Folk-Lore and Legends | Page 7

the morning
sun, the glowworm to the eastern star. They have ta'en him away, the
invisible dwellers of the earth. I saw them come on him with shouting
and with singing, and they charmed him where he sat, and away they
bore him; and the horse he rode was never shod with iron, nor owned
before the mastery of human hand. They have ta'en him away over the
water, and over the wood, and over the hill. I got but ae look of his
bonnie blue ee, but ae; ae look. But as I have endured what never
maiden endured, so will I undertake what never maiden undertook, I
will win him from them all. I know the invisible ones of the earth; I
have heard their wild and wondrous music in the wild woods, and there
shall a christened maiden seek him, and achieve his deliverance.' She
paused, and glancing around a circle of condoling faces, down which
the tears were dropping like rain, said, in a calm and altered but still
delirious tone: 'Why do you weep, Mary Halliday? and why do you
weep, John Graeme? Ye think that Elphin Irving--oh, it's a bonnie,
bonnie name, and dear to many a maiden's heart, as well as mine--ye
think he is drowned in Corrie; and ye will seek in the deep, deep pools
for the bonnie, bonnie corse, that ye may weep over it, as it lies in its
last linen, and lay it, amid weeping and wailing in the dowie kirkyard.
Ye may seek, but ye shall never find; so leave me to trim up my hair,
and prepare my dwelling, and make myself ready to watch for the hour
of his return to upper earth.' And she resumed her household labours
with an alacrity which lessened not the sorrow of her friends.
"Meanwhile the rumour flew over the vale that Elphin Irving was
drowned in Corriewater. Matron and maid, old man and young,
collected suddenly along the banks of the river, which now began to
subside to its natural summer limits, and commenced their search;

interrupted every now and then by calling from side to side, and from
pool to pool, and by exclamations of sorrow for this misfortune. The
search was fruitless: five sheep, pertaining to the flock which he
conducted to pasture, were found drowned in one of the deep eddies;
but the river was still too brown, from the soil of its moorland sources,
to enable them to see what its deep shelves, its pools, and its
overhanging and hazelly banks concealed. They remitted further search
till the stream should become pure; and old man taking old man aside,
began to whisper about the mystery of the youth's disappearance; old
women laid their lips to the ears of their coevals, and talked of Elphin
Irving's fairy parentage, and his having been dropped by an unearthly
hand into a Christian cradle. The young men and maids conversed on
other themes; they grieved for the loss of the friend and the lover, and
while the former thought that a heart so kind and true was not left in the
vale, the latter thought, as maidens will, on his handsome person,
gentle manners, and merry blue eye, and speculated with a sigh on the
time when they might have hoped a return for their love. They were
soon joined by others who had heard the wild and delirious language of
his sister: the old belief was added to the new assurance, and both again
commented upon by minds full of superstitious feeling, and hearts full
of supernatural fears, till the youths and maidens of Corrievale held no
more love trysts for seven days and nights, lest, like Elphin Irving, they
should be carried away to augment the ranks of the unchristened
chivalry.
"It was curious to listen to the speculations of the peasantry. 'For my
part,' said a youth, 'if I were sure that poor Elphin escaped from that
perilous water, I would not give the fairies a pound of hiplock wool for
their chance of him. There has not been a fairy seen in the land since
Donald Cargil, the Cameronian, conjured them into the Solway for
playing on their pipes during one of his nocturnal preachings on the hip
of the Burnswark hill.'
"'Preserve me, bairn,' said an old woman, justly exasperated at the
incredulity of her nephew, 'if ye winna believe what I both heard and
saw at the moonlight end of Craigyburnwood on a summer night, rank
after rank of the fairy folk, ye'll at least believe a douce man and a

ghostly professor, even the late minister of Tinwaldkirk. His only
son--I mind the lad weel, with his long yellow locks and his bonnie
blue eyes--when I was but a gilpie of a lassie,