­ple knew that the per­son of that like­ness was to vis­it them with­in a few days. This copy, echo, or liv­ing pic­ture, goes at last to his own herd. It ac­com­pa­nied that per­son so long and fre­quent­ly for ends best known to it­self, whether to guard him from the se­cret as­saults of some of its own folk, or on­ly as a sport­ful ape to coun­ter­feit all his ac­tions. How­ev­er, the sto­ries of old witch­es prove be­yond con­tra­dic­tion that all sorts of peo­ple, spir­its which as­sume light airy bod­ies, or crazed bod­ies coact­ed by for­eign spir­its, seem to have some plea­sure (at least to as­suage some pain or melan­choly) by frisk­ing and ca­per­ing like satyrs, or whistling and screech­ing (like un­lucky birds) in their un­hal­lowed syn­agogues and Sab­baths. If in­vit­ed and earnest­ly re­quired, these com­pan­ions make them­selves known and fa­mil­iar to men; oth­er­wise, be­ing in a dif­fer­ent state and el­ement, they nei­ther can nor will eas­ily con­verse with them. They avouch that a _heluo_ or great eater has a vo­ra­cious elve to be his at­ten­der, called a joint-​eater or just-​halver, feed­ing on the pith and quintessence of what the man eats; and that, there­fore, he con­tin­ues lean like a hawk or heron, notwith­stand­ing his de­vour­ing ap­petite; yet it would seem they con­vey that sub­stance else­where, for these sub­ter­raneans eat but lit­tle in their dwellings, their food be­ing ex­act­ly clean, and served up by pleas­ant chil­dren, like en­chant­ed pup­pets.

Their hous­es are called large and fair, and (un­less at some odd oc­ca­sions) un­per­ceiv­able by vul­gar eyes, like Rach­land and oth­er en­chant­ed is­lands, hav­ing fir lights, con­tin­ual lamps, and fires, of­ten seen with­out fu­el to sus­tain them. Wom­en are yet alive who tell they were tak­en away when in childbed to nurse fairy chil­dren, a lin­ger­ing vo­ra­cious im­age of them be­ing left in their place (like their re­flec­tion in a mir­ror), which (as if it were some in­sa­tiable spir­it in an as­sumed body) made first sem­blance to de­vour the meats that it cun­ning­ly car­ried by, and then left the car­cass as if it ex­pired and de­part­ed thence by a nat­ural and com­mon death. The child and fire, with food and all oth­er nec­es­saries, are set be­fore the nurse how soon she en­ters, but she nei­ther per­ceives any pas­sage out, nor sees what those peo­ple do in oth­er rooms of the lodg­ing. When the child is weaned, the nurse dies, or is con­veyed back, or gets it to her choice to stay there. But if any su­pert­er­raneans be so sub­tle as to prac­tise sleights for procur­ing the pri­va­cy to any of their mys­ter­ies (such as mak­ing use of their oint­ments, which, as Gyges' ring, make them in­vis­ible or nim­ble, or cast them in a trance, or al­ter their shape, or make things ap­pear at a vast dis­tance, etc.), they smite them with­out pain, as with a puff of wind, and be­reave them of both the nat­ural and ac­quired sights in the twin­kling of an eye (both these sights, when once they come, be­ing in the same or­gan and in­sep­ara­ble), or they strike them dumb. The tra­mon­tanes to this day place bread, the Bible, or a piece of iron, to save their wom­en at such times from be­ing thus stolen, and they com­mon­ly re­port that all un­couth, un­known wights are ter­ri­fied by noth­ing earth­ly so much as cold iron. They de­liv­er the rea­son to be that hell ly­ing be­twixt the chill tem­pests and the fire­brands of scald­ing met­als, and iron of the north (hence the load­stone caus­es a ten­den­cy to that point), by an an­tipa­thy there­to, these odi­ous, far-​scent­ing crea­tures shrug and fright at all that comes thence re­lat­ing to so ab­horred a place, whence their tor­ment is ei­ther be­gun, or feared to come here­after.

Their ap­par­el and speech is like that of the peo­ple and coun­try un­der which they live; so are they seen to wear plaids and var­ie­gat­ed gar­ments in the High­lands of Scot­land, and sua­nachs [plaids] there­fore in Ire­land. They speak but lit­tle, and that by way of whistling, clear, not rough. The very dev­ils con­jured in any coun­try do an­swer in the lan­guage of the place; yet some­times the sub­ter­raneans speak more dis­tinct­ly than at oth­er times. Their wom­en are said to spin very fine, to dye, to tossue, and em­broi­der; but whether it be as man­ual op­er­ation of sub­stan­tial re­fined stuffs, with apt and sol­id in­stru­ments, or on­ly cu­ri­ous cob­webs, un­pal­pa­ble rain­bows, and a phan­tas­tic im­ita­tion of the ac­tions of more ter­res­tri­al mor­tals, since it tran­scend­ed all the sens­es of the seer to dis­cern whether, I leave to con­jec­ture as I found it.

Their men trav­el much abroad, ei­ther pre­sag­ing or ap­ing the dis­mal and trag­ical ac­tions of some amongst us; and have al­so many dis­as­trous do­ings of their own, as con­vo­ca­tions, fight­ing, gash­es, wounds, and buri­als, both in the earth and air. They live much longer than we; yet die at last, or [at] least van­ish from that state. 'Tis one of their tenets that noth­ing per­isheth, but (as the sun and year) ev­ery­thing goes in a cir­cle, less­er or greater, and is re­newed and re­freshed in its rev­olu­tions; as 'tis an­oth­er, that ev­ery body in the cre­ation moves (which is a sort of life); and that noth­ing moves but has an­oth­er an­imal mov­ing on it; and so on, to the ut­most min­utest cor­pus­cle that's ca­pa­ble of be­ing a re­cep­ta­cle of life.

