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    SCOTTISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES - 85 Scottish Children's Stories: 85 Scottish Fairy & Folk Tales, Myths, Legends and Children's Stories
    SCOTTISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES - 85 Scottish Children's Stories: 85 Scottish Fairy & Folk Tales, Myths, Legends and Children's Stories
    SCOTTISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES - 85 Scottish Children's Stories: 85 Scottish Fairy & Folk Tales, Myths, Legends and Children's Stories
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    SCOTTISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES - 85 Scottish Children's Stories: 85 Scottish Fairy & Folk Tales, Myths, Legends and Children's Stories

    By Anon E. Mouse and Compiled by Sir George Douglas

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    About this ebook

    This book, compiled by Sir George Douglas, contains not just fairytales but also tales of kelpies, brownies, stories of animals - foxes, crows, frogs and stories of mermen and comic tales as well.
    Contained herein are eighty-five stories like:
    The Story of the White Pet,
    The Fisherman and the Mermen,
    The Seal-Catcher’s Adventure,
    The Frog and the Crow,
    Habitrot, The Wee Bunnock
    and many, many more.

    In the days long before the advent of radio and television, the arrival of a story-teller in a village was an important event. As soon as it became known, there would be a rush to the house where he was lodged, and every available seat--on bench, table, bed, beam, or the floor would quickly be appropriated. And then, for hours, together--just like some first-rate actor on a stage--the story-teller would hold his audience spell-bound with the tales contained herein.

    John Campbell of Isla, who gathered the Popular Tales of the West Highlands series in the 1870’s, records that in his day the practice of story-telling still lingered in the remote Western Islands of Barra at that time. Maybe, just maybe, there are a few alive today who remember this custom being continued at Poolewe in Ross-shire where the young people used to assemble at night to hear the old ones recite the tales which they, in turn, had learned from their fore-fathers.

    This book is a treasure chest of classic Scottish Folklore, and will make fascinating reading for those interested in folklore in general. So, take some time out and travel back to a period before television and radio, a time when tales were passed on orally--at the drying kilns, at the communal well and in homes and cottages of Scotland.

    10% of the profit from the sale of this book is donated to charities by the publisher.
    YESTERDAYS BOOKS raising funds for TODAYS CHARITIES
    ==============
    KEYWORDS/TAGS: Folklore, fairy tales, myths, legends, Scottish, Scotland, folk tales, children’s stories, bedtime, poolewe, ross-shire, scots, Nursery, White Pet, Milk-White Doo, Croodin Doo, Cattie, Kiln-Ring, Spinning, Marriage, Robin Redbreast, Wren, Tempted Lady, Fause Knight, Wee Boy, Strange Visitor, Rashin-Coatie, Animals, Fox Outwitted, Fleas, Bag-Pipes, Stratagem, Cock, Wolf, Lost Tail, Frog, Crow, Grouse Cock, Wife, Eagle, Presumption, Two Foxes, Bee, Mouse, Alexander Jones, Fairies Of Scotland, Miller's Wife, Sir Godfrey Macculloch, Laird, Habitrot, Tulman, Isle Of Pabaidh, Sanntraigh, Water Fairies, Transportation, Poor Man, Peatlaw, Leith, Crooked Finger, Ploughmen, The Smith. Lothian, Fairy Land, Bible-Reader, Thom, Willie, Gloaming Bucht, Song,  Faithful Purse-Bearer, Brownie, Bogle, Kelpy, Mermen,Demons, Bodsbeck, Thievish Maids, Doomed Rider, Graham Of Morphie, Fisherman, Mermaid Wife, Seal-Catcher, Adventure, Knockdolion, Laird, Lorntie, Nuckelavee, Two Shepherds, Fatlips, witchcraft, Comic Tales, Wee Bunnock, Shifty Lad, Widow's Son, Lothian Tom, Ploughman's Glory, Witty Exploits, George Buchanan, King's Fool, Literary Tales, Haunted Ships, Elphin Irving, Cupbearer, Fairy Oak, Corriewater, Cousin Mattie, Rat Hall
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAbela Publishing
    Release dateFeb 12, 2018
    ISBN9788827568347
    SCOTTISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES - 85 Scottish Children's Stories: 85 Scottish Fairy & Folk Tales, Myths, Legends and Children's Stories

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      SCOTTISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES - 85 Scottish Children's Stories - Anon E. Mouse

