converted into a pulpit, in the times of persecution, proscribed the revelry of unchristened feet. Lamentations of no earthly voices were heard for years around this beloved hill." * The latter part of this quotation alludes to a very prominent part of Scottish fairy superstition, the haunts or habitations of the Elf-folk, and their Court or Fairy-land, a species of fiction which, as we have seen, makes a striking figure in the Scandinavian mythology, and probably furnished Chaucer with his adventure of Sir Thopas. The local appropriation of Fairies, however, though common enough in England, has been more minutely marked and described in Scotland. Green hills, mountain-lakes, romantic glens, and inaccessible falls of water, were more peculiarly their favourite haunts, whilst the wilderness or forest wild was deemed the regular entrance to Elf-land or the Court of Faery. "There be many Places," says Kirk, “called Fairie-hills, which the Mountain People think impious and dangerous to peel or discover, by taking earth or wood from them;" and, speaking in another place of their habitations, he adds, they" are called large and fair, and (unless att some odd occasions) unperceaveable by vulgar eyes, like Rachland and other inchanted Islands, having fir Lights, continual Lamps, and Fires, often seen Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, 8vo. 1810. pp. 295, 296, 297. + The resemblance between the search of Svegder for Godheim or Fairy-land, and the object of Sir Thopas's expedition, cannot but strike the reader: "In his sadel he clombe anon, And pricked over stile and ston An elf quene for to espie; Til he so long had riden and gone The countree of Faërie. Wherein he saughte north and south, In many a foreste wilde; For in that countree nas ther non, That to him dorst ride or gon, Neither wif ne childe." Cant. Tales, apud Tyrwhitt, v. 13726. without Fuel to sustain them," confirming the account by the instance of a female neighbour of his, who, being conveyed to Elf-land, "found the Place full of Light, without any Fountain or Lamp from whence it did spring." * "Lakes and pits, on the tops of mountains," remarks Dr. Leyden, were "regarded with a degree of superstitious horror, as the porches or entrances of the subterraneous habitations of the fairies; from which confused murmurs, the cries of children, moaning voices, the ringing of bells, and the sounds of musical instruments, are often supposed to be heard. Round these hills, the green fairy circles are believed to wind, in a spiral direction, till they reach the descent to the central cavern; so that, if the unwary traveller be benighted on the charmed ground, he is inevitably conducted, by an invisible to the fearful descent." † power, That a similar partiality was shown by these fairy people to the site of secluded waterfalls, is recorded in the Statistical Account of Scotland, where the minister of Dumfries, after describing a Linn formed by the water of the Crichup, as inaccessible to real beings, observes, that it had anciently been "considered as the habitation of imaginary ones; and at the entrance into it there was a curious Cell or Cave, called the Elf's Kirk, where, according to the superstition of the times, the imaginary inhabitants of the Linn were supposed to hold their meetings." ‡ But, independent of these numerous occasional residences of the fairy tribe, a firm belief in the existence of a fixed court, or Elf-land peculiarly so denominated, as the centre of their empire and the abode of their Queen, was so prevalent in Scotland, during the sixteenth century, as to have been acted upon in a court of justice. A woman named Alison Pearson having been convicted, on the 28th of May, 1586, of holding intercourse with and visiting the Queen of * Essay, pp. 5. 12. 18. +"Scenes of Infancy: descriptive of Teviotdale," 1st edit. 12mo. p. 161. Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xiii. p. 245. Elf-land; "for hanting and repairing," says the indictment," with the gude neighbours, and Queene of Elfland, thir divers years by past, as she had confest; and that she had friends in that court, which were of her own blude, who had gude acquaintance of the Queene of Elfland, — and that she was seven years ill handled in the Court of Elfland*," and for this notable crime was the burnt to death! poor creature When such was the credulity of a bench of judges, we need not wonder that Fairy Land had become a professed article of the poetical creed, and that Lindsay in 1560, and Montgomery in 1584, should allude to it as a subject of admitted notoriety: thus the former, in his Complaynt of the Papingo, says "Bot sen my spreit mon from my bodye go, I recommend it to the Quene of Fary, In wilderness amang the holtis hair;"† and the latter, in his Flyting against Polwart, speaking of Hallow'een, tells us, that "The king of Pharie and his court, with the elf queen, According to the Tale of the Young Tamlane, a poem in its original state coeval with the Complaynt of Scotland, and on the authority of the Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, said also to be of considerable antiquity §, Elf-land is represented as a terrestrial paradise, the opening of the road to which was in the desert "Where living land was left behind;" it is described as a "bonny road" "that winds about the fernie brae," Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, vol. ii. p. 206. 1st edit. + Lindsay's Works, 1592, p. 222. + Watson's Collection of Scots Poems, 1709, part iii. p. 12. but the roaring of the sea is heard in the descent, and at length the traveller wades knee-deep through rivers of blood, "For a' the blude that's shed on earth, Rins thro' the springs o' that countrie;" * yet, when arrived, the land is full of pleasantness, a garden of the loveliest green, self-illumined, and whose halls have roofs of beaten gold, and floors of purest chrystal. † In conformity to these Scottish traditionary features of Fairy-land, and in reference to the popular tale of Thomas the Rhymer, who, daring to salute the Fairy Queen, was carried off in early life to this region of enchantment, and there broke the vow of silence enjoined on all who entered its precincts ‡, Dr. Leyden has executed the following glowing picture: "The fairy ring-dance now, round Eildon-tree, On glancing step appears the fairy queen ; — In robes, that glister like the sun in May, With hawk and hounds she leads the moon-light ranks, - Dire to the minstrel was the fairy's boon! - * Thomas The Rhymer, part i., Scott's Minstrelsy, vol. ii. pp. 253, 254. Tale of the Young Tamlane, Minstrelsy, vol. ii. p. 235. キ "If you speak word in Elflyn land, Ye'll ne'er get back to your ain countrie.” Thomas the Rhymer; Minstrelsy, vol. ii. p. 253, Silent they wade, where sounding torrents lave And Rymour's tongue confess'd the numbing spell: In iron sleep the minstrel lies forlorn, Who breathed a sound before he blew the horn."* * Scenes of Infancy, book ii. pp. 71-73. This poem abounds in passages of exquisite pathos and splendid imagination. The book, whence the lines just quoted are taken, closes with the following apostrophe to Mr. Scott: VOL. II. "O Scott! with whom, in youth's serenest prime, I wove, with careless hand, the fairy rhyme, Bade chivalry's barbaric pomp return, And heroes wake from every mouldering urn! The deeds of knights, the loves of dames, proclaim, In cheerful joke, or legendary tale, Thy mind, whose fearless frankness nought could move, While from each scene of early life I part, True to the beatings of this ardent heart, When, half-deceased, with half the world between, T T |