So potent is the flower or berry or wood of the rowan or witchwood or quicken or whicken-tree or mountain ash against the wiles of the elf-folk, that dairymaids use it for cream-stirrers and cowherds for a switch.
Rowan-tree and red thread
Gar the Witches tyne their speed.
[136]. "True Thomas."
There are four copies in handwriting—two of them written about 1450—of a rhymed romance telling how Thomas in his youth, while dreaming daydreams under the Eildon Tree, was met and greeted by the Queen of fair Elfland. The ballad on p. 127 has been passed on from mouth to mouth.
Up to our own grandmothers' day, at least, this Thomas Rhymour of Ercildoune—a village nor far distant from where the Leader joins the Tweed—was famous as a Wise One and a Seer (a See-er—with the inward eye). He lived seven centuries ago, between 1210 and 1297. Years after he had returned from Elfland—as the ballad tells—while he sat feasting in his Castle, news was brought to him that a hart and a hind, having issued out of the forest, were to be seen stepping fair and softly down the stony street of the town, to the marvel of the people. At this, Thomas at once rose from among his guests; left the table; made down to the street; followed after these strange summoners: and was seen again no more.
"Ilka tett," line 7, means every twist or plait; a "fairlie," stanza II, is a wonder, mystery, marvel; and the "coat" in the last stanza, being of "even cloth," was finer than the finest napless damask.
So, too, Young Tamlane, when a boy "just turned of nine," was carried off by the Elfin Queen:
Ae fatal morning I went out
Dreading nae injury,