      Scottish

      Fairy & Folk Tales

      Selected and Edited

      with an Introduction by

      Sir George Douglas

      Originally Pubished By

      A. L. Burt Company, New York

      [1901 – or thereabouts]

      Resurrected by

      Abela Publishing, London

      [2018]

      Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales

      Typographical arrangement of this edition

      © Abela Publishing 2018

      This book may not be reproduced in its current format in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, or mechanical ( including photocopy, file or video recording, internet web sites, blogs, wikis, or any other information storage and retrieval system) except as permitted by law without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      Abela Publishing,

      London

      United Kingdom

      2018

      ISBN-13: 978-X-XXXXXX-XX-X

      email [email protected]

      www.AbelaPublishing.com/Scottish.html

      Dedication

      This book is dedicated to the teachers and storytellers

      who keep folklore and history alive

      through the telling and re-telling of these tales

      Acknowledgements

      The Publisher acknowledges the work that

      Sir George Douglas

      did in compiling this exquisite collection of

      Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales

      in a time well before

      any electronic media was in use.

      Contents

      Introduction

      The Three Green Men Of Glen Nevis

      Nursery Stories

      The Story Of The White Pet

      The Milk-White Doo

      The Croodin Doo

      The Cattie Sits In The Kiln-Ring Spinning

      Marriage Of Robin Redbreast

      And The Wren

      The Tempted Lady

      The Fause Knight And The Wee Boy

      The Strange Visitor

      Rashin-Coatie

      Stories Of Animals

      The Fox Outwitted

      The Fox Troubled With Fleas

      The Fox And The Bag-Pipes

      The Fox's Stratagem

      The Fox And The Wrens

      The Fox And The Cock

      How The Wolf Lost His Tail

      Frog And Crow

      The Grouse Cock And His Wife

      The Eagle And The Wren

      The Wren's Presumption

      The Two Foxes

      The Bee And The Mouse

      The Two Mice

      Alexander Jones

      Fairy Tales

      The Fairies Of Scotland

      The Fairy And The Miller's Wife

      Sir Godfrey Macculloch

      The Laird O' Co'

      Habitrot

      The Tulman

      The Isle Of Pabaidh

      Sanntraigh

      Water Fairies

      Fairy Transportation

      The Poor Man Of Peatlaw

      The Fairy Boy Of Leith

      Mind The Crooked Finger

      The Two Young Ploughmen

      The Smith And The Fairies

      The Lothian Farmer's Wife

      Redemption From Fairy Land

      The Fairy And The Bible-Reader

      Thom And Willie

      The Gloaming Bucht

      The Fairy's Song

      The Faithful Purse-Bearer

      The Brownie, The Bogle, The Kelpy, Mermen And Demons

      The Scottish Brownie

      The Brownie Of Bodsbeck

      The Brownie And The Thievish Maids

      The Bogle

      The Doomed Rider

      Graham Of Morphie

      The Fisherman And The Merman

      The Mermaid Wife

      The Seal-Catcher's Adventure

      The Mermaid Of Knockdolion

      The Young Laird Of Lorntie

      Nuckelavee

      The Two Shepherds

      Fatlips

      The Silly Mutton

      Witchcraft

      Macgillichallum Of Razay

      The Witch Of Laggan

      The Blacksmith's Wife Of Yarrowfoot

      The Miller Of Holdean

      Ronaldson Of Bowden

      The Farmer's Wife Of Deloraine

      Laird Harry Gilles

      The Missing Web

      The Witches Of Delnabo

      The Brazen Brogues

      Comic Tales

      The Wee Bunnock

      The Tale Of The Shifty Lad, The Widow's Son

      Lothian Tom

      The Ploughman's Glory; Or, Tom's Song

      The Witty Exploits Of Mr. George Buchanan, The King's Fool

      Literary Tales

      The Haunted Ships

          Elphin Irving - The Fairies' Cupbearer

      The Fairy Oak Of Corriewater.

