to shake off these idle terrors."[7]

_Tam o' Shanter_, written for Captain Grose, was perhaps based on
a Scottish legend, learnt at the inglenook in childhood, from
this old wife, or perhaps

"By some auld houlet-haunted biggin
Or kirk deserted by its riggin,"

from Captain Grose himself, who made to quake:

"Ilk ghaist that haunts auld ha' or chamer,
Ye gipsy-gang that deal in glamor,
And you, deep-read in hell's black grammar,
Warlocks and witches."

In it Burns reveals with lively reality the terrors that assail
the reveller on his homeward way through the storm:

"Past the birks and meikle stane
Where drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane;
And through the whins, and by the cairn
Where hunters fand the murdered bairn
And near the thorn, aboon the well
Where Mungo's mither hanged hersell."

For sheer terror the wild, fantastic witch-dance, seen through a
Gothic window in the ruins of Kirk-Alloway, with the light of
humour strangely glinting through, has hardly been surpassed. The
Ballad-collections, beginning with Percy's _Reliques of Ancient