492 Sir George Douglas [Jan. 29, 



wild glen among the hills. She is sought for by her parents ; but no 

 trace of her is found. Years pass, and the mystery remains unsolved. 

 But at the close of the seventh year, in the same twilight hour in 

 which she had vanished, Kilmeny returns to her home. She has 

 been rapt away by fairies, with whom the intervening years have 

 been spent. But in the midst of Fairyland, her heart still yearns 

 tenderly to her home ; and when seven years have expired, and the 

 fairies have no longer power to detain her against her will, she 

 chooses to leave the life of pleasure which she leads among them to 

 return to the common world. This is an outline of the story ; but 

 the story is the least part of the poem. Its charm lies in its 

 exquisitely flowing and melodious verse, in its suggestion of the 

 twilight world and of a world of shadows — a land " where all things 

 are forgotten," — in its wistful tenderness ; in one word, in the unique 

 and perfect aptness of the style to the subject. So magical, indeed, 

 are the fairy touches throughout the writings of the Ettrick Shepherd, 

 that one might almost be tempted to dream that the experience with 

 which tradition credits Thomas the Khymer had been shared by this 

 rhymer of a later day. 



As in England, tales of fairies caught sight of on the country 

 green, at twilight or by moonlight, of services rendered by mortals 

 to fairies and gratefully and gracefully repaid, find a place among the 

 fables of the Scottish peasantry. But it is by no means in such airy, 

 gracious, and harmless if not beneficent, creations as this that the 

 genius of the Scottish nation finds its fancy's most congenial food. 

 That genius is, upon the whole, essentially a sombre one, — relieved, 

 indeed, by a rough humour ; but tending most to an affinity with 

 gloom. The malevolence, the hostility, of Nature, its permanence as 

 contrasted with the transient character of man, its victoriousness in 

 the never-ending battle waged against it by man, — a battle in which he 

 fights for life, in which he gains a few trifling and temporary advan- 

 tages, but in which he must recognise from the first that he fights 

 against impossible odds : these are facts which a barren soil and 

 a bleak and stormy climate have thrust forcibly upon the Scottish 

 popular imagination, and which have impressed themselves deeply 

 upon it. This gloomy view of Nature has tinged the superstitious 

 beliefs of the peasantry, and through them their stories. And 

 upon the back of this gloomy view of Nature, has come a sense — 

 stronger perhaps than is felt by any other nation — of fate and 

 doom, of the mystery of life and death, of the cruelty of the inevita- 

 ble, the pain of separation, the darkness which enshrouds the whole. 

 In this sense the Scotch are a nation of pessimists. They have found 

 their religious vocation in Calvinism ; and the spirit which embraced 

 Calvinism like a bride informs their mythology and their fireside 

 tales. Their tendency to devil-worship, to the propitiation of evil 

 spirits, is illustrated by the hideous usage of the Good-man's Croft, — 

 a plot of ground near a village which was left untilled — set apart 

 for, and dedicated to, the Powers of Evil, in the hope that their 

 malignity might be appeased by the sacrifice, and that so they might 



