Of their dress and weapons he gives us the following account:—"Their Apparell is like that of the People and Countrey under which they live: so are they seen to wear Plaids and variegated Garments in the Highlands of Scotland, and Suanochs therefore in Ireland."[315:B]—"Their Weapons are most what solid earthly Bodies, nothing of Iron, but much of Stone, like to yellow, soft Flint-spa, shaped like a barbed Arrow-head, but flung like a Dairt, with great force. These Armes (cut by Airt and Tools it seems beyond humane) have somewhat of the Nature of Thunderbolt subtilty, and mortally wounding the vital Parts without breaking the skin."[315:C]
This description of the weapons, garb, disposition, and nature of the Gaelic, Highland, or Scoto-Irish Fairies, equally applies to the more elegant race which haunted the cheerful and cultivated districts of Caledonia; for Mr. Cromek, painting the character of the Scottish Lowland Fairies, from the popular belief of Nithsdale and Galloway, tinges it with the same fearful attributes and mischievous propensities:—"They were small of stature," he relates, "exquisitely shaped and proportioned; of a fair complexion, with long fleeces of yellow hair flowing over their shoulders, and tucked above their brows with combs of gold. A mantle of green cloth, inlaid with wild flowers, reached to their middle;—green pantaloons, buttoned with bobs of silk, and sandals of silver, formed their under dress. On their shoulders hung quivers of adder slough, stored with pernicious arrows; and bows, fashioned from the rib of a man, buried where three Lairds' lands meet, tipped with gold, ready bent for warfare, were slung by their sides. Thus accoutred they mounted on steeds, whose hoofs would not print the new plowed land, nor dash the dew from the cup of a hare-bell. They visited the flock, the folds, the fields of coming grain, and the habitations of men;—and woe to the mortal whose frailty threw him in their power!—A flight of arrows, tipped with deadly plagues, were poured into his folds; and nauseous weeds grew up in his pastures; his coming harvest was blighted with pernicious breath,—and whatever he had no longer prospered. These fatal shafts were formed of the bog reed, pointed with white field flint, and dipped in the dew of hemlock. They were shot into cattle with such magical dexterity that the smallest aperture could not be discovered, but by those deeply skilled in fairy warfare, and in the cure of elf-shooting. Cordials and potent charms are applied; the burning arrow is extracted, and instant recovery ensues. The fairies seem to have been much attached to particular places. A green hill;—an opening in a wood;—a burn just freeing itself from the Uplands, were kept sacred for revelry and festival. The Ward-law, an ever green hill in Dalswinton Barony, was, in olden days, a noted Fairy tryste. But the Fairy ring being
converted into a pulpit, in the times of persecution, proscribed the revelry of unchristened feet. Lamentations of no earthly voices were heard for years around this beloved hill."[317:A]
The latter part of this quotation alludes to a very prominent part of Scottish fairy superstition, the haunts or habitations of the Elf-folk, and their Court or Fairy-land, a species of fiction which, as we have seen, makes a striking figure in the Scandinavian mythology, and probably furnished Chaucer with his adventure of [317:B]Sir Thopas. The local appropriation of Fairies, however, though common enough in England, has been more minutely marked and described in Scotland. Green hills, mountain-lakes, romantic glens, and inaccessible falls of water, were more peculiarly their favourite haunts, whilst the wilderness or forest wild was deemed the regular entrance to Elf-land or the Court of Faery. "There be many Places," says Kirk, "called Fairie-hills, which the Mountain People think impious and dangerous to peel or discover, by taking earth or wood from them;" and, speaking in another place of their habitations, he adds, they "are called large and fair, and (unless att some odd occasions) unperceaveable by vulgar eyes, like Rachland and other inchanted Islands, having fir Lights, continual Lamps, and Fires, often seen
without Fuel to sustain them," confirming the account by the instance of a female neighbour of his, who, being conveyed to Elf-land, "found the Place full of Light, without any Fountain or Lamp from whence it did spring."[318:A]
"Lakes and pits, on the tops of mountains," remarks Dr. Leyden, were "regarded with a degree of superstitious horror, as the porches or entrances of the subterraneous habitations of the fairies; from which confused murmurs, the cries of children, moaning voices, the ringing of bells, and the sounds of musical instruments, are often supposed to be heard. Round these hills, the green fairy circles are believed to wind, in a spiral direction, till they reach the descent to the central cavern; so that, if the unwary traveller be benighted on the charmed ground, he is inevitably conducted, by an invisible power, to the fearful descent."[318:B]
That a similar partiality was shown by these fairy people to the site of secluded waterfalls, is recorded in the Statistical Account of Scotland, where the minister of Dumfries, after describing a Linn formed by the water of the Crichup, as inaccessible to real beings, observes, that it had anciently been "considered as the habitation of imaginary ones; and at the entrance into it there was a curious Cell or Cave, called the Elf's Kirk, where, according to the superstition of the times, the imaginary inhabitants of the Linn were supposed to hold their meetings."[318:C]
But, independent of these numerous occasional residences of the fairy tribe, a firm belief in the existence of a fixed court, or Elf-land peculiarly so denominated, as the centre of their empire and the abode of their Queen, was so prevalent in Scotland, during the sixteenth century, as to have been acted upon in a court of justice. A woman named Alison Pearson having been convicted, on the 28th of May, 1586, of holding intercourse with and visiting the Queen of
Elf-land; "for hanting and repairing," says the indictment, "with the gude neighbours, and Queene of Elfland, thir divers years by past, as she had confest; and that she had friends in that court, which were of her own blude, who had gude acquaintance of the Queene of Elfland,—and that she was seven years ill handled in the Court of Elfland[319:A]," and for this notable crime was the poor creature burnt to death!
When such was the credulity of a bench of judges, we need not wonder that Fairy Land had become a professed article of the poetical creed, and that Lindsay in 1560, and Montgomery in 1584, should allude to it as a subject of admitted notoriety: thus the former, in his Complaynt of the Papingo, says