As this Gallovidian gentleman was taking the air on horseback, near his own house, he was suddenly accosted by a little old man, arrayed in green, and mounted upon a white palfrey.  After mutual salutation, the old man gave Sir Godfrey to understand, that he resided under his habitation, and that he had great reason to complain of the direction of a drain, or common sewer, which emptied itself directly into his chamber of dais, [A] Sir Godfrey Macculloch was a good deal startled at this extraordinary complaint; but, guessing the nature of the being he had to deal with, he assured the old man, with great courtesy, that the direction of the drain should be altered; and caused it be done accordingly.  Many years afterwards, Sir Godfrey had the misfortune to kill, in a fray, a gentleman of the neighbourhood.  He was apprehended, tried, and condemned.[B] The scaffold, upon which his head was to be struck off, was erected on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh; but hardly had he reached the fatal spot, when the old man, upon his white palfrey, pressed through the crowd, with the rapidity of lightning.  Sir Godfrey, at his command, sprung on behind him; the “good neighbour” spurred his horse down the steep bank, and neither he nor the criminal were ever again seen.

[Footnote A:  The best chamber was thus currently denominated in Scotland, from the French dais, signifying that part of the ancient halls which was elevated above the rest, and covered with a canopy.  The turf-seats, which occupy the sunny side of a cottage wall, is also termed the dais.]

[Footnote B:  In this particular, tradition coincides with the real fact; the trial took place in 1697.]

The most formidable attribute of the elves, was their practice of carrying away, and exchanging, children; and that of stealing human souls from their bodies.  “A persuasion prevails among the ignorant,” says the author of a MS. history of Moray, “that, in a consumptive disease, the Fairies steal away the soul, and put the soul of a Fairy in the room of it.”  This belief prevails chiefly along the eastern coast of Scotland, where a practice, apparently of druidical origin, is used to avert the danger.  In the increase of the March moon, withies of oak and ivy are cut, and twisted into wreaths or circles, which they preserve till next March.  After that period, when persons are consumptive, or children hectic, they cause them to pass thrice through these circles.  In other cases the cure was more rough, and at least as dangerous as the disease, as will appear from the following extract: 

“There is one thing remarkable in this parish of Suddie (in Inverness-shire), which I think proper to mention.  There is a small hill N.W. from the church, commonly called Therdy Hill, or Hill of Therdie, as some term it; on the top of which there is a well, which I had the curiosity to view, because of the several reports concerning it.  When children happen to be sick, and languish long in their malady,