They are said to have aris­to­crat­ical rulers and laws, but no dis­cernible re­li­gion, love, or de­vo­tion to­wards God, the blessed Mak­er of all: they dis­ap­pear when­ev­er they hear His name in­voked, or the name of Je­sus (at which all do bow will­ing­ly, or by con­straint, that dwell above or be­neath, with­in the earth), (Philip, ii. 10); nor can they act ought at that time af­ter hear­ing of that sa­cred name. The Taibls­dear or seer, that cor­re­sponds with this kind of fa­mil­iars, can bring them with a spell to ap­pear to him­self or oth­ers when he pleas­es, as read­ily as En­dor Witch did those of her own kind. He tells they are ev­er read­iest to go on hurt­ful er­rands, but sel­dom will be the mes­sen­gers of great good to men. He is not ter­ri­fied with their sight when he calls them, but see­ing them in a sur­prise (as of­ten as he does) frights him ex­treme­ly, and glad would he be quit of such, for the hideous spec­ta­cles seen among them; as the tor­tur­ing of some wight, earnest, ghost­ly, star­ing looks, skir­mish­es, and the like. They do not all the harm which ap­pear­ing­ly they have pow­er to do; nor are they per­ceived to be in great pain, save that they are usu­al­ly silent and sullen. They are said to have many pleas­ant toy­ish books; but the op­er­ation of these pieces on­ly ap­pears in some parox­ysms of an­tic, cory­ban­tic jol­li­ty, as if rav­ished and prompt­ed by a new spir­it en­ter­ing in­to them at that in­stant, lighter and mer­ri­er than their own. Oth­er books they have of in­volved, ab­struse sense, much like the Ro­sur­cian [Rosi­cru­cian] style. They have noth­ing of the Bible, save col­lect­ed parcels for charms and counter-​charms; not to de­fend them­selves with­al, but to op­er­ate on oth­er an­imals, for they are a peo­ple in­vul­ner­able by our weapons, and al­beit were­wolves' and witch­es' true bod­ies are (by the union of the spir­it of na­ture that runs through all echo­ing and dou­bling the blow to­wards an­oth­er) wound­ed at home, when the as­tral as­sumed bod­ies are strick­en else­where--as the strings of a sec­ond harp, tuned to a uni­son, sound, though on­ly one be struck,--yet these peo­ple have not a sec­ond, or so gross a body at all, to be so pierced; but as air which when di­vid­ed unites again; or if they feel pain by a blow, they are bet­ter physi­cians than we, and quick­ly cure. They are not sub­ject to sore sick­ness­es, but dwin­dle and de­cay at a cer­tain pe­ri­od, all about an age. Some say their con­tin­ual sad­ness is be­cause of their pen­du­lous state (like those men, Luke xi­ii. 2-6), as un­cer­tain what at the last rev­olu­tion will be­come of them, when they are locked up in­to an un­change­able con­di­tion; and if they have any frol­ic fits of mirth, 'tis as the con­strained grin­ning of a mort-​head [death's-​head], or rather as act­ed on a stage, and moved by an­oth­er, ther [than?] cor­dial­ly com­ing of them­selves. But oth­er men of the sec­ond sight, be­ing il­lit­er­ate, and un­wary in their ob­ser­va­tions, learn from [dif­fer from] those; one aver­ring those sub­ter­ranean peo­ple to be de­part­ed souls, at­tend­ing a while in this in­fe­ri­or state, and clothed with bod­ies pro­cured through their alms-​deeds in this life; flu­id, ac­tive, ethe­re­al ve­hi­cles to hold them that they may not scat­ter nor wan­der, and be lost in the to­tum, or their first noth­ing; but if any were so im­pi­ous as to have giv­en no alms, they say, when the souls of such do de­part, they sleep in an in­ac­tive state till they re­sume the ter­res­tri­al bod­ies again; oth­ers, that what the low-​coun­try Scotch call a wraith, and the Irish _taibhse_, or death's mes­sen­ger (ap­pear­ing some­times as a lit­tle rough dog, and if crossed and con­jured in time, will be paci­fied by the death of any oth­er crea­ture in­stead of the sick man), is on­ly ex­uvi­ous fumes of the man ap­proach­ing death, ex­haled and con­gealed in­to a var­ious like­ness (as ships and armies are some­times shaped in the air), and called as­tral bod­ies, ag­itat­ed as wild-​fire with wind, and are nei­ther souls nor coun­ter­feit­ing spir­its; yet not a few avouch (as is said) that sure­ly these are a nu­mer­ous peo­ple by them­selves, hav­ing their own pol­itics, which di­ver­si­ties of judg­ment may oc­ca­sion sev­er­al in­con­so­nan­cies in this re­hearsal, af­ter the nar­row­est scruti­ny made about it.

Their weapons are most-​what sol­id earth­ly bod­ies, noth­ing of iron, but much of stone, like to yel­low soft flint spa, shaped like a barbed ar­row­head, but flung like a dart, with great force. These arms (cut by art and tools, it seems, be­yond hu­man) have some­what of the na­ture of thun­der­bolt sub­tle­ty, and mor­tal­ly wound­ing the vi­tal parts with­out break­ing the skin; of which wounds I have ob­served in beasts, and felt them with my hands. They are not as in­fal­li­ble Ben­jamites, hit­ting at a hair's-​breadth; nor are they whol­ly un­van­quish­able, at least in ap­pear­ance.

The men of the sec­ond sight do not dis­cov­er strange things when asked, but at fits and rap­tures, as if in­spired with some ge­nius at that in­stant, which be­fore did work in or about them. Thus I have fre­quent­ly spo­ken to one of them, who in his trans­port told me he cut the body of one of those peo­ple in two with his iron weapon, and so es­caped this on­set, yet he saw noth­ing left be­hind of that ap­pear­ing di­vid­ed; at oth­er times he out­wrest­ed [wres­tled?] some of them. His neigh­bours of­ten per­ceived this man to dis­ap­pear at a cer­tain place, and about an hour af­ter to be­come vis­ible, and dis­cov­er him­self near a bow-​shot from the first place. It was in that place where he be­came in­vis­ible, said he, that the sub­ter­raneans did en­counter and com­bat with him. Those who are _un­se­und_, or un­sanc­ti­fied (called fey), are said to be pierced or wound­ed with those peo­ple's weapons, which makes them do some­what very un­like their for­mer prac­tice, caus­ing a sud­den al­ter­ation, yet the cause there­of un­per­ceiv­able at present; nor have they pow­er (ei­ther they can­not make use of their nat­ural pow­ers, or asked not the heav­en­ly aid) to es­cape the blow im­pen­dent. A man of the sec­ond sight per­ceived a per­son stand­ing by him (sound to oth­er's view) whol­ly gored in blood, and he (amazed like) bid him in­stant­ly flee. The whole man laughed at his _airt_ [no­tice] and warn­ing, since there was no ap­pear­ance of dan­ger. He had scarce con­tract­ed his lips from laugh­ter when un­ex­pect­ed­ly his en­emies leaped in at his side and stabbed him with their weapons. They al­so pierce cows or oth­er an­imals, usu­al­ly said to be Elf-​shot, whose purest sub­stance (if they die) these sub­ter­raneans take to live on, viz. the aeri­al and ethe­re­al parts, the most spir­itu­ous mat­ter for pro­long­ing of life, such as aqua­vi­tae (mod­er­ate­ly tak­en) is amongst liquors, leav­ing the ter­res­tri­al be­hind. The cure of such hurts is on­ly for a man to find out the hole with his fin­ger, as if the spir­its flow­ing from a man's warm hand were an­ti­dote suf­fi­cient against their poi­soned darts.

