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

THE SCOTTISH BORDER. 181
them, instinicted him by what means he might win her,
and exhorted him to exert all his courage, since her
temporal and eternal happiness depended on the success
of his attempt. The farmer, who ardently loved his
wife, set out on Hallowe'en, and, in the midst of a plot
of furze, waited impatiently for the procession of the
Fairies. At the ringing of the Fairy bridles, and the
wild unearthly sound which accompanied the cavalcade,
his heart failed him, and he suffered the ghostly train to
pass by without interruption. When the last had rode
past, the whole troop vanished, with loud shouts of
laughter and exultation ; among which he plainly dis-
covered the voice of his wife, lamenting that he had
lost her for ever.
A similar, but real incident, took place at the town of
North Berwick, within the memory of man. The wife
of a man, above the lowest class of society, being left
alone in the house a few days after delivery, was attack-
ed and carried off by one of those convulsion fits, inci-
dent to her situation. Upon the return of the famil}'^,
who had been engaged in hay-making, or harvest, they
found the corpse much disfigured. This circumstance,
the natural consequence of her disease, led some of the
spectators to think that she had been carried off by the
Fairies, and that the body before them was some elfin
deception. The husband, probably, paid little attention
to this opinion at the time. The body was interred, and
after a decent time had elapsed, finding his domestic
affairs absolutely required female superintendance, the