we had reached the Row of Dennan," said the old man, a child might have scratched his ears." The circumstance is a minute one, but it paints the times when the poor beeve was compelled To hoof it o'er as many weary miles, With goading pikemen hollowing at his heels, Page 90.-Stanza v. -that huge cliff, whose ample verge Tradition calls the Hero's Targe. There is a rock so named in the forest of Glenfinlas, by which a tumultuary cataract takes it course. This wild place is said in former times to have afforded refuge to an outlaw, who was supplied with provisions by a woman, who lowered them down from the brink of the precipice above. His water he procured for himself by letting down a flagon tied to a string, into the black pool beneath the fall. Page 90.-Stanza v. Or raven on the blasted oak, That watching while the deer is broke, Everything belonging to the chase was matter of solemnity among our ancestors, but nothing was more so than the mode of cutting up, or, as it was technically called, breaking the slaughtered stag. The forester had his allotted portion; the hounds had a certain allowance; and, to make the division as general as possible, the very birds had their share also. "There is a little gristle," says Turberville, "which is upon the spoone of the brisket, which we call the raven's bone; and I have seen in some places a raven so wont and accustomed to it, that she would never fail to croak and cry for it all the time you were in breaking up of the deer, and would not depart till she had it." In the very ancient metrical romance of Sir Tristrem, that peerless Knight, who is said to have been the very deviser of all rules of chase, did not omit this ceremony: The raven he yaf his yifts Sat on the fourched tree. SIR TRISTREM, 2nd Edition. The raven might also challenge his rights by the book of St. Albans, for thus says Dame Juliana Berners : -Slitteth anon The bely to the side from the corbyn bone; Jonson, in the "Sad Shepherd," gives a more poetical account of the same ceremony : Marian. He that undoes him, Doth cleave the brisket bone upon the spoon, Robin Hood. The raven's bone. Now o'er head sat a raven On a sere bough, a grown, great bird and hoarse, Page 97.-Stanza xiii. Why sounds yon stroke on beech and oak, Or who comes here to chase the deer, It has been already observed, that fairies, if not positively malevolent, are capricious and easily offended. They are, like other proprietors of forests, peculiarly jealous of their rights of vert and venison, as appears from the cause of offence taken, in the original Danish ballad. This jealousy was also an attribute of the Northern Duergar, or dwarfs; to many of whose distinctions the fairies seem to have succeeded, if, indeed, they are not the same class of beings. In the huge metrical record of German chivalry, entitled the Helden-buch, Sir Hildebrand, and the other heroes of whom it treats, are engaged in one of the most desperate adventures, from a rash violation of the rosegarden of an Elfin, or Dwarf King. There are yet traces of a belief in this worst and most malicious order of fairies among the Border wilds. Dr. Leyden has introduced such a dwarf into his ballad entitled the Count of Keeldar, and has not forgot his characteristic detestation of the chase : "The third blast that young Keeldar blew And a wee man, of swarthy hue, His russet weeds were brown as heath That clothes the upland fell; And the hair of his head was frizzly red As the purple heather-bell. An urchin, clad in prickles red, Clung cow'ring to his arm; The hounds they howl'd, and backward fled, Why rises high the stag-hound's cry, Where stag-hound ne'er should be? Why wakes that horn the silent morn, 'Brown dwarf, that o'er the muirland strays, The Brown Man of the Muirs, who stays 'Tis sweet beneath the heather-bell To live in autumn brown; And sweet to hear the lav'rock's swell, Far, far from tower and town. 'But woe betide the shrilling horn, The poetical picture here given of the Duergar corresponds exactly with the following Northumbrian legend, with which I was lately favoured by my learned and kind friend, Mr. Surtees of Mainsforth, who has bestowed indefatigable labour upon the antiquities of the English Border counties. The subject is in itself so curious, that the length of the note will, I hope, be pardoned. "I have only one record to offer of the appearance of our Northumbrian Duergar. My narratrix is Elizabeth Cockburn, an old wife of Offerton, in this county, whose credit, in a case of this kind, will not, I hope, be much impeached, when I add that she is, by her dull neighbours, supposed to be occasionally insane, but, by herself, to be at those times endowed with a faculty of seeing visions, and spectral appearances, which shun the common ken. "In the year before the great rebellion, two young men from Newcastle were sporting on the high moors above Elsdon, and after pursuing their game several hours, sat down to dine, in a green glen, near one of the mountain streams. After their repast, the younger lad ran to the brook for water, and after stooping to drink, was surprised, on lifting his head again, by the appearance of a brown dwarf, who stood on a crag covered with brackens, across the burn. This extraordinary personage did not appear to be above half the stature of a common man, but was uncommonly stout and broad built, having the appearance of vast strength. His dress was entirely brown, the colour of the brackens, and his head covered with frizzled red hair. His countenance was expressive of the most savage ferocity, and his eyes glared like a bull's. It seems, he addressed the young man first, threatening him with his vengeance for having trespassed on his demesnes, and asked him if he knew in whose presence he stood? The youth replied, that he now supposed him to be the lord of the moors; that he offended through ignorance: and offered to bring him the game he had killed. The dwarf was a little mollified by this submission, but remarked, that nothing could be more offensive to him than