As birds, as beasts, whose bod­ies are much used to the change of the free and open air, fore­see storms, so those in­vis­ible peo­ple are more saga­cious to un­der­stand by the books of na­ture things to come, than we, who are pestered with the gross­est dregs of all el­emen­tary mix­tures, and have our pur­er spir­its choked by them. The deer scents out a man and pow­der (though a late in­ven­tion) at a great dis­tance; a hun­gry hunter, bread; and the raven, a car­rion; their brains, be­ing long clar­ified by the high and sub­tle air, will ob­serve a very small change in a trice. Thus a man of the sec­ond sight, per­ceiv­ing the op­er­ations of these fore­cast­ing in­vis­ible peo­ple among us (in­dulged through a stu­pen­dous prov­idence to give warn­ings of some re­mark­able events, ei­ther in the air, earth, or wa­ters), told he saw a wind­ing shroud creep­ing on a walk­ing health­ful per­son's leg till it came to the knee, and af­ter­wards it came up to the mid­dle, then to the shoul­ders, and at last over the head, which was vis­ible to no oth­er per­son. And by ob­serv­ing the spaces of time be­twixt the sev­er­al stages, he eas­ily guessed how long the man was to live who wore the shroud; for when it ap­proached the head, he told that such a per­son was ripe for the grave.

There be many places called fairy-​hills, which the moun­tain peo­ple think im­pi­ous and dan­ger­ous to peel or dis­cov­er, by tak­ing earth or wood from them, su­per­sti­tious­ly be­liev­ing the souls of their pre­de­ces­sors to dwell there. And for that end (say they) a mole or mound was ded­icate be­side ev­ery church­yard to re­ceive the souls till their ad­ja­cent bod­ies arise, and so be­came as a fairy-​hill; they us­ing bod­ies of air when called abroad. They al­so af­firm those crea­tures that move in­vis­ibly in a house, and cast huge great stones, but do no much hurt, be­cause counter-​wrought by some more cour­te­ous and char­ita­ble spir­its that are ev­ery­where ready to de­fend men (Dan. x. 13), to be souls that have not at­tained their rest, through a ve­he­ment de­sire of re­veal­ing a mur­der or no­table in­jury done or re­ceived, or a trea­sure that was for­got in their life­time on earth, which, when dis­closed to a con­juror alone, the ghost quite re­moves.

In the next coun­try to that of my for­mer res­idence, about the year 1676, when there was some scarci­ty of grain, a mar­vel­lous il­lapse and vi­sion strong­ly struck the imag­ina­tion of two wom­en in one night, liv­ing at a good dis­tance from one an­oth­er, about a trea­sure hid in a hill called _Sith-​bruthach_, or fairy-​hill. The ap­pear­ance of a trea­sure was first rep­re­sent­ed to the fan­cy, and then an au­di­ble voice named the place where it was to their awak­ing sens­es. Where­upon both rose, and meet­ing ac­ci­den­tal­ly at the place, dis­cov­ered their de­sign; and joint­ly dig­ging, found a ves­sel as large as a Scot­tish peck full of small pieces of good mon­ey, of an­cient coin; and halv­ing be­twixt them, they sold in dish­fuls for dish­fuls of meal to the coun­try peo­ple. Very many of un­doubt­ed cred­it saw and had of the coin to this day. But whether it was a good or bad an­gel, one of the sub­ter­ranean peo­ple, or the rest­less soul of him who hid it, that dis­cov­ered it, and to what end it was done, I leave to the ex­am­ina­tion of oth­ers.

These sub­ter­raneans have con­tro­ver­sies, doubts, dis­putes, feuds, and sid­ing of par­ties; there be­ing some ig­no­rance in all crea­tures, and the vastest cre­at­ed in­tel­li­gences not com­pass­ing all things. As to vice and sin, what­ev­er their own laws be, sure ac­cord­ing to ours, and eq­ui­ty, nat­ural, civ­il, and re­vealed, they transgress and com­mit acts of in­jus­tice and sin by what is above said, as to their steal­ing of nurs­es to their chil­dren, and that oth­er sort of plagin­ism in catch­ing our chil­dren away (may seem to heir some es­tate in those in­vis­ible do­min­ions) which nev­er re­turn. For swear­ing and in­tem­per­ance, they are not ob­served so sub­ject to those ir­reg­ular­ities, as to en­vy, spite, hypocrisy, ly­ing, and dis­sim­ula­tion.

As our re­li­gion obliges us not to make a peremp­to­ry and cu­ri­ous search in­to these ab­struse­ness­es, so the his­to­ries of all ages give as many plain ex­am­ples of ex­traor­di­nary oc­cur­rences as make a mod­est in­quiry not con­temptible. How much is writ­ten of pig­mies, fairies, nymphs, syrens, ap­pari­tions, which though not the tenth part true, yet could not spring of noth­ing; even En­glish au­thors re­late [of] Bar­ry Is­land, in Glam­or­gan­shire, that lay­ing your ear in­to a cleft of the rocks, blow­ing of bel­lows, strik­ing of ham­mers, clash­ing of ar­mour, fil­ing of iron, will be heard dis­tinct­ly ev­er since Mer­lin en­chant­ed those sub­ter­ranean wights to a sol­id man­ual forg­ing of arms to Au­re­lius Am­bro­sius and his Britons, till he re­turned; which Mer­lin be­ing killed in a bat­tle, and not com­ing to loose the knot, these ac­tive vul­cans are there tied to a per­pet­ual labour.

THE FAIRY BOY OF LEI­TH.

