12 



RELICS OF POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS, 



had finished her tale, " the gallant Lord of Romeville did well to 

 set his pearl in gold ; but I expected to have seen his ancestor's 

 nuptial ring employed to a better purpose. As usual, sister, all 

 the mischief in your story resulted from women ; and I have al- 

 ways thought the influence of superstition, and of