that the elves may have obtained their most frequent name from their being par excellence a fair or comely people, a quality which they affected on all occasions; while the superstition of the Scottish was likely enough to give them a name which might propitiate the vanity for which they deemed the race remarkable; just as, in other instances, they called the fays “men of peace,” “good neighbours,” and by other titles of the like import.  It must be owned, at the same time, that the words fay and fairy may have been mere adoptions of the French fee and feerie, though these terms, on the other side of the Channel, have reference to a class of spirits corresponding, not to our fairies, but with the far different Fata of the Italians.  But this is a question which we willingly leave for the decision of better etymologists than ourselves.

LETTER V.

Those who dealt in fortune-telling, mystical cures by charms, and the like, often claimed an intercourse with Fairyland—­Hudhart or Hudikin—­Pitcairn’s “Scottish Criminal Trials”—­Story of Bessie Dunlop and her Adviser—­Her Practice of Medicine—­And of Discovery of Theft—­Account of her Familiar, Thome Reid—­Trial of Alison Pearson—­Account of her Familiar, William Sympson—­Trial of the Lady Fowlis, and of Hector Munro, her Stepson—­Extraordinary species of Charm used by the latter—­Confession of John Stewart, a Juggler, of his Intercourse with the Fairies—­Trial and Confession of Isobel Gowdie—­Use of Elf-arrow Heads—­Parish of Aberfoyle—­Mr. Kirke, the Minister of Aberfoyle’s Work on Fairy Superstitions—­He is himself taken to Fairyland—­Dr. Grahame’s interesting Work, and his Information on Fairy Superstitions—­Story of a Female in East Lothian carried off by the Fairies—­Another instance from Pennant.

To return to Thomas the Rhymer, with an account of whose legend I concluded last letter, it would seem that the example which it afforded of obtaining the gift of prescience, and other supernatural powers, by means of the fairy people, became the common apology of those who attempted to cure diseases, to tell fortunes, to revenge injuries, or to engage in traffic with the invisible world, for the purpose of satisfying their own wishes, curiosity, or revenge, or those of others.  Those who practised the petty arts of deception in such mystic cases, being naturally desirous to screen their own impostures, were willing to be supposed to derive from the fairies, or from mortals transported to fairyland the power necessary to effect the displays of art which they pretended to exhibit.  A confession of direct communication and league with Satan, though the accused were too frequently compelled by torture to admit and avow such horrors, might, the poor wretches hoped, be avoided by the avowal of a less disgusting intercourse with sublunary spirits, a race which might be described by negatives, being