"About fif­teen years since, hav­ing busi­ness that de­tained me for some time at Lei­th, which is near Ed­in­burgh, in the king­dom of Scot­land, I of­ten met some of my ac­quain­tance at a cer­tain house there, where we used to drink a glass of wine for our re­fec­tion. The wom­an which kept the house was of hon­est rep­uta­tion among the neigh­bours, which made me give the more at­ten­tion to what she told me one day about a fairy boy (as they called him) who lived about that town. She had giv­en me so strange an ac­count of him, that I de­sired her I might see him the first op­por­tu­ni­ty, which she promised; and not long af­ter, pass­ing that way, she told me there was the fairy boy, but a lit­tle be­fore I came by; and, cast­ing her eye in­to the street, said, 'Look you, sir, yon­der he is, at play with those oth­er boys'; and point­ing him out to me, I went, and by smooth words, and a piece of mon­ey, got him to come in­to the house with me; where, in the pres­ence of divers peo­ple, I de­mand­ed of him sev­er­al as­tro­log­ical ques­tions, which he an­swered with great sub­tle­ty; and, through all his dis­course, car­ried it with a cun­ning much above his years, which seemed not to ex­ceed ten or eleven.

"He seemed to make a mo­tion like drum­ming up­on the ta­ble with his fin­gers, up­on which I asked him whether he could beat a drum? To which he replied, 'Yes, sir, as well as any man in Scot­land; for ev­ery Thurs­day night I beat all points to a sort of peo­ple that used to meet un­der yon­der hill' (point­ing to the great hill be­tween Ed­in­burgh and Lei­th). 'How, boy?' quoth I, 'what com­pa­ny have you there?' 'There are, sir,' said he, 'a great com­pa­ny both of men and wom­en, and they are en­ter­tained with many sorts of mu­sic be­sides my drum; they have, be­sides, plen­ty of va­ri­ety of meats and wine, and many times we are car­ried in­to France or Hol­land in the night, and re­turn again, and whilst we are there, we en­joy all the plea­sures the coun­try doth af­ford.' I de­mand­ed of him how they got un­der that hill? To which he replied that there was a great pair of gates that opened to them, though they were in­vis­ible to oth­ers, and that with­in there were brave large rooms, as well ac­com­mo­dat­ed as most in Scot­land. I then asked him how I should know what he said to be true? Up­on which he told me he would read my for­tune, say­ing, I should have two wives, and that he saw the forms of them over my shoul­ders; and both would be very hand­some wom­en.

“The wom­an of the house told me that all the peo­ple in Scot­land could not keep him from the ren­dezvous on Thurs­day night; up­on which, by promis­ing him some more mon­ey, I got a promise of him to meet me at the same place in the af­ter­noon, the Thurs­day fol­low­ing, and so dis­missed him at that time. The boy came again at the place and time ap­point­ed, and I had pre­vailed with some friends to con­tin­ue with me (if pos­si­ble) to pre­vent his mov­ing that night. He was placed be­tween us, and an­swered many ques­tions, un­til, about eleven of the clock, he was got away un­per­ceived by the com­pa­ny; but I, sud­den­ly miss­ing him, has­tened to the door, and took hold of him, and so re­turned him in­to the same room. We all watched him, and, of a sud­den, he was again got out of doors; I fol­lowed him close, and he made a noise in the street, as if he had been set up­on, and from that time I could nev­er see him.”

THE DRA­CAE.

These are a sort of wa­ter-​spir­its who in­vei­gle wom­en and chil­dren in­to the re­cess­es which they in­hab­it, be­neath lakes and rivers, by float­ing past them, on the sur­face of the wa­ter, in the shape of gold rings or cups. The wom­en thus seized are em­ployed as nurs­es, and af­ter sev­en years are per­mit­ted to re­vis­it earth. Ger­vase men­tions one wom­an in par­tic­ular who had been al­lured by ob­serv­ing a wood­en dish, or cup, float by her, while she was wash­ing clothes in the riv­er. Be­ing seized as soon as she reached the depths, she was con­duct­ed in­to one of the sub­ter­ranean re­cess­es, which she de­scribed as very mag­nif­icent, and em­ployed as nurse to one of the brood of the hag who had al­lured her. Dur­ing her res­idence in this ca­pac­ity, hav­ing ac­ci­den­tal­ly touched one of her eyes with an oint­ment of ser­pent's grease, she per­ceived, at her re­turn to the world, that she had ac­quired the fac­ul­ty of see­ing the _Dra­cae_, when they in­ter­min­gle them­selves with men. Of this pow­er she was, how­ev­er, de­prived by the touch of her ghost­ly mis­tress, whom she had one day in­cau­tious­ly ad­dressed. It is a cu­ri­ous fact that this sto­ry, in al­most all its parts, is cur­rent in both the High­lands and Low­lands of Scot­land, with no oth­er vari­ation than the sub­sti­tu­tion of Fairies for Dra­cae, and the cav­ern of a hill for that of a riv­er. In­deed many of the vul­gar ac­count it ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous to touch any­thing which they may hap­pen to find with­out sain­ing (bless­ing) it, the snares of the en­emy be­ing no­to­ri­ous and well-​at­test­ed. A pool-​wom­an of Teviot­dale hav­ing been for­tu­nate enough, as she thought her­self, to find a wood­en bee­tle, at the very time when she need­ed such an im­ple­ment, seized it with­out pro­nounc­ing a prop­er bless­ing, and, car­ry­ing it home, laid it above her bed to be ready for em­ploy­ment in the morn­ing. At mid­night the win­dow of her cot­tage opened, and a loud voice was heard call­ing up some one with­in by a strange and un­couth name. The ter­ri­fied cot­tager ejac­ulat­ed a prayer, which, we may sup­pose, en­sured her per­son­al safe­ty; while the en­chant­ed im­ple­ment of house­wifery, tum­bling from the bed­stead, de­part­ed by the win­dow with no small noise and pre­cip­ita­tion. In a hu­mor­ous fugi­tive tract, Dr. John­son has been in­tro­duced as dis­put­ing the au­then­tic­ity of an ap­pari­tion, mere­ly be­cause the spir­it as­sumed the shape of a teapot and a shoul­der of mut­ton. No doubt, a case so much in point as that we have now quot­ed would have re­moved his in­creduli­ty.

