[Footnote A:  The first part of the process was to wash the wound clean, and bind it up so as to promote adhesion, and exclude the air.  Now, though the remedies, afterwards applied to the sword, could hardly promote so desirable an issue, yet it is evident the wound stood a good chance of healing by the operation of nature, which, I believe, medical gentlemen call a cure by the first intention.]

The vulgar continue to believe firmly in the phenomenon of the murdered corpse bleeding at the approach of the murderer.  “Many (I adopt the words of an ingenious correspondent) are the proofs advanced in confirmation of the opinion, against those who are so hardy as to doubt it; but one, in particular, as it is said to have happened in this place, I cannot help repeating.

“Two young men, going a fishing in the river Yarrow, fell out; and so high ran the quarrel, that the one, in a passion, stabbed the other to the heart with a fish spear.  Astonished “at the rash act, he hesitated whether to fly, give himself up to justice, or conceal the crime; and, in the end, fixed on the latter expedient, burying the body of his friend very deep in the sands.  As the meeting had been accidental, he was never from gaiety to a settled melancholy.  Time passed on for the space of fifty years, when a smith, fishing near the same place, discovered an uncommon and curious bone, which he put in his pocket, and afterwards showed to some people in his smithy.  The murderer being present, now an old white-headed man, leaning on his staff, desired a sight of the little bone; but how horrible was the issue! no sooner had he touched it, than it streamed with purple blood.  Being told where it was found, he confessed the crime, was condemned, but was prevented, by death, from suffering the punishment due to his crime.

“Such opinions, though reason forbids us to believe them, a few moments reflection on the cause of their origin will teach us to revere.  Under the feudal system which prevailed, the rights of humanity were too often violated, and redress very hard to be procured; thus an awful deference to one of the leading attributes of Omnipotence begat on the mind, untutored by philosophy, the first germ of these supernatural effects; which was, by superstitious zeal, assisted, perhaps, by a few instances of sudden remorse, magnified into evidence of indisputable guilt.”

THE LASS OF LOCHROYAN.

NOW FIRST PUBLISHED IN A PERFECT STATE.

Lochroyan, whence this ballad probably derives its name, lies in Galloway.  The lover, who, if the story be real, may be supposed to have been detained by sickness, is represented, in the legend, as confined by Fairy charms in an enchanted castle situated in the sea.  The ruins of ancient edifices are still visible on the summits of most of those small islands, or rather insulated rocks, which lie along the coast of Ayrshire and Galloway; as Ailsa and Big Scaur.