      Cousin Mattie

      Rat Hall

      Introduction

      IT is only within comparatively recent years that the homely stories in the mouths of the country-people have been constituted a branch of learning, and have had applied to them, as such, the methods and the terminology of science. No doubt a very noteworthy gain to knowledge has resulted from this treatment,--a curious department of research has been opened up, and light has been cast upon various outside things of greater importance than the subject of study itself. But, side by side with this gain to knowledge, is there not, involved in the method of treatment indicated, a loss to the stories themselves? Classified, tabulated, scientifically named, they are no longer the wild free product of Nature that we knew and loved:--they are become, so to speak, a collection of butterflies in a case, an album of pressed wild flowers. No doubt they are still very interesting, and highly instructive; but their poetry, their brightness, the fragrance which clung about them in their native air, their native soil, is in large measure gone! Well then,--with all due recognition of the value of the labours of the scientific folk-lorist, the comparative mythologist, whose work I would not for one moment be understood to undervalue,--is there not room, even at the present day, to study these stories from another point of view, and that the simplest and most obvious one--the point of view, I mean, of the story-teller pure and simple? One would hope that the time had not yet come when the old tales, considered on their own merits, have entirely ceased to charm; and it is an undeniable fact that there are still persons among us who would regard it as a real and personal loss could they be made to believe that the ideal hero of their childhood, as he falls heroically, in a bloody battle, wounded to the death, is in reality a myth, or an allegory to embody the setting of the sun; and who would even feel themselves aggrieved could they be brought to realise that the bugbear of their baby years--their own particular bugbear--is common also to the aborigines of Polynesia. So great is the power of early association. Well then, my proposal is to consider the Tales of the Scottish Peasantry simply from the literary, critical, or story-teller's point of view,--from the point of view, that is, of persons who actually tell them, to whom they are actually told.

      I suppose that most nations, whilst their life has remained primitive, have practised the art of storytelling; and certainly the Scotch were no exceptions to the rule. Campbell of Isla, who wrote about thirty years ago, records that in his day the practice of story-telling still lingered in the remote Western Islands of Barra; where, in the long winter nights, the people would gather in crowds to listen to those whom they considered good exponents of the art. At an earlier date,--but still, at that time, within living memory,--the custom survived at Poolewe in Ross-shire where the young people were used to assemble at night to hear the old ones recite the tales which they had learned from their fore-fathers. Here, and at earlier dates in other parts of the country also, the demand for stories would further be supplied by travelling pedlars, or by gaberlunzie men, or pauper wandering musicians and entertainers, or by the itinerant shoemaker or tailor--Whip-the-Cat as he was nicknamed,--both of which last were accustomed to travel through thinly-populated country districts, in the pursuit of their calling, and to put up for the night at farm-houses,--where, whilst plying their needles, they would entertain the company with stories.

      The arrival of one of these story-tellers in a village was an important event. As soon as it became known, there would be a rush to the house where he was lodged, and every available seat--on bench, table, bed, beam, or the floor--would quickly be appropriated. And then, for hours together--just like some first-rate actor on a stage--the story-teller would hold his audience spell-bound. During his recitals, the emotions of the reciter were occasionally very strongly excited, as were also those of his listeners,--who at one time would be on the verge of tears, at another would give way to loud laughter. There were many of these listeners, by the way, who believed firmly in all the extravagances narrated. And such rustic scenes as these, as I hope presently to show, have by no means been without their marked effect upon Scottish literature.

      In his tour through the Islands, Campbell of Isla--my authority for these particulars--visited one of the old story-tellers in his home. The man was far advanced in years, and he lived in a rude hut on the shore at South Uist. Campbell describes the scene in detail. The but consisted of one room only. The fireplace was the floor, and the chimney a hole above it,--so that the air was dense with peat-smoke, whilst the rafters were hung with streamers and festoons of soot. The old man himself had the manner of a practised narrator,--he would chuckle at certain places in his story, and, like an Ancient Mariner or like one of the Weird Sisters, would lay a withered finger on the listener's knee when he came to the terrifying parts. A little boy in a kilt stood at his knee, gazing in his wrinkled face, and devouring every word. Whilst the story lasted, three wayfarers dropped in, listened for a while, and then proceeded on their way. The daylight streamed down the chimney, lighting up a tract in the blue mist of the peat-smoke and falling on the white hair and brown wrinkled face of the old man, as he sat on a low stool by the fire, and on the rest of the dwelling, with its furniture of boxes and box-beds, dresser, dishes, gear of all sorts,--until at last it faded away, through shades of deepening brown, to the black darkness of the smoked roof and the corner where the peat was stored.

      To turn now from the story-teller to the stories.

      Perhaps the most characteristic of the Highland tales are those--somewhat tedious they are, it must be confessed, with all their repetitions of dialogues, all their reproductions of what is practically one situation--which deal with heroes and giants. The shortest kind of popular tale, on the other hand, is that which is concerned with the dumb animals,--by no means dumb, of course, in the stories. The Highlands, too, are particularly rich in these tales; and it is easy to understand how the country-people generally--living so near to nature as they do--may come to have an insight into, and an appreciation of, the character of the brute animals; together with a sympathy with them in their tussle for existence, which is not attainable by those who lead a more artificial life. Some of the apologues and traits of animal life in which this knowledge and appreciative sympathy have been embodied are decidedly naive and quaint. Nor do they lack a pungent human application.