A SUC­CINCT AC­COUNT OF MY LORD TAR­BAT'S RE­LA­TIONS, IN A LET­TER TO THE HON­OR­ABLE ROBERT BOYLE, ES­QUIRE, OF THE PRE­DIC­TIONS MADE BY SEERS, WHERE­OF HIM­SELF WAS EAR-​AND EYE-​WIT­NESS.

Sir,--I heard very much, but be­lieved very lit­tle of the sec­ond sight; yet its be­ing as­sumed by sev­er­al of great ve­rac­ity, I was in­duced to make in­quiry af­ter it in the year 1652, be­ing then con­fined in the north of Scot­land by the En­glish usurpers. The more gen­er­al ac­counts of it were that many High­landers, yet far more Is­landers, were qual­ified with this sec­ond sight; and men, wom­en, and chil­dren, in­dis­tinct­ly, were sub­ject to it, and chil­dren where par­ents were not. Some­times peo­ple came to age who had it not when young, nor could any tell by what means pro­duced. It is a trou­ble to most of them who are sub­ject to it, and they would be rid of it at any rate if they could. The sight is of no long du­ra­tion, on­ly con­tin­uing so long as they can keep their eyes steady with­out twin­kling. The hardy, there­fore, fix their look that they may see the longer; but the tim­orous see on­ly glances--their eyes al­ways twin­kle at the first sight of the ob­ject. That which gen­er­al­ly is seen by them are the species of liv­ing crea­tures, and of inan­imate things, which be in mo­tion, such as ships, and habits up­on per­sons. They nev­er see the species of any per­son who is al­ready dead. What they fore­see fails not to ex­ist in the mode, and in that place where it ap­pears to them. They can­not well know what space of time shall in­ter­vene be­tween the ap­pari­tion and the re­al ex­is­tence. But some of the hardi­est and longest ex­pe­ri­ence have some rules for con­jec­tures; as, if they see a man with a shroud­ing sheet in the ap­pari­tion, they will con­jec­ture at the near­ness or re­mote­ness of his death by the more or less of his body that is cov­ered by it. They will or­di­nar­ily see their ab­sent friends, though at a great dis­tance, some­times no less than from Amer­ica to Scot­land, sit­ting, stand­ing, or walk­ing in some cer­tain place; and then they con­clude with an as­sur­ance that they will see them so, and there. If a man be in love with a wom­an, they will or­di­nar­ily see the species of that man stand­ing by her, and so like­wise if a wom­an be in love. If they see the species of any per­son who is sick to die, they see them cov­ered over with the shroud­ing sheet.

These gen­er­als I had ver­ified to me by such of them as did see, and were es­teemed hon­est and sober by all the neigh­bour­hood; for I in­quired af­ter such for my in­for­ma­tion. And be­cause there were more of these seers in the isles of Lewis, Har­ris, and Uist than in any oth­er place, I did en­treat Sir James M'Don­ald (who is now dead), Sir Nor­mand M'Loud, and Mr. Daniel Mori­son, a very hon­est per­son (who are still alive), to make in­quiry in this un­couth sight, and to ac­quaint me there­with; which they did, and all found an agree­ment in these gen­er­als, and in­formed me of many in­stances con­firm­ing what they said. But though men of dis­cre­tion and hon­our, be­ing but at sec­ond-​hand, I will choose rather to put my­self than my friends on the haz­ard of be­ing laughed at for in­cred­ible re­la­tions.

I was once trav­el­ling in the High­lands, and a good num­ber of ser­vants with me, as is usu­al there; and one of them, go­ing a lit­tle be­fore me, en­ter­ing in­to a house where I was to stay all night, and go­ing hasti­ly to the door, he sud­den­ly slipped back with a screech, and did fall by a stone, which hit his foot. I asked what the mat­ter was, for he seemed to be very much fright­ed. He told me very se­ri­ous­ly that I should not lodge in that house, be­cause short­ly a dead cof­fin would be car­ried out of it, for many were car­ry­ing of it when he was heard cry. I, ne­glect­ing his words, and stay­ing there, he said to oth­er of his ser­vants he was sor­ry for it, and that sure­ly what he saw would short­ly come to pass. Though no sick per­son was then there, yet the land­lord, a healthy High­lander, died of an apoplec­tic fit be­fore I left the house.

In the year 1653 Alexan­der Mon­ro (af­ter­wards Lieu­tenant-​Colonel to the Earl of Dum­bar­ton's reg­iment) and I were walk­ing in a place called Ul­lapool, in Loch Broom, on a lit­tle plain at the foot of a rugged hill. There was a ser­vant walk­ing with a spade in the walk be­fore us; his back was to us, and his face to the hill. Be­fore we came to him he let the spade fall, and looked to­ward the hill. He took no­tice of us as we passed near by him, which made me look at him, and per­ceiv­ing him to stare a lit­tle strange­ly I con­jec­tured him to be a seer. I called at him, at which he start­ed and smiled. “What are you do­ing?” said I. He an­swered, “I have seen a very strange thing: an army of En­glish­men, lead­ing of hors­es, com­ing down that hill; and a num­ber of them are com­ing down to the plain, and eat­ing the bar­ley which is grow­ing in the field near to the hill.” This was on the 4th May (for I not­ed the day), and it was four or five days be­fore the bar­ley was sown in the field he spoke of. Alexan­der Mon­ro asked him how he knew they were En­glish­men. He said be­cause they were lead­ing of hors­es, and had on hats and boots, which he knew no Scotch­man would have there. We took lit­tle no­tice of the whole sto­ry as oth­er than a fool­ish vi­sion, but wished that an En­glish par­ty were there, we be­ing then at war with them, and the place al­most in­ac­ces­si­ble for horse­men. But in the be­gin­ning of Au­gust there­after, the Earl of Mid­dle­ton (then Lieu­tenant for the King in the High­lands), hav­ing oc­ca­sion to march a par­ty of his to­wards the South High­lands, he sent his Foot through a place called In­ver­lawell; and the fore-​par­ty, which was first down the hill, did fall off eat­ing the bar­ley which was on the lit­tle plain un­der it. And Mon­ro call­ing to mind what the seer told us in May pre­ced­ing, he wrote of it, and sent an ex­press to me to Lochslin, in Ross (where I then was), with it.

