It is hoped the reader will receive, with due respect, these, and similar stories, told by Mr Waldron; for he himself, a scholar and a gentleman, informs us, “as to circles in grass, and the impression of small feet among the snow, I cannot deny but I have seen them frequently, and once thought I heard a whistle, as though in my ear, when nobody that could make it was near me.”  In this passage there is a curious picture of the contagious effects of a superstitious atmosphere.  Waldron had lived so long among the Manks, that he was almost persuaded to believe their legends.

From the History of the Irish Bards, by Mr Walker, and from the glossary subjoined to the lively and ingenious Tale of Castle Rackrent, we learn, that the same ideas, concerning Fairies, are current among the vulgar in that country.  The latter authority mentions their inhabiting the ancient tumuli, called Barrows, and their abstracting mortals.  They are termed “the good people;” and when an eddy of wind raises loose dust and sand, the vulgar believe that it announces a Fairy procession, and bid God speed their journey.

The Scottish Fairies, in like manner, sometimes reside in subterranean abodes, in the vicinity of human habitations or, according to the popular phrase, under the “door-stane,” or threshold; in which situation, they sometimes establish an intercourse with men, by borrowing and lending, and other kindly offices.  In this capacity they are termed “the good neighbours,"[A] from supplying privately the wants of their friends, and assisting them in all their transactions, while their favours are concealed.  Of this the traditionary story of Sir Godfrey Macculloch forms a curious example.

[Footnote A:  Perhaps this epithet is only one example, among many, of the extreme civility which the vulgar in Scotland use towards spirits of a, dubious, or even a determinedly mischievous, nature.  The archfiend himself is often distinguished by the softened title of the “good-man.”  This epithet, so applied, must sound strange to a southern ear; but, as the phrase bears various interpretations, according to the places where it is used, so, in the Scottish dialect, the good-man of such a place signifies the tenant, or life-renter, in opposition to the laird, or proprietor.  Hence, the devil is termed the good-man, or tenant, of the infernal regions.  In the book of the Universal Kirk, 13th May, 1594, mention is made of “the horrible superstitioune usit in Garioch, and dyvers parts of the countrie, in not labouring a parcel of ground dedicated to the devil, under the title of the Guid-man’s Croft.”  Lord Hailes conjectured this to have been the tenenos adjoining to some ancient Pagan temple.  The unavowed, but obvious, purpose of this practice, was to avert the destructive rage of Satan from the neighbouring possessions.  It required various fulminations of the General Assembly of the Kirk to abolish a practice bordering so nearly upon the doctrine of the Magi.]