J. F. Campbell Collection > Minstrelsy of the Scottish border > Volume 2

THE SCOTTISH BORDER. 159
"" was the plain and simple story (however it may be
" judged of) that he told before the judge, the whole
" court, and the jury ; and there being no proofs, but
" what cures he had done to very many, the jury did
" acquit him : and I remember the judge said, when
" all the evidence was heard, that if he were to assign
" his punishment, he should be whipped from thence
" to Fairy -hall; and did seem to judge it to be a de-
" lusion, or an imposture." — Webster's Displaying of
Supposed Witchcraft y p. 301.
A rustic, also, whom Jackson taxed with magical
practices, about l620, obstinately denied that the good
King of the Fairies had any connection with the devil ;
and some of the Highland seers, even in our day, have
boasted of their intimacy with the elves, as an innocent
and advantageous connection. One ?tJacoan, in Appin,
the last person eminently gifted with the second sight,
professed to my learned and excellent friend, Mr Ram-
say of Ochtertyre, that he owed his prophetic visions
to their intervention.
VI. There remains yet another cause to be noticed,
which seems to have induced a considerable alteration
into the popular creed of England, respecting Fairies.
Many poets of the sixteenth century, and, above all,
our immortal Shakespeare, deserting the hackneyed
fictions of Greece and Rome, sought for machinery in
the superstitions of their native country. " The fays,
" which nightly dance upon the wold," were an inte-
resting subject ; and the creative imagination of the
bard, improving upon the vulgar belief, assigned to