      The class of stories next to be considered displays a higher degree of fancy. And it must not be imagined that this quality of fancy is anything less than a characteristic attribute of the minds of many of the Scotch peasantry. It displays itself in its simplest form perhaps in their nomenclature in the names which they have given either to natural objects, or to places which are characterised by some striking natural feature. In the Highlands, the Gaelic place-names are often very elaborate indeed; but to turn now to the Lowlands. A, waterfall in the Selkirkshire hills, where the water, after pouring dark over a declivity, dashes down in white foam among rocks, is known as The Grey Mare's Tail; twin hills in Roxburghshire, which have beautifully rounded matched summits, have been christened Maiden's Paps. Then, the cirrus, or curl-cloud, is in rustic speech, goat's hair; the phenomenon of the Northern Lights, among the fishermen of Shetland, is the Merry Dancers; the Pleiades are the Twinklers; the constellation of Orion, with its star iota pendant as if from a girdle, is the King's Ellwand, or yard-measure; the noxious froth which adheres to the stalks of rank vegetation at mid-summer is the Witches' spittle. There is a root of poetry, I think, in this aptitude for giving names; and, as a matter of fact, in the Lowlands of Scotland, rustic poets and rhymesters are far from uncommon. Nor are the peasantry, in their name-giving, wanting in literary allusiveness--allusiveness, that is, to the only book which has ever obtained universal currency among them. For example, among the fishermen of the East Coast, the black mark below the gills of a haddock is Peter's Thumb; whilst a coarse plant commonly found in corn-fields, which has its leaves strangely clouded and stained as if with droppings, and is called, I believe, by the botanists, Polygonum persicaria, is locally known on the Borders as The Flower which grew at the Foot of the Cross.

      Perhaps the deepest thinkers among a people who have their philosophers as well as their dreamers, are to be found among the hill shepherds. And it is chiefly through the instrumentality of one of these hill shepherds that we can now, in fancy, enter that realm of fancy, the world of Fairyland. James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, was one of those common men, plus genius, who every now and then in the history of literature give to a whole world of floating thought, fancy, tradition, a permanent substantial form. No man in literature is his master in the weird tale. No man, but Shakespeare--not even excepting Drayton--has written so well of the fairies.

      Hogg was born in the Arcadia of Scotland, Ettrick Forest, where, as Scott tells us, the belief in fairies lingered longer than elsewhere-about the year 1770. When he--was a young man, the spirit of emulation was stirred in his breast by the example of the poet Burns. And so, as he wandered through the pastoral solitudes, keeping his sheep, he carried an ink-horn slung from his neck, and taught himself to write,--and so committed his first poem to paper. And as he thus wandered and mused, he is said to have fallen asleep one day, upon a green hill-side, to dream the dream of Kilmeny, and to bear her image in his heart for ever after.

      The story of Kilmeny is that of a girl of poetic nature, a lover of solitude, who, wandering alone at twilight, disappears in a wild glen among the hills. She is sought for by her friends--at first hopefully, at last despairingly. No trace of her is found. Years pass, and the mystery remains unsolved; but at the close of the seventh year, in the same twilight hour in which she had vanished, Kilmeny returns to her home. She has been rapt away by fairies, with whom the intervening years have been spent. But in the midst of Fairyland, her heart still yearns tenderly to her home; and when seven years have expired, and the fairies have no longer power to detain her against her will, she chooses to leave the life of pleasure which she leads among them, to return to the common earth. Such is an outline of the story; but the story is the least part of the poem. Its charm lies in its exquisitely flowing and melodious verse, in its suggestion of the twilight world, and of a world of shadows--a land where all things are forgotten--in its wistful tenderness,--in a word, in the unique and perfect aptness of the style to the subject. So magical, indeed, are the fairy touches throughout the writings of the Ettrick Shepherd, that one might almost be tempted to dream that the experience with which tradition credits Thomas the Rhymer had been shared by this rhymer of a later day.

