The Laird of Balmachie's Wife

In the olden times, when it was the fashion for gentlemen to wear swords,
the Laird of Balmachie went one day to Dundee, leaving his wife at home
ill in bed. Riding home in the twilight, he had occasion to leave the
high road, and when crossing between some little romantic knolls, called
the Cur-hills, in the neighbourhood of Carlungy, he encountered a troop
of fairies supporting a kind of litter, upon which some person seemed to
be borne. Being a man of dauntless courage, and, as he said, impelled by
some internal impulse, he pushed his horse close to the litter, drew his
sword, laid it across the vehicle, and in a firm tone exclaimed--

"In the name of God, release your captive."

The tiny troop immediately disappeared, dropping the litter on the
ground. The laird dismounted, and found that it contained his own wife,
dressed in her bedclothes. Wrapping his coat around her, he placed her
on the horse before him, and, having only a short distance to ride,
arrived safely at home.

Placing her in another room, under the care of an attentive friend, he
immediately went to the chamber where he had left his wife in the
morning, and there to all appearance she still lay, very sick of a fever.
She was fretful, discontented, and complained much of having been
neglected in his absence, at all of which the laird affected great
concern, and pretending much sympathy, insisted upon her rising to have
her bed made. She said that she was unable to rise, but her husband was
peremptory, and having ordered a large wood fire to warm the room, he
lifted the impostor from the bed, and bearing her across the floor as if
to a chair, which had been previously prepared, he threw her on the fire,
from which she bounced like a sky-rocket, and went through the ceiling,
and out at the roof of the house, leaving a hole among the slates. He
then brought in his own wife, a little recovered from her alarm, who
said, that sometime after sunset, the nurse having left her for the
purpose of preparing a little candle, a multitude of elves came in at the
window, thronging like bees from a hive. They filled the room, and
having lifted her from the bed carried her through the window, after
which she recollected nothing further, till she saw her husband standing
over her on the Cur-hills, at the back of Carlungy. The hole in the
roof, by which the female fairy made her escape, was mended, but could
never be kept in repair, as a tempest of wind happened always once a
year, which uncovered that particular spot, without injuring any other
part of the roof.