History and traditions of the land of the Lindsays in Angus and Mearns

MENMUIR — POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 267
mother was bewitched, or, that the rickety child was a substitute
for the healthy one, whom the fames had carried away by
stealth to their invisible chambers about the hill of Caterthun !
The learned in such matters were anxious to find the truth of
these ideas by experiment. If the boy was really of fairy origin,
he would, on being placed over a blaze of whins, fly from thence
to his native region — if an heir of mortality, he would withstand
the fire, and receive, at worst, a slight burn, or scaum!
The Tigerton Hecate was well aware that it would revolt
the feelings of the parents to have their child undergo such an
ordeal, and the mother giving her ailing child in charge of a
neighbour on leaving home for a day, Hecate prevailed on the
nurse pro tempore, to allow her to test the boy's human or
supernatural being. The experiment was of the highest pos-
sible interest. Harvey was not more anxious to discover the
circulation of the blood than were those hags the pro or con of
their irrational surmises. A favoured few were collected to
witness the result, and the scene took place in the ben of a low
thatched cottage. The door was carefully secured, the small
window covered up, and the ceremony conducted by whis-
perings, so that no human eye beheld, nor ear heard, the un-
hallowed communings. A bundle of whins was lighted ; and,
stript to the skin, the poor child was placed upon the tongs,
and held over, the flame by two of the learned conclave. He
screamed and yelled, as older people would do in like circum-
stances ; but, as he never attempted to fly out at the chimney,
he was declared by the devilish hags, in council assembled, to
be merely a human creature after all !!