through a large and long entry, where I saw above six hundred men in armour laid prostrate on the ground as if asleep.  At last I found myself in the open field by the help of the moonlight, in the very place where I first met him, and made a shift to get home by three in the morning.  But the money I had received was just double of what I esteemed it when the woman paid me, of which at this instant I have several pieces to show, consisting of ninepennies, thirteen pence-halfpennies,” &c.[31]

[Footnote 29:  In this the author is in the same ignorance as his namesake Reginald, though having at least as many opportunities of information.]

[Footnote 30:  In popular tradition, the name of Thomas the Rhymer was always averred to be Learmonth. though he neither uses it himself, nor is described by his son other than Le Rymour.  The Learmonths of Dairsie, in Fife, claimed descent from the prophet.]

[Footnote 31:  “Discourse of Devils and Spirits appended to the Discovery of Witchcraft,” by Reginald Scot, Esq., book ii. chap. 3, sec. 10.]

It is a great pity that this horse-dealer, having specimens of the fairy coin, of a quality more permanent than usual, had not favoured us with an account of an impress so valuable to medalists.  It is not the less edifying, as we are deprived of the more picturesque parts of the story, to learn that Thomas’s payment was as faithful as his prophecies.  The beautiful lady who bore the purse must have been undoubtedly the Fairy Queen, whose affection, though, like that of his own heroine Yseult, we cannot term it altogether laudable, seems yet to have borne a faithful and firm character.

I have dwelt at some length on the story of Thomas the Rhymer, as the oldest tradition of the kind which has reached us in detail, and as pretending to show the fate of the first Scottish poet, whose existence, and its date, are established both by history and records; and who, if we consider him as writing in the Anglo-Norman language, was certainly one among the earliest of its versifiers.  But the legend is still more curious, from its being the first and most distinguished instance of a man alleged to have obtained supernatural knowledge by means of the fairies.

Whence or how this singular community derived their more common popular name, we may say has not as yet been very clearly established.  It is the opinion of the learned that the Persian word Peri, expressing an unearthly being, of a species very similar, will afford the best derivation, if we suppose it to have reached Europe through the medium of the Arabians, in whose alphabet the letter P does not exist, so that they pronounce the word Feri instead of Peri.  Still there is something uncertain in this etymology.  We hesitate to ascribe either to the Persians or the Arabians the distinguishing name of an ideal commonwealth, the notion of which they certainly did not contribute to us.  Some are, therefore, tempted to suppose