Individuals, whose lives had been engaged in intrigues of politics or stratagems of war, were sometimes surreptitiously carried off to Fairyland; as Alison Pearson, the sorceress who cured Archbishop Adamson, averred that she had recognised in the Fairy court the celebrated Secretary Lethington and the old Knight of Buccleuch, the one of whom had been the most busy politician, the other one of the most unwearied partisans of Queen Mary, during the reign of that unfortunate queen.  Upon the whole, persons carried off by sudden death were usually suspected of having fallen into the hands of the fairies, and unless redeemed from their power, which it was not always safe to attempt, were doomed to conclude their lives with them.  We must not omit to state that those who had an intimate communication with these spirits, while they were yet inhabitants of middle earth, were most apt to be seized upon and carried off to Elfland before their death.

The reason assigned for this kidnapping of the human race, so peculiar to the elfin people, is said to be that they were under a necessity of paying to the infernal regions a yearly tribute out of their population, which they were willing to defray by delivering up to the prince of these regions the children of the human race, rather than their own.  From this it must be inferred, that they have offspring among themselves, as it is said by some authorities, and particularly by Mr. Kirke, the minister of Aberfoyle.  He indeed adds that, after a certain length of life, these spirits are subject to the universal lot of mortality—­a position, however, which has been controverted, and is scarcely reconcilable to that which holds them amenable to pay a tax to hell, which infers existence as eternal as the fire which is not quenched.  The opinions on the subject of the fairy people here expressed, are such as are entertained in the Highlands and some remote quarters of the Lowlands of Scotland.  We know, from the lively and entertaining legends published by Mr. Crofton Croker—­which, though in most cases told with the wit of the editor and the humour of his country, contain points of curious antiquarian information—­that the opinions of the Irish are conformable to the account we have given of the general creed of the Celtic nations respecting elves.  If the Irish elves are anywise distinguished from those of Britain, it seems to be by their disposition to divide into factions and fight among themselves—­a pugnacity characteristic of the Green Isle.  The Welsh fairies, according to John Lewis, barrister-at-law, agree in the same general attributes with those of Ireland and Britain.  We must not omit the creed of the Manxmen, since we find, from the ingenious researches of Mr. Waldron, that the Isle of Man, beyond other places in Britain, was a peculiar depository of the fairy traditions, which, on the island being conquered by the Norse, became, in all probability, chequered with those of Scandinavia from a source peculiar and more direct than that by which they reached Scotland or Ireland.