such an offer, as he considered the wild animals as his subjects, and never failed to avenge their destruction. He condescended further to inform him, that he was, like himself, mortal, though of years far exceeding the lot of common humanity; and (what I should not have had an idea of) that he hoped for salvation. He never, he added, fed on anything that had life, but lived, in the summer, on whortleberries, and, in winter, on nuts and apples, of which he had great store in the woods. Finally, he invited his new acquaintance to accompany him home, and partake his hospitality; an offer which the youth was on the point of accepting, and was just going to spring across the brook (which if he had done, says Elizabeth, the dwarf would certainly have torn him in pieces), when his foot was arrested by the voice of his companion, who thought he tarried long; and, on looking round again, the wee brown man was fled.' The story adds, that he was imprudent enough to slight the admonition, and to sport over the moors on his way homewards; but, soon after his return, he fell into a lingering disorder, and died within the year." Page 97.-Stanza xiii. Or who may dare on wold to wear As the Daoine Shi', or Men of Peace, wore green habits, they were supposed to take offence when any mortals ventured to assume their favourite colour. Indeed from some reason, which has been, perhaps, originally a general superstition, green is held in Scotland to be unlucky to particular tribes and counties. The Caithness men, who hold this belief, allege, as a reason, that their bands wore that colour when they were cut off at the battle of Flodden; and for the same reason they avoid crossing the Ord on a Monday, being the day of the week on which their ill-omened array set forth. Green is also disliked by those of the name of Ogilvy; but more especially is it held fatal to the whole clan of Grahame. It is remembered of an aged gentleman of that name, that when his horse fell in a fox-chase he accounted for it at once, by observing that the whipcord attached to his lash was of this unlucky colour. Page 97.-Stanza xiii. For thou wert christened man. The Elves were supposed greatly to envy the privileges acquired by Christian initiation, and they gave to those mortals who had fallen into their power a certain precedence, founded upon this advantageous distinction. Tamlane, in the old ballad, describes his own rank in the fairy procession: "For I ride on a milk-white steed, And aye nearest the town; Because I was a christened knight, I presume, that, in the Danish ballad, the obstinacy of the "Weiest Elt," who would not flee for cross or sign, is to be derived from the circumstance of his having been "christened man How eager the elves were to obtain for their offspring the prerogatives of Christianity, will be proved by the following story: In the district called Haga, in Iceland, dwelt a nobleman called Sigward Forster, who had an intrigue with one of the subterranean females. The elf became pregnant, and exacted from her lover a firm promise that he would procure the baptism of the infant. At the appointed time, the mother came to the * church-yard, on the wall of which she placed a golden cup, and a stole for the priest, agreeable to the custom of making an offering at baptism. She then stood a little apart. When the priest left the church, he inquired the meaning of what he saw, and demanded of Sigward if he avowed himself the father of the child. But Sigward, ashamed of the connection, denied the paternity. He was then interrogated if he desired that the child should be baptized; but this also he answered in the negative, lest, by such request, he should admit himself to be the father. On which the child was left untouched and unbaptized. Whereupon the mother, in extreme wrath, snatched up the infant and the cup, and retired, leaving the priestly cope, of which fragments are still in preservation. But this female denounced and imposed upon Sigward, and his posterity, to the ninth generation, a singular disease, with which many of his descendants are afflicted at this day." Thus wrote Einar Gudmund, pastor of the parish of Garpsdale, in Iceland, a man profoundly versed in learning, from whose manuscript it was extracted by the learned Torfæus. Historia Hrolfi Krakii, Hafnia, 1715, præfatio. use. Page 98.-Stanza xv. And gaily shines the Fairy-land- No fact respecting fairy-land seems to be better ascertained than the fantastic and illusory nature of their apparent pleasure and splendour. It has been already noticed, in the former quotations from Dr. Grahame's entertaining volume, and may be confirmed by the following Highland tradition: "A woman, whose new-born child had been conveyed by them into their secret abodes, was also carried thither herself, to remain, however, only until she should suckle her infant. She, one day, during this period, observed the Shi'ichs busily employed in mixing various ingredients in a boiling cauldron; and, as soon as the composition was prepared, she remarked that they all carefully anointed their eyes with it, laying the remainder aside for future In a moment when they were all absent, she also attempted to anoint her eyes with the precious drug, but had time to apply it to one eye only, when the Daoine Shi returned. But with that eye she was henceforth enabled to see everything as it really passed in their secret abodes :-she saw every object, not as she hitherto had done, in deceptive splendour and elegance, but in its genuine colours and form. The gaudy ornaments of the apartment were reduced to the walls of a gloomy cavern. Soon after, having discharged her office, she was dismissed to her own home. Still, however, she retained the faculty of seeing, with her medicated eye, everything that was done anywhere in her presence, by the deceptive art of the order. One day, amidst a throng of people, she chanced to observe the Shi'ich, or man of peace, in whose possession she had left her child; though to every other eye invisible. Prompted by maternal |