1892.] on Tales of the Scottish Peasantry. 493 



be induced to spare the crops on the surrounding fields. Of the 

 state of superstitious dread in which some Scotchmen passed their 

 lives, Mrs. Grant of Laggan gives a curious illustration when she 

 tells us that in the Highlands of her day, to boast, or to congratulate 

 a friend, was to rashly court retribution ; to praise a child upon the 

 nurse's arm was to incur suspicion of wishing to bring down ill upon 

 its head. 



Holding these beliefs, it is not to be wondered at if, in their 

 stories, the Scotch are the past-masters of the weird. And, as a matter 

 of fact, their very nursery-tales — many of them — would appear to have 

 been conceived with a view to educating, for some strange purpose or 

 other, the passions of horror and of sorrow in the child to whom they 

 are told. Such rhymes, for instance, as " The Tempted Lady," and 

 " The Strange Visitor," are uncanny to a degree. In the former, the 

 Evil One himself appears, in specious guise. The Strange Visitor is 

 Death. The nursery ballad of " The Croodin Doo "* is as full of 

 combined piteousness and sinister suggestion of underhand wickedness 

 as any little tragedy of its length could well be. The suggestion is 

 that of a man's childless lawful wife bearing a bitter grudge against 

 his child borne by another woman. The babe returns from a day's 

 outing, and is questioned by his slighted mother as to where he has 

 been and what he has done. But he is tired, and cries out to be put 

 to bed. The jealous woman, however, persists in her interrogatory, 

 in the course of which she asks him what he had for dinner. He 

 replies that he dined off " a little four-footed fish." (The eft, or newt, 

 is, like the toad, in the common superstition, venomous). " And 

 what was done with the bones of this singular fish ? " asks the woman. 

 They were given to the lap-dog. And what did the dog do? 

 After eating them, he "shot out his feet and died." There, with 

 admirable art, the ballad ends. Its effect is immensely heightened 

 by a burthen, or refrain, in which, at the close of every verse, the 

 child, with wearisome iteration and with child-like importunity, 

 cries out to his mother to " make his bed soon." This ballad of child- 

 life is queer fare to set before a child. 



Stoddart, the tourist, long ago remarked the contrast between the 

 fairies of the English popular mythology and those of the Scotch ; 

 and certainly the delicate, joyous, tricksy, race of moonlight revellers 

 whom we meet in Shakespeare are scarcely to be recognised as be- 

 longing to the same family with the soul-less, man-stealing, creatures 

 of the Scottish peasant's fancy. The effect exercised upon popular 

 superstition by the ruling passion of Calvinistic religion is one of the 

 most striking things in Scottish folk-lore. The belief in fairies, for 

 example, did not cease to exist. It was not even universally discoun- 

 tenanced by the Church ; for we find recorded instances of Ministers 

 of the Gospel combining with their parishioners to take measures for 

 the restitution of infants which the fairies had changed at nurse, or 

 for the recovery of women who had been spirited away. And certainly 



* A term of affection applied to a child. 



