prancing of horses, and the bellowing of cows, augmented the horrors of the night; and to any one who only heard the din, it seemed that the whole onstead was in a blaze, and horses and cattle perishing in the flame.  All wiles, common or extraordinary, were put in practice to entice or force the honest farmer and his wife to open the door; and when the like success attended every new stratagem, silence for a little while ensued, and a long, loud, and shrilling laugh wound up the dramatic efforts of the night.  In the morning, when Laird Macharg went to the door, he found standing against one of the pilasters a piece of black ship oak, rudely fashioned into something like human form, and which skilful people declared would have been clothed with seeming flesh and blood, and palmed upon him by elfin adroitness for his wife, had he admitted his visitants.  A synod of wise men and women sat upon the woman of timber, and she was finally ordered to be devoured by fire, and that in the open air.  A fire was soon made, and into it the elfin sculpture was tossed from the prongs of two pairs of pitchforks.  The blaze that arose was awful to behold; and hissings and burstings and loud cracklings and strange noises were heard in the midst of the flame; and when the whole sank into ashes, a drinking-cup of some precious metal was found; and this cup, fashioned no doubt by elfin skill, but rendered harmless by the purification with fire, the sons and daughters of Sandie Macharg and his wife drink out of to this very day.  Bless all bold men, say I, and obedient wives!”

THE BROWNIE.

The Scottish Brownie formed a class of being distinct in habit and disposition from the freakish and mischievous elves.  He was meagre, shaggy, and wild in his appearance.  Thus Cleland, in his satire against the Highlanders, compares them to

   “Faunes, or Brownies, if ye will,
   Or Satyres come from Atlas Hill.”

In the day-time he lurked in remote recesses of the old houses which he delighted to haunt, and in the night sedulously employed himself in discharging any laborious task which he thought might be acceptable to the family to whose service he had devoted himself.  But the Brownie does not drudge from the hope of recompense.  On the contrary, so delicate is his attachment that the offer of reward, but particularly of food, infallibly occasions his disappearance for ever.  It is told of a Brownie, who haunted a border family now extinct, that the lady having fallen unexpectedly ill, and the servant, who was ordered to ride to Jedburgh for the sage-femme, showing no great alertness in setting out, the familiar spirit slipped on the greatcoat of the lingering domestic, rode to the town on the laird’s best horse, and returned with the midwife en croupe.  During the short space of his absence, the Tweed, which they must necessarily ford, rose to a dangerous height.