Letter V

Those who dealt in fortune-telling, mystical cures by charms, and the like, often claimed an intercourse with Fairyland--Hudhart or Hudikin--Pitcairn's "Scottish Criminal Trials"--Story of Bessie Dunlop and her Adviser--Her Practice of Medicine--And of Discovery of Theft--Account of her Familiar, Thome Reid--Trial of Alison Pearson--Account of her Familiar, William Sympson--Trial of the Lady Fowlis, and of Hector Munro, her Stepson--Extraordinary species of Charm used by the latter--Confession of John Stewart, a Juggler, of his Intercourse with the Fairies--Trial and Confession of Isobel Gowdie--Use of Elf-arrow Heads--Parish of Aberfoyle--Mr. Kirke, the Minister of Aberfoyle's Work on Fairy Superstitions--He is himself taken to Fairyland--Dr. Grahame's interesting Work, and his Information on Fairy Superstitions--Story of a Female in East Lothian carried off by the Fairies--Another instance from Pennant.

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To return to Thomas the Rhymer, with an account of whose legend I concluded last letter, it would seem that the example which it afforded of obtaining the gift of prescience, and other supernatural powers, by means of the fairy people, became the common apology of those who attempted to cure diseases, to tell fortunes, to revenge injuries, or to engage in traffic with the invisible world, for the purpose of satisfying their own wishes, curiosity, or revenge, or those of others. Those who practised the petty arts of deception in such mystic cases, being naturally desirous to screen their own impostures, were willing to be supposed to derive from the fairies, or from mortals transported to fairyland the power necessary to effect the displays of art which they pretended to exhibit. A confession of direct communication and league with Satan, though the accused were too frequently compelled by torture to admit and avow such horrors, might, the poor wretches hoped, be avoided by the avowal of a less disgusting intercourse with sublunary spirits, a race which might be described by negatives, being neither angels, devils, nor the souls of deceased men; nor would it, they might flatter themselves, be considered as any criminal alliance, that they held communion with a race not properly hostile to man, and willing, on certain conditions, to be useful and friendly to him. Such an intercourse was certainly far short of the witch's renouncing her salvation, delivering herself personally to the devil, and at once ensuring condemnation in this world, together with the like doom in the next.

Accordingly, the credulous, who, in search of health, knowledge, greatness, or moved by any of the numberless causes for which men seek to look into futurity, were anxious to obtain superhuman assistance, as well as the numbers who had it in view to dupe such willing clients, became both cheated and cheaters, alike anxious to establish the possibility of a harmless process of research into futurity, for laudable, or