A virtuous well, about whose flowery banks
  The nimble-footed Fairies dance their rounds,
  By the pale moon-shine, dipping oftentimes
  Their stolen children, so to make them free
  From dying flesh, and dull mortality.
      Faithful Shepherdess.

It is sometimes accounted unlucky to pass such places, without performing some ceremony to avert the displeasure of the elves.  There is, upon the top of Minchmuir, a mountain in Peebles-shire, a spring, called the Cheese Well, because, anciently, those who passed that way were wont to throw into it a piece of cheese, as an offering to the Fairies, to whom it was consecrated.

Like the feld elfen of the Saxons, the usual dress of the Fairies is green; though, on the moors, they have been sometimes observed in heath-brown, or in weeds dyed with the stoneraw, or lichen.[A] They often ride in invisible procession, when their presence is discovered by the shrill ringing of their bridles.  On these occasions, they sometimes borrow mortal steeds; and when such are found at morning, panting and fatigued in their stalls, with their manes and tails dishevelled and entangled, the grooms, I presume, often find this a convenient excuse for their situation; as the common belief of the elves quaffing the choicest liquors in the cellars of the rich (see the story of Lord Duffus below), might occasionally cloak the delinquencies of an unfaithful butler.

[Footnote A:  Hence the hero of the ballad is termed an “elfin grey.”]

The Fairies, beside their equestrian processions, are addicted it would seem, to the pleasures of the chace.  A young sailor, travelling by night from Douglas, in the Isle of Man, to visit his sister, residing in Kirk Merlugh, heard the noise of horses, the holla of a huntsman, and the sound of a horn.  Immediately afterwards, thirteen horsemen, dressed in green, and gallantly mounted, swept past him.  Jack was so much delighted with the sport, that he followed them, and enjoyed the sound of the horn for some miles; and it was not till he arrived at his sister’s house that he learned the danger which he had incurred.  I must not omit to mention, that these little personages are expert jockeys, and scorn to ride the little Manks ponies, though apparently well suited to their size.  The exercise therefore, falls heavily upon the English and Irish horses brought into the Isle of Man.  Mr Waldron was assured by a gentleman of Ballafletcher, that he had lost three or four capital hunters by these nocturnal excursions.—­WALDRON’S Works, p. 132.  From the same author we learn, that the Fairies sometimes take more legitimate modes of procuring horses.  A person of the utmost integrity informed him, that, having occasion to sell a horse, he was accosted among the mountains by a little gentleman plainly dressed, who priced his horse, cheapened him, and, after some chaffering, finally purchased him.  No sooner had the buyer mounted, and paid the price, than, he sunk through the earth, horse and man, to the astonishment and terror of the seller; who experienced, however, no inconvenience from dealing with so extraordinary a purchaser.—­Ibid. p. 135.