tenants who have deserted it. The ruined and abandoned churchyard of
Boldside has been long believed to be haunted by the Fairies, and the
deep broad current of the Tweed, wheeling in moonlight round the foot
of the steep bank, with the number of trees originally planted for
shelter round the fields of the cottagers, but now presenting the
effect of scattered and detached groves, fill up the idea which one
would form in imagination for a scene that Oberon and Queen Mab might
love to revel in. There are evenings when the spectator might
believe, with Father Chaucer, that the

--Queen of Faery,
With harp, and pipe, and symphony,
Were dwelling in the place.

Another, and even a more familiar refuge of the elfin race, (if
tradition is to be trusted,) is the glen of the river, or rather
brook, named the Allen, which falls into the Tweed from the northward,
about a quarter of a mile above the present bridge. As the streamlet
finds its way behind Lord Sommerville's hunting-seat, called the
Pavilion, its valley has been popularly termed the Fairy Dean, or
rather the Nameless Dean, because of the supposed ill luck attached by
the popular faith of ancient times, to any one who might name or
allude to the race, whom our fathers distinguished as the Good
Neighbours, and the Highlanders called Daoine Shie, or Men of Peace;
rather by way of compliment, than on account of any particular idea of
friendship or pacific relation which either Highlander or Borderer
entertained towards the irritable beings whom they thus distinguished,
or supposed them to bear to humanity. [Footnote: See Rob Roy, Note,
p. 202.]