A KiRKCORMACK Ghost Story. 245 



" spirits " should take her child before it was baptised ! In 

 the parish of Kirkinner there are numerous " knowes " or 

 hillocks covered with blackthorns, and these are still called 

 " fairy knowes." A few miles from Portwilliam, on the 

 farm of Chippermore, is a field called the " Witch-howe," 

 and contained in it are some bushes called the " fairy-thorns." 

 Also near Culshablin School, in Mochrum parish, is a thorn 

 bush on the roadside still called the " fairy tree." 



After having briefly related some fairy beliefs prevalent 

 in Galloway and other parts where the oldest races have 

 blended with new-comers, we naturally ask, to whom may we 

 attribute the origin of such beliefs? 



Dr Haddon in a lecture on " Fairy Tales " delivered at 

 Cardiff in 1894 says : — " What are the fairies? Legendary 

 mixture of the possible and impossible, of fact and fancy. 

 Part of fairydom refers to (i) spirits that never were em- 

 bodied ; other fairies are (2) spirits of environment, nature, 

 or local spirits, and household or domestic spirits ; (3) spirits 

 of the organic world, spirits of plants, and spirits of animals ; 

 (4) spirits of men or ghosts; and (5) witches and wizards, or 

 men possessed with other spirits. All these, and possibly 

 other elements, enter into the fanciful aspects of Fairyland, 

 but there is a large residuum of real occurrences ; these point 

 to a clash of races, and we may regard many of these fairy 

 sagas as stories told by men of the Iron Age of events which 

 happened to men of the Bronze Age in their conflicts with men 

 of the Neolithic Age, and possibly these, too, have been 

 traditions of the Paleolithic Age." 



I feel that it is impossible to find any words which are 

 more fit to conclude the foregoing pages, and it is to be hoped 

 that those who have hitherto opposed the study of fairy lore 

 and all its attendant superstitions may come to look upon it 

 as a very great assistance in the elucidation of race history, 

 and it would be well to remember that " superstition in a race 

 is merely the proof of imagination ; the people lacking fairy 

 lore must also lack intelligence and wit," as Miss B. Hunt 

 tells us in the preface to her charming book just lately pub- 

 lished, Folk-Tales of Breffny, in which some striking allusions 

 are made to the fairy-thorn superstitions. 



