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