      As in England, tales of fairies caught sight of on the country green, at twilight or by moonlight, of services rendered by mortals to fairies and gratefully and gracefully repaid, find a place among the fables of the Scottish peasantry. But it is by no means in such airy, gracious, and harmless if not beneficent, creations as this that the genius of the Scottish nation finds its fancy's most congenial food. That genius is upon the whole essentially a sombre one--relieved, indeed, by a rough humour--but tending most to an affinity with gloom. The hostility of Nature, its permanence as contrasted with the transient character of man, its victoriousness in the never-ending battle waged against it by man,--a battle in which he fights for life, in which he gains a few trifling and temporary advantages, but in which he must recognise from the first that he fights against impossible odds: these are facts which a barren soil and a bleak and stormy climate have thrust forcibly upon the Scottish popular imagination, and which have impressed themselves deeply upon it. The shepherd battling for his life, and for the lives of his flock, against the force and darkness of driving snow, is a far more characteristic Scottish figure than that of James Hogg asleep on the hill-side, dreaming of Fairyland.

      This gloomy view of Nature has tinged the superstitious beliefs, and through them the stories of the Scottish peasantry. And upon the back of this gloomy view of Nature has come a sense, stronger perhaps than is felt by any other nation, of fate and doom, of the mystery of life and death, of the cruelty of the inevitable, the pain of separation, the darkness which enshrouds the whole. In this sense the Scotch are a nation of pessimists. They have found their religious vocation in Calvinism, the gloomiest and most terrible of creeds; and the spirit which embraced Calvinism like a bride informs their mythology and their fireside tales. Their tendency to devil-worship--to the propitiation of evil spirits--is illustrated by the hideous usage of the Good-man's Croft--a plot of ground near a village which was left untilled, set apart for, and dedicated to, the Powers of Evil, in the hope that their malignity might be appeased by the sacrifice, and that so they might be induced to spare the crops on the surrounding fields. Of the state of superstitious dread in which some Scotchmen passed their lives, Mrs. Grant, of Laggan, gives a further curious illustration when she tells us that, in the Highlands of her day, to boast, or to congratulate a friend, was to rashly court retribution; whilst to praise a babe upon the nurse's arm was to incur suspicion of wishing to bring down ill upon its head.

      Holding such beliefs as these, it is not to be wondered at if, in their stories, the Scotch are the passed-masters of the weird. Their very nursery tales--many of them--would appear to have been conceived with a view to educating, for some strange purpose or other, the passions of horror and sorrow in the child to whom they are told. Such rhymes, for instance, as The Tempted Lady, The Fause Knight and the Wee Boy, The Strange Visitor, are uncanny to a degree. In the two former, the Evil One himself appears, in specious guise. The Strange Visitor is Death. The nursery ballad of The Croodin' Doo--a term of affection applied to a child--is as full of combined piteousness and sinister suggestion of underhand wickedness as any little tragedy of its length could well be. The suggestion is that of a man's childless, lawful wife bearing a bitter grudge against another woman who has borne him a child. The babe returns from a day's outing, and is questioned by his slighted mother as to where he has been, and what he has done. But he is tired, and cries out to be put to bed. The jealous woman, however, persists in her interrogatory, and asks him what he has had for dinner. He replies that he has dined on a little four-footed fish. (The eft, or newt, is, like the toad, in the common superstition, venomous.) And what was done with the bones of this singular fish? asks the woman. They were given to the lapdog. And what did the dog do? After eating them, he shot out his feet and died. There, with admirable art, the ballad ends. Its effect is immensely heightened by a burden, or refrain, in which, at the close of every verse, the child, with wearisome iteration, and with child-like importunity, cries out to his mother to make his bed soon. This little song of child-life is queer fare to set before a child.

      Stoddart, the tourist, long ago pointed out the contrast between the fairies of the English popular mythology and those of the Scotch; and certainly the delicate, joyous, tricksy, race of moonlight revellers whom we meet in the pages of Shakespeare are scarcely to be recognised as belonging to the same family with the soulless, man-stealing, creations of the Scottish peasant's fancy. The effect exercised upon popular superstition by the ruling passion of Calvinistic religion is one of the most striking things in Scottish folklore. For example, the belief in fairies did not cease to exist. It does not seem even to have been universally discountenanced by the Church; for we find mention of cases in which Ministers of the Gospel combine with their parishioners to take measures for the restitution of infants which the fairies had changed at nurse, or for the recovery of women who had been spirited away. And, indeed, two of the most curious pieces of composition known to me are, a pamphlet on the Second Sight, written by a Minister of Tiree, and an article on the Fairies, written by a Minister of Aberfoyle,--both in the Seventeenth Century. Both writers were obviously firm believers in the superstitions upon which they wrote; and in both cases the gross ignorance and darkness of the writer's mind is only equalled by the authoritative weight and pedantry of his style. The Solemn League and Covenant had left its mark even upon the fairies, as the touching little story of The Fairy and the Bible-reader shows.

