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

172 MINSTRELSY OF
" almost turned skeletons, the common people imagine
" they are taken away (at least the substance) by spi-
" rits, called Fairies, and the shadow left with them ;
" so, at a particular season in summer, they leave them
** all night themselves, watching at a distance, near this
" well, and this they imagine will either e7id or mend
*' them ; they say many more do recover than do not.
" Yea, an honest tenant who lives hard by it, and whom
" I had the curiosity to discourse about it, told me it has
'* recovered some, who were about eight or nine years
" of age, and to his certain knowledge, they bring adult
** persons to it ; foi', as he was passing one dark night, he
" heard groanings, and, coming to the well, he found a
'' man, who had been long sick, wrapped in a plaid, so
" that he could scarcely move, a stake being fixed in
" the earth, with a rope, or tedder, that was about the
" plaid ; he had no sooner enquired what he was, but
" he conjured him to loose him, and out of sympathy
" he was pleased to slacken that wherein he was, as I
" may so speak, swaddled ; but, if I right remember,
" he signified, he did not recover." — Account of the Pa-
rish of Suddie, apud Macfarlane's MSS.
According to the earlier doctrine, concerning the ori-
ginal corruption of hiunan nature, the power of daemons
over infants had been long reckoned considerable, in the
period intervening between birth and baptism. Du-
ring this period, therefore, children were believed to be
particularly liable to abstraction by the fairies, and mo-
thers chiefly dreaded the substitution of changelings in
the place of their own olTspring. Various monstrous