It was a curious trait in the character of David Ritchie, that he was very superstitious. Not only had he planted his house, his garden, and even his intended grave, all round with the mountain-ash, but it is also well authenticated that he never went abroad without a branch of this singular antidote, tied round with a red thread, in his pocket, to prevent the effects of the evil eye. When the sancta sanctorum of his domicile were so sacrilegiously ransacked after his death, there was found an elf-stone, or small round pebble, bored in the centre, hung by a cord of hair passed through the hole to the head of his bed!
After taking the foregoing view of the Wizard’s fairy bower, I was next conducted to his grave, which lies in the immediate vicinity. A slip of his favourite rowan-tree marked the spot. It had been planted several years after his death by some kindly hand, and, in the absence of a less perishable monument, seemed a wonderful act of delicacy and attention. It spoke a pathos to the feelings that the finest inscription could not have excited,—it was so consonant with the former desires of “the poor inhabitant below!”
In allusion to the foregoing circumstances, the following verses were composed, and inserted in a periodical publication:—
I sat upon the Wizard’s grave,—
’Twas on a smiling summer day,
When all around the desert spot
Bloomed in the young delights of May.
In undistinguished lowliness
I found the little mound of earth,
And bitter weeds o’ergrew the place,