      The fairies, and that rough, grotesque, humoursome, but good-natured figure, the Brownie, occupy, however, but a small space in the popular mythology in comparison with such shapes of awe, of terror, or of ill-omen, as the ghosts, more real than living man, which the Highland Ezekiel saw borne past him on the wind, in Morven of the gloomy skies; or as the witch, the wraith, the warning, the water-kelpie, the man or woman who has the second sight, the evil or lost spirit

      The characteristic rough humour of the Scottish peasant, as it affects the creations of the fancy, embodies itself almost exclusively in the Brownie. This was a half-human creature, of uncouth appearance.

      "His matted head on his breast did rest;

      A lang blue beard wan'er'd down like a vest;--

      But the glare o' his e'e hath nae bard exprest."

      During the day he would lurk in out-of-the-way corners of some old house which he had chosen to inhabit; and in the night-time would make himself useful to the family to which he had attached himself. But the conditions of his service were the most disinterested ever drawn up, and on the slightest attempt being made to reward him for his labours he would disappear for ever. The Brown Man of the Moors is another of these twilight, or half-seen, creations; but he is not of a domestic character. Wanderers upon lonely moors might, on rare occasion, catch a glimpse of him squatting in a hollow--a short, thick, powerful figure; earth-coloured, or of the tint of the surrounding ling. Shellycoat dwelt in the waters. He was accustomed to appear decked out with the spoils of the sea--his coat being hung with shells, which clattered as he moved; and his delight was in mischief,--such as, for instance, like the Spunkie, or Will-o'-the-Wisp, in leading travellers astray. Nuckelavee, the Sea-Devil of the Orkney Islanders, a more formidable figure, seemed to be shaped like a man above and like a horse below; and his peculiar horror lay in the fact that, being skinless, his raw, red flesh was exposed to view. Then there was the River Horse, a supernatural being supposed to feed, in the shape of a horse, on the shores of Loch Lochy, and when disturbed to plunge into its waters. The River Bull emerged from the lake to visit the cow-pastures; and there were cow-herds who pretended that they could distinguish the calves of which he was the sire. Most of these creatures of the fancy are peculiar to the Scotch; and one cannot help fondly speculating as to the poetic use which Shakespeare would have made of them, had they happened to be among the associations of his childhood. But a more subtle water-spirit than any of those yet mentioned was the Kelpy, whose appearances were generally timed either to give warning of death by drowning, or to lure men to a watery grave. The Kelpy story of The Doomed Rider, to be found in the present collection, admirably illustrates the sentiment of fatalism inherent in the Scottish peasant's mind. In illustration of the kindred feeling of the malevolence of Nature, inherent there also, the poet Alexander Smith has aptly quoted the following popular rhyme--a dialogue in which two rivers are supposed to be the speakers:--

      "Said Tweed to Till,

      What gars ye rin sae still?

      Said Till to Tweed,

      Though ye rin wi' speed,

      And I rin slaw,

      For every ane that ye droon

      I droon twa!"

      Here it appears that the elements are our enemies, and war against us to the death.

      But, beyond a doubt, the most valuable element in the peasant tales, considered from the poetic standpoint, is not the fanciful or the imaginative element, but the human. This is, in some cases, brought out in extraordinary strength by the juxtaposition of the supernatural. Space allows me to cite but a single instance. By far the strangest, the most startling, and to us the most incomprehensible, of all the Scottish superstitions is the belief in the periodical return of the dead to their former homes-not as night-walking ghosts, encountered only by solitary persons in the dark--but as social beings, come back to join the family circle, and share in its festivities,--in short, in the old phrase, come back to dine and dance with the living. How anything so incredible should ever have come to be believed,--we may well be at a loss to understand. Yet believed it seems to have been. There are two of the old ballads which are concerned with the belief, and they are two of the most beautiful which have come down to us.

      The fragment entitled The Wife of Usher's Well sets forth how a thriving country-woman made provision for her three sons by sending them to sea. But they have not been long away from her, when she hears that they have perished in a storm. Then, in the madness of her grief, she puts up a blasphemous prayer to heaven,--praying that the conflict of wind and wave may never cease until her sons come home to

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