[20] The mother of William Nicholson the poet, a native of Borgue, where her family had long been settled, and a woman of great intelligence, often told that in her day there lived a man belonging to Borgue parish whose mother and grandmother had been examined before the Kirk-Session regarding his having been carried away by the fairies.
[21] “Brownie” here synonymus with “Fairy.”
[22] Langhill (now Longhill), adjacent to the Rispain Roman Camp, about a mile from Whithorn on the Glasserton Road.
[23] Roodmass: The festival of the finding of the Holy Cross (May 3rd).
[24] “When the mother’s vigilance hinders the fairies from carrying her child away, or changing it, the touch of fairy hands and their unearthly breath make it wither away in every limb and lineament like a blighted ear of corn, saving the countenance, which unchangeably retains the sacred stamp of divinity. The way to cure a breath-blasted child is worthy of notice. The child is undressed and laid out in unbleached linen new from the loom. Water is brought from a blessed well, in the utmost silence, before sunrise, in a pitcher never before wet; in which the child is washed, and its clothes dipped by the fingers of a maiden. Its limbs, on the third morning’s experiment, plump up, and all its former vigour returns.”—Allan Cunningham, in “Cromek’s Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song.”
[25] The leaden figure of a man connected with a cascade, once a prominent feature of the gardens.
[26] Simpson’s History of Sanquhar.
[27] The “Brownie” of Scotland corresponds with the “Robin Goodfellow” of England.
“Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day labourers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And, stretched out all the chimney’s length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of door he flings
Ere the first cock his matin rings.”
—Il Penseroso
[28] A communion cup, belonging to M‘Millan, the well-known ousted minister of Balmaghie, and founder of a variety of the species Covenanter. This cup was treasured by a zealous disciple in the parish of Kirkcowan, and long used as a test by which to ascertain the orthodoxy of suspected persons. If, on taking the precious relic into his hand, the person trembled, or gave other symptoms of agitation, he was denounced as having bowed the knee to Baal, and sacrificed at the altar of idolatry; and it required, through his future life, no common exertion in the good cause, to efface the stigma thus fixed upon him.—Note to original edition.