of witches should hold their revels within a consecrated precinct; but the weird scene has so established itself in the world’s imaginative faith that it must be accepted as an authentic incident, in spite of rule and reason to the contrary.  Possibly, some carnal minister, some priest of pious aspect and hidden infidelity, had dispelled the consecration of the holy edifice by his pretence of prayer, and thus made it the resort of unhappy ghosts and sorcerers and devils.

The interior of the kirk, even now, is applied to quite as impertinent a purpose as when Satan and the witches used it as a dancing-hall; for it is divided in the midst by a wall of stone-masonry, and each compartment has been converted into a family burial-place.  The name on one of the monuments is Crawfurd; the other bore no inscription.  It is impossible not to feel that these good people, whoever they may be, had no business to thrust their prosaic bones into a spot that belongs to the world, and where their presence jars with the emotions, be they sad or gay, which the pilgrim brings thither.  They shut us out from our own precincts, too,—­from that inalienable possession which Burns bestowed in free gift upon mankind, by taking it from the actual earth and annexing it to the domain of imagination.  And here these wretched squatters have lain down to their long sleep, after barring each of the two doorways of the kirk with an iron grate!  May their rest be troubled, till they rise and let us in!

Kirk Alloway is inconceivably small, considering how large a space it fills in our imagination before we see it.  I paced its length, outside of the wall, and found it only seventeen of my paces, and not more than ten of them in breadth.  There seem to have been but very few windows, all of which, if I rightly remember, are now blocked up with mason-work of stone.  One mullioned window, tall and narrow, in the eastern gable, might have been seen by Tam O’Shanter, blazing with devilish light, as he approached along the road from Ayr; and there is a small and square one, on the side nearest the road, into which he might have peered, as he sat on horseback.  Indeed, I could easily have looked through it, standing on the ground, had not the opening been walled up.  There is an odd kind of belfry at the peak of one of the gables, with the small bell still hanging in it.  And this is all that I remember of Kirk Alloway, except that the stones of its material are gray and irregular.

The road from Ayr passes Alloway Kirk, and crosses the Doon by a modern bridge, without swerving much from a straight line.  To reach the old bridge, it appears to have made a bend, shortly after passing the kirk, and then to have turned sharply towards the river.  The new bridge is within a minute’s walk of the monument; and we went thither, and leaned over its parapet to admire the beautiful Doon, flowing wildly and sweetly between its deep and wooded banks.  I never saw a lovelier scene; although this might