I had oc­ca­sion once to be in com­pa­ny where a young la­dy was (ex­cuse my not nam­ing of per­sons), and I was told there was a no­table seer in the com­pa­ny. I called him to speak with me, as I did or­di­nar­ily when I found any of them; and af­ter he had an­swered me sev­er­al ques­tions, I asked if he knew any per­son to be in love with that la­dy. He said he did, but he knew not the per­son; for, dur­ing the two days he had been in her com­pa­ny, he per­ceived one stand­ing near her, and his head lean­ing on her shoul­der, which he said did fore­tell that the man should mar­ry her, and die be­fore her, ac­cord­ing to his ob­ser­va­tion. This was in the year 1655. I de­sired him to de­scribe the per­son, which he did, so that I could con­jec­ture, by the de­scrip­tion, of such a one, who was of that la­dy's ac­quain­tance, though there were no thoughts of their mar­riage till two years there­after. And hav­ing oc­ca­sion in the year 1657 to find this seer, who was an is­lander, in com­pa­ny with the oth­er per­son whom I con­jec­tured to have been de­scribed by him, I called him aside, and asked if that was the per­son he saw be­side the la­dy near two years then past. He said it was he in­deed, for he had seen that la­dy just then stand­ing by him hand in hand. This was some few months be­fore their mar­riage, and that man is now dead, and the la­dy alive.

I shall trou­ble you but with one more, which I thought most re­mark­able of any that oc­curred to me.

In Jan­uary 1652, the above-​men­tioned Lieu­tenant, Colonel Alex. Mon­ro, and I, hap­pened to be in the house of one William M'Clend, of Fer­rin­lea, in the coun­ty of Ross. He, the land­lord, and I, were sit­ting in three chairs near the fire, and in the cor­ner of the great chim­ney there were two is­landers, who were that very night come to the house, and were re­lat­ed to the land­lord. While the one of them was talk­ing with Mon­ro, I per­ceived the oth­er to look odd­ly to­ward me. From this look, and his be­ing an is­lander, I con­jec­tured him a seer, and asked him at what he stared. He an­swered by de­sir­ing me to rise from that chair, for it was an un­lucky one. I asked him why? He an­swered, be­cause there was a dead man in the chair next to me. “Well,” said I, “if it be in the next chair, I may keep my own. But what is the like­ness of the man?” He said he was a tall man, with a long grey coat, boot­ed, and one of his legs hang­ing over the arm of the chair, and his head hang­ing dead to the oth­er side, and his arm back­ward, as if it was bro­ken. There were some En­glish troops then quar­tered near that place, and there be­ing at that time a great frost af­ter a thaw, the coun­try was cov­ered all over with ice. Four or five of the En­glish rid­ing by this house some two hours af­ter the vi­sion, while we were sit­ting by the fire, we heard a great noise, which proved to be those troop­ers, with the help of oth­er ser­vants, car­ry­ing in one of their num­ber, who had got a very mis­chievous fall, and had his arm broke; and falling fre­quent­ly in swoon­ing fits, they brought him in­to the hall, and set him in the very chair, and in the very pos­ture that the seer had proph­esied. But the man did not die, though he re­cov­ered with great dif­fi­cul­ty.

Among the ac­counts giv­en me by Sir Nor­mand M'Loud, there was one wor­thy of spe­cial no­tice, which was thus:--There was a gen­tle­man in the Isle of Har­ris, who was al­ways seen by the seers with an ar­row in his thigh. Such in the Isle who thought those prog­nos­ti­ca­tions in­fal­li­ble, did not doubt but he would be shot in the thigh be­fore he died. Sir Nor­mand told me that he heard it the sub­ject of their dis­course for many years. At last he died with­out any such ac­ci­dent. Sir Nor­mand was at his buri­al at St. Clement's Church in the Har­ris. At the same time the corpse of an­oth­er gen­tle­man was brought to be buried in the same very church. The friends on ei­ther side came to de­bate who should first en­ter the church, and, in a trice, from words they came to blows. One of the num­ber (who was armed with bow and ar­rows) let one fly among them. (Now ev­ery fam­ily in that Isle have their buri­al-​place in the Church in stone chests, and the bod­ies are car­ried in open biers to the buri­al-​place.) Sir Nor­mand hav­ing ap­peased the tu­mult, one of the ar­rows was found shot in the dead man's thigh. To this Sir Nor­mand was a wit­ness.

In the ac­count which Mr. Daniel Mori­son, par­son in the Lewis, gave me, there was one, though it be het­ero­ge­neous from the sub­ject, yet it may be worth your no­tice. It was of a young wom­an in this parish, who was might­ily fright­ened by see­ing her own im­age still be­fore her, al­ways when she came to the open air; the back of the im­age be­ing al­ways to her, so that it was not a re­flec­tion as in a mir­ror, but the species of such a body as her own, and in a very like habit which ap­peared to her­self con­tin­ual­ly be­fore her. The par­son kept her a long while with him, but had no rem­edy of her evil, which trou­bled her ex­ceed­ing­ly. I was told af­ter­wards that when she was four or five years old­er she saw it not.

These are mat­ters of fact, which I as­sure you they are tru­ly re­lat­ed. But these and all oth­ers that oc­curred to me, by in­for­ma­tion or oth­er­wise, could nev­er lead me in­to a re­mote con­jec­ture of the cause of so ex­traor­di­nary a phe­nomenon. Whether it be a qual­ity in the eyes of some peo­ple in these parts, con­cur­ring with a qual­ity in the air al­so; whether such species be ev­ery­where, though not seen by the want of eyes so qual­ified, or from what­ev­er oth­er cause, I must leave to the in­quiry of clear­er judg­ments than mine. But a hint may be tak­en from this im­age which ap­peared still to this wom­an above men­tioned, and from an­oth­er men­tioned by Aris­to­tle, in the fourth of his Meta­physics (if I re­mem­ber right, for it is long since I read it), as al­so from the com­mon opin­ion that young in­fants (un­sul­lied with many ob­jects) do see ap­pari­tions which were not seen by those of el­der years; as like­wise from this, that sev­er­al did see the sec­ond sight when in the High­lands or Isles, yet when trans­port­ed to live in oth­er coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly in Amer­ica, they quite lose this qual­ity, as was told me by a gen­tle­man who knew some of them in Bar­ba­does, who did see no vi­sion there, al­though he knew them to be seers when they lived in the Isles of Scot­land.

_Thus far my Lord Tar­bat_.

THE BOGLE.

