nocturnal visions are less unstable and uncertain than those that exist
under our noses. True it is, at any rate, that the legend was narrated
to me in a meagre form by a lady, sufficiently ancient to be supposed to
be a lover of strange stories, and not imaginative or wicked enough to
concoct them.

That part of Edinburgh called the West Bow was, at the date of our
legend, the tinsmiths' quarter; a fact which no one who chanced to walk
down that way could have doubted, unless indeed he was deaf. Among the
fraternity there was one destined to live in annals even with more
posthumous notoriety than he of the same place and craft, who long got
the credit of being the author of the "Land o' the Leal." His name was
Thomas, or, according to the Scottish way of pronouncing it, Tammas
Dodds; who, with a wife going under the domestic euphuism of Jenny,
occupied as a dwelling-house a small flat of three rooms, in the near
neighbourhood of his workshop. This couple had lived together five
years, without having any children procreated of their bodies, or any
quarrel born of their spirits; and thus they might have lived to the end
of their lives, if a malign influence, born of the devil, had not got
possession of the husband's heart.

This influence, which we may be permitted by good Calvinists to call
diabolical, was, as a consequence, not only in its origin, but also in
its medium, altogether extraneous to our couple. For so far as regards
Mrs. Jenny Dodds, she was, as much as a good wife could be, free from
any great defects of conduct; and as for the tinsmith himself, he had
hitherto lived so sober and douce a life, that we cannot avoid the
notion, that if he had not been subject to "aiblins a great temptation,"
he would not have become the victim of the arch-enemy. Thus much we say
of the dispositions of the two parties; and were it not that certain