of a funeral procession, with all its attendants.  The ‘noontide hag,’ called in Gaelic Glas-lich, a tall, emaciated, gigantic female figure, is supposed in particular to haunt the district of Knoidart.  A goblin dressed in antique armor, and having one hand covered with blood, called, from that circumstance, Lham-dearg, or Red-hand, is a tenant of the forests of Glenmore and Rothiemurcus.  Other spirits of the desert, all frightful in shape and malignant in disposition, are believed to frequent different mountains and glens of the Highlands, where any unusual appearance, produced by mist, or the strange lights that are sometimes thrown upon particular objects, never fails to present an apparition to the imagination of the solitary and melancholy mountaineer.”

161.  Mankind.  Accented on the first syllable; as it is almost invariably in Shakespeare, except in Timon of Athens, where the modern accent prevails.  Milton uses either accent, as suits the measure.  We find both in P. L. viii. 358:  “Above mankind, or aught than mankind higher.”

166.  Alpine’s.  Some eds. misprint “Alpine;” also “horsemen” in 172 below.

168.  The fatal Ben-Shie’s boding scream.  The Ms. reads: 

    “The fatal Ben-Shie’s dismal scream,
     And seen her wrinkled form, the sign
     Of woe and death to Alpine’s line.”

Scott has the following note here:  “Most great families in the Highlands were supposed to have a tutelar, or rather a domestic, spirit, attached to them, who took an interest in their prosperity, and intimated, by its wailings, any approaching disaster.  That of Grant of Grant was called May Moullach, and appeared in the form of a girl, who had her arm covered with hair.  Grant of Rothiemurcus had an attendant called Bodach-an-dun, or the Ghost of the Hill; and many other examples might be mentioned.  The Ben-Shie implies the female fairy whose lamentations were often supposed to precede the death of a chieftain of particular families.  When she is visible, it is in the form of an old woman, with a blue mantle and streaming hair.  A superstition of the same kind is, I believe, universally received by the inferior ranks of the native Irish.

“The death of the head of a Highland family is also sometimes supposed to be announced by a chain of lights of different colours, called Dr’eug, or death of the Druid.  The direction which it takes marks the place of the funeral.” [See the Essay on Fairy Superstitions in Scott’s Border Minstrelsy.]

169.  Sounds, too, had come, etc.  Scott says:  “A presage of the kind alluded to in the text, is still believed to announce death to the ancient Highland family of M’Lean of Lochbuy.  The spirit of an ancestor slain in battle is heard to gallop along a stony bank, and then to ride thrice around the family residence, ringing his fairy bridle, and thus intimating the approaching calamity.  How easily the eye as well as the ear may be deceived