This is a freak­ish spir­it who de­lights rather to per­plex and fright­en mankind than ei­ther to serve or se­ri­ous­ly hurt them. The _Es­prit Fol­let_ of the French, Shake­speare's Puck, or Robin Good­fel­low, and Shelly­coat, a spir­it who re­sides in the wa­ters, and has giv­en his name to many a rock and stone on the Scot­tish coast, be­long to the class of bogles. One of Shelly­coat's pranks is thus nar­rat­ed:--Two men in a very dark night, ap­proach­ing the banks of the Et­trick, heard a dole­ful voice from its waves re­peat­ed­ly ex­claim, “Lost! lost!” They fol­lowed the sound, which seemed to be the voice of a drown­ing per­son, and, to their as­ton­ish­ment, found that it as­cend­ed the riv­er; still they con­tin­ued to fol­low the cry of the ma­li­cious sprite, and, ar­riv­ing be­fore dawn at the very sources of the riv­er, the voice was now heard de­scend­ing the op­po­site side of the moun­tain in which they arise. The fa­tigued and de­lud­ed trav­ellers now re­lin­quished the pur­suit, and had no soon­er done so, than they heard Shelly­coat ap­plaud­ing, in loud bursts of laugh­ter, his suc­cess­ful roguery.

DAOINE SHIE, OR THE MEN OF PEACE.

They are, though not ab­so­lute­ly malev­olent, be­lieved to be a pee­vish, re­pin­ing, and en­vi­ous race, who en­joy, in the sub­ter­ranean re­cess­es, a kind of shad­owy splen­dour. The High­landers are at all times un­will­ing to speak of them, but es­pe­cial­ly on Fri­day, when their in­flu­ence is sup­posed to be par­tic­ular­ly ex­ten­sive. As they are sup­posed to be in­vis­ibly present, they are at all times to be spo­ken of with re­spect. The fairies of Scot­land are rep­re­sent­ed as a diminu­tive race of be­ings, of a mixed or rather du­bi­ous na­ture, capri­cious in their dis­po­si­tions, and mis­chievous in their re­sent­ment. They in­hab­it the in­te­ri­or of green hills, chiefly those of a con­ical form, in Gael­ic termed _Sighan_, on which they lead their dances by moon­light, im­press­ing up­on the sur­face the marks of cir­cles, which some­times ap­pear yel­low and blast­ed, some­times of a deep green hue, and with­in which it is dan­ger­ous to sleep, or to be found af­ter sun­set. The re­moval of those large por­tions of turf, which thun­der­bolts some­times scoop out of the ground with sin­gu­lar reg­ular­ity, is al­so as­cribed to their agen­cy. Cat­tle which are sud­den­ly seized with the cramp, or some sim­ilar dis­or­der, are said to be elf-​shot, and the ap­proved cure is to chafe the parts af­fect­ed with a blue bon­net, which, it may be read­ily be­lieved, of­ten re­stores the cir­cu­la­tion. The tri­an­gu­lar flints fre­quent­ly found in Scot­land, with which the an­cient in­hab­itants prob­ably barbed their shafts, are sup­posed to be the weapons of fairy re­sent­ment, and are termed elf ar­row­heads. The rude brazen bat­tle-​ax­es of the an­cients, com­mon­ly called “celts,” are al­so as­cribed to their man­ufac­ture. But, like the Goth­ic duer­gar, their skill is not con­fined to the fab­ri­ca­tion of arms; for they are heard sed­ulous­ly ham­mer­ing in linns, precipices, and rocky or cav­ernous sit­ua­tions, where, like the dwarfs of the mines men­tioned by George Agri­co­la, they busy them­selves in im­itat­ing the ac­tions and the var­ious em­ploy­ments of men. The Brook of Beau­mont, for ex­am­ple, which pass­es in its course by nu­mer­ous linns and cav­erns, is no­to­ri­ous for be­ing haunt­ed by the fairies; and the per­fo­rat­ed and round­ed stones which are formed by trit­ura­tion in its chan­nels are termed by the vul­gar fairy cups and dish­es. A beau­ti­ful rea­son is as­signed by Fletch­er for the fays fre­quent­ing streams and foun­tains. He tells us of

“A vir­tu­ous well, about whose flow­ery banks The nim­ble-​foot­ed fairies dance their rounds By the pale moon­shine, dip­ping of­ten­times Their stolen chil­dren, so to make them free From dy­ing flesh and dull mor­tal­ity.”

It is some­times ac­count­ed un­lucky to pass such places with­out per­form­ing some cer­emo­ny to avert the dis­plea­sure of the elves. There is up­on the top of Minch­muir, a moun­tain in Pee­blesshire, a spring called the Cheese Well, be­cause, an­cient­ly, those who passed that way were wont to throw in­to it a piece of cheese as an of­fer­ing to the fairies, to whom it was con­se­crat­ed.

Like the _feld elfen_ of the Sax­ons, the usu­al dress of the fairies is green; though, on the moors, they have been some­times ob­served in heath- brown, or in weeds dyed with the stone-​raw or lichen. They of­ten ride in in­vis­ible pro­ces­sion, when their pres­ence is dis­cov­ered by the shrill ring­ing of their bri­dles. On these oc­ca­sions they some­times bor­row mor­tal steeds, and when such are found at morn­ing, pant­ing and fa­tigued in their stalls, with their manes and tails di­shev­elled and en­tan­gled, the grooms, I pre­sume, of­ten find this a con­ve­nient ex­cuse for their sit­ua­tion, as the com­mon be­lief of the elves quaffing the choic­est liquors in the cel­lars of the rich might oc­ca­sion­al­ly cloak the delin­quen­cies of an un­faith­ful but­ler.

The fairies, be­sides their eques­tri­an pro­ces­sions, are ad­dict­ed, it would seem, to the plea­sures of the chase. A young sailor, trav­el­ling by night from Dou­glas, in the Isle of Man, to vis­it his sis­ter re­sid­ing in Kirk Mer­lugh, heard a noise of hors­es, the hol­loa of a hunts­man, and the sound of a horn. Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter­wards, thir­teen horse­men, dressed in green, and gal­lant­ly mount­ed, swept past him. Jack was so much de­light­ed with the sport that he fol­lowed them, and en­joyed the sound of the horn for some miles, and it was not till he ar­rived at his sis­ter's house that he learned the dan­ger which he had in­curred. I must not omit to men­tion that these lit­tle per­son­ages are ex­pert jock­eys, and scorn to ride the lit­tle Manx ponies, though ap­par­ent­ly well suit­ed to their size. The ex­er­cise, there­fore, falls heav­ily up­on the En­glish and Irish hors­es brought in­to the Isle of Man. Mr. Wal­dron was as­sured by a gen­tle­man of Bal­lafletch­er that he had lost three or four cap­ital hunters by these noc­tur­nal ex­cur­sions. From the same au­thor we learn that the fairies some­times take more le­git­imate modes of procur­ing hors­es. A per­son of the ut­most in­tegri­ty in­formed him that, hav­ing oc­ca­sion to sell a horse, he was ac­cost­ed among the moun­tains by a lit­tle gen­tle­man plain­ly dressed, who priced his horse, cheap­ened him, and, af­ter some chaf­fer­ing, fi­nal­ly pur­chased him. No soon­er had the buy­er mount­ed and paid the price than he sank through the earth, horse and man, to the as­ton­ish­ment and ter­ror of the sell­er, who, ex­pe­ri­enced, how­ev­er, no in­con­ve­nience from deal­ing with so ex­traor­di­nary a pur­chas­er.

THE DEATH “BREE.”

There was once a wom­an, who lived in the Camp-​del-​more of Strathavon, whose cat­tle were seized with a mur­rain, or some such fell dis­ease, which rav­aged the neigh­bour­hood at the time, car­ry­ing off great num­bers of them dai­ly. All the for­lorn fires and hal­lowed wa­ters failed of their cus­tom­ary ef­fects; and she was at length told by the wise peo­ple, whom she con­sult­ed on the oc­ca­sion, that it was ev­ident­ly the ef­fect of some in­fer­nal agen­cy, the pow­er of which could not be de­stroyed by any oth­er means than the nev­er-​fail­ing spe­cif­ic--the juice of a dead head from the church­yard,--a nos­trum cer­tain­ly very dif­fi­cult to be pro­cured, con­sid­er­ing that the head must needs be ab­stract­ed from the grave at the hour of mid­night. Be­ing, how­ev­er, a wom­an of a stout heart and strong faith, na­tive feel­ings of del­ica­cy to­wards the sanc­tu­ary of the dead had more weight than had fear in re­strain­ing her for some time from re­sort­ing to this des­per­ate rem­edy. At length, see­ing that her stock would soon be an­ni­hi­lat­ed by the de­struc­tive ca­reer of the dis­ease, the wife of Camp- del-​more re­solved to put the ex­per­iment in prac­tice, what­ev­er the re­sult might be. Ac­cord­ing­ly, hav­ing with con­sid­er­able dif­fi­cul­ty en­gaged a neigh­bour­ing wom­an as her com­pan­ion in this haz­ardous ex­pe­di­tion, they set out a lit­tle be­fore mid­night for the parish church­yard, dis­tant about a mile and a half from her res­idence, to ex­ecute her de­ter­mi­na­tion. On ar­riv­ing at the church­yard her com­pan­ion, whose courage was not so no­table, ap­palled by the gloomy prospect be­fore her, re­fused to en­ter among the habi­ta­tions of the dead. She, how­ev­er, agreed to re­main at the gate till her friend's busi­ness was ac­com­plished. This cir­cum­stance, how­ev­er, did not stag­ger the wife's res­olu­tion. She, with the great­est cool­ness and in­tre­pid­ity, pro­ceed­ed to­wards what she sup­posed an old grave, took down her spade, and com­menced her op­er­ations. Af­ter a good deal of toil she ar­rived at the ob­ject of her labour. Rais­ing the first head, or rather skull, that came in her way, she was about to make it her own prop­er­ty, when a hol­low, wild, sepul­chral voice ex­claimed, “That is my head; let it alone!” Not wish­ing to dis­pute the claimant's ti­tle to this head, and sup­pos­ing she could be oth­er­wise pro­vid­ed, she very good- na­tured­ly re­turned it and took up an­oth­er. “That is my fa­ther's head,” bel­lowed the same voice. Wish­ing, if pos­si­ble, to avoid dis­putes, the wife of Camp-​del-​more took up an­oth­er head, when the same voice in­stant­ly start­ed a claim to it as his grand­fa­ther's head. “Well,” replied the wife, net­tled at her dis­ap­point­ments, “al­though it were your grand­moth­er's head, you shan't get it till I am done with it.” “What do you say, you lim­mer?” says the ghost, start­ing up in his awry ha­bil­iments. “What do you say, you lim­mer?” re­peat­ed he in a great rage. “By the great oath, you had bet­ter leave my grand­fa­ther's head.” Up­on mat­ters com­ing this length, the wily wife of Camp-​del-​more thought it prop­er to as­sume a more con­cil­ia­to­ry as­pect. Telling the claimant the whole par­tic­ulars of the predica­ment in which she was placed, she promised faith­ful­ly that if his hon­our would on­ly al­low her to car­ry off his grand­fa­ther's skull or head in a peace­able man­ner, she would re­store it again when done with. Here, af­ter some com­muning, they came to an un­der­stand­ing; and she was al­lowed to take the head along with her, on con­di­tion that she should re­store it be­fore cock-​crow­ing, un­der the heav­iest penal­ties.

On com­ing out of the church­yard and look­ing for her com­pan­ion, she had the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion to find her “with­out a mouth­ful of breath in her body”; for, on hear­ing the dis­pute be­tween her friend and the guardian of the grave, and sus­pect­ing much that she was like­ly to share the un­pleas­ant pun­ish­ments with which he threat­ened her friend, at the bare recital of them she fell down in a faint, from which it was no easy mat­ter to re­cov­er her. This proved no small in­con­ve­nience to Camp-​del-​more's wife, as there were not above two hours to elapse ere she had to re­turn the head ac­cord­ing to the terms of her agree­ment. Tak­ing her friend up­on her back, she car­ried her up a steep ac­cliv­ity to the near­est ad­join­ing house, where she left her for the night; then re­paired home with the ut­most speed, made _dead bree_ of the head ere the ap­point­ed time had ex­pired, re­stored the skull to its guardian, and placed the grave in its for­mer con­di­tion. It is need­less to add that, as a re­ward for her ex­em­plary courage, the “_bree_” had its de­sired ef­fect. The cat­tle speed­ily re­cov­ered, and, so long as she re­tained any of it, all sorts of dis­eases were of short du­ra­tion.

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