If the delicacy of the reader’s imagination be a little hurt at imagining the elegant Titania in the disguise of a stout woman, a heavy burden for a clumsy bench, drinking what Christopher Sly would have called very sufficient small-beer with a peasant’s wife, the following description of the fairy host may come more near the idea he has formed of that invisible company:—­Bessie Dunlop declared that as she went to tether her nag by the side of Restalrig Loch (Lochend, near the eastern port of Edinburgh), she heard a tremendous sound of a body of riders rushing past her with such a noise as if heaven and earth would come together; that the sound swept past her and seemed to rush into the lake with a hideous rumbling noise.  All this while she saw nothing; but Thome Reid showed her that the noise was occasioned by the wights, who were performing one of their cavalcades upon earth.

The intervention of Thome Reid as a partner in her trade of petty sorcery did not avail poor Bessie Dunlop, although his affection to her was apparently entirely platonic—­the greatest familiarity on which he ventured was taking hold of her gown as he pressed her to go with him to Elfland.  Neither did it avail her that the petty sorcery which she practised was directed to venial or even beneficial purposes.  The sad words on the margin of the record, “Convict and burnt,” sufficiently express the tragic conclusion of a curious tale.

Alison Pearson, in Byrehill, was, 28th May, 1588, tried for invocation of the spirits of the devil, specially in the vision of one Mr. William Sympson, her cousin and her mother’s brother’s son, who she affirmed was a great scholar and doctor of medicine, dealing with charms and abusing the ignorant people.  Against this poor woman her own confession, as in the case of Bessie Dunlop, was the principal evidence.

As Bessie Dunlop had Thome Reid, Alison Pearson had also a familiar in the court of Elfland.  This was her relative, William Sympson aforesaid, born in Stirling, whose father was king’s smith in that town.  William had been taken away, she said, by a man of Egypt (a Gipsy), who carried him to Egypt along with him; that he remained there twelve years, and that his father died in the meantime for opening a priest’s book and looking upon it.  She declared that she had renewed her acquaintance with her kinsman so soon as he returned.  She further confessed that one day as she passed through Grange Muir she lay down in a fit of sickness, and that a green man came to her, and said if she would be faithful he might do her good.  In reply she charged him, in the name of God and by the law he lived upon, if he came for her soul’s good to tell his errand.  On this the green man departed.  But he afterwards appeared to her with many men and women with him, and against her will she was obliged to pass with them farther than she could tell, with piping, mirth, and good cheer; also that she accompanied them into