10 Transactions. 



foot-fnlls liad been most frequuutly heard. A young man who had 

 been attending classes in Edinburgh came liome, and one evening 

 when I was in his father's house set off a balloon after sunset. The 

 candle in it set the whole tissue on fire while it was soaring above 

 our heads. A shepherd whom I knew, seeing the light from a 

 distance, rushed in a state of great agitation into a neighbouring 

 cottage, which he happened to be near, and bi'ought out the good- 

 man of the house. Both thought that it must have been the light 

 which is seen before death ; but the mistress of the house rather 

 soothed them by remarking that such a light could not be seen by 

 two at once. An old woman informed me that she had witnessed 

 this premonitory light, which lighted up the interior of the byre 

 while she was engaged milking her cows, and she learned that her 

 mother, residing some miles distant, had expired that same even- 

 ing. Readers will recollect the ftiteful light in Sir "Walter Scott's 

 ballad of lovely Rosabelle. James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, 

 refers to an omen called the " death bell," a tingling in the ears, 

 which is believed to announce a friend's death. As the " light 

 before death " could not be seen by two at once, so the death-bell 

 could only be heard by one at the same time. The relations of a 

 gentleman residing in Tynron have been warned of death by the 

 sound of wheels upon the gravel walk leading to the door, when 

 no wheels were there, and to a family in Durisdeer the warning 

 came like a switch against the panes of the window. The old 

 Ijrecentor of Glencairn, who died six or seven years ago, told me 

 that while walking one moonlit evening in his garden in a medi- 

 tative mood he heard a sound, as if a cart containing pieces of 

 metal had been tilted up and the materials discharged. His belief 

 was that a murdered infant had been buried in that garden. 

 These murdered innocents were frequently heard wailing about 

 forty years ago in the corn and in the thickets around Maqueston 

 in Tynron. A gentleman of suspected morality had occupied this 

 house early in the century. So troublesome wore these sounds 

 that the new tenant had for a while great difficulty in retaining 

 servants. A white lady has been observed hovering by moonlight 

 over the little cascade in the Shinnel which forms Paul's Pool. In 

 " Bennett's Tales of Nithsdale " mention is made of the custom of 

 placing a wooden platter with salt, or more correctly salt and 

 earth — for a turf was cut and put above the platter — on the breast 

 of a corpse. There is a reminiscence of this in our parish, and the 

 reason given for the custom was that it prevented the corpse from 



