The servants, however, resorted to the usual mode of banishing a Brownie: they left a green cloke and hood for him by the kitchen fire, and remained on the watch. They saw him come in, gaze at the new clothes, try them on, and, apparently in great delight, go jumping and frisking about the kitchen. But at the first crow of the cock he vanished, crying—
Here's a cloak, and here's a hood!
The Cauld Lad of Hilton will do no more good;
and he never again returned to the kitchen; yet it was said that he might still be heard at midnight singing those lines in a tone of melancholy.
There was a room in the castle long called the Cauld Lad's Room, which was never occupied unless the castle was full of company, and within the last century many persons of credit had heard of the midnight wailing of the Cauld Lad, who some maintained was the spirit of a servant whom one of the barons of Hilton had killed unintentionally in a fit of passion."[344]
In the beginning of the last century Bourne thus gives the popular belief on this subject:
"Another part of this (winter's evening) conversation generally turns upon Fairies. These, they tell you, have frequently been seen and heard; nay, that there are some still living who were stolen away by them, and confined seven years. According to the description they give of them, who pretend to have seen them, they are in the shape of men exceeding little: they are always clad in green, and frequent the woods and fields. When they make cakes (which is a work they have been often heard at), they are very noisy; and when they have done, they are full of mirth and pastime. But generally they dance in moonlight, when mortals are asleep, and not capable of seeing them; as may be observed on the following morning, their dancing places being very distinguishable: for as they dance hand in hand, and so make a circle in their dance, so next day there will be seen rings and circles on the grass."[345]
The author of "Round about our Coalfire" says:[346]
"My grandmother has often told me of Fairies dancing upon our green, and they were little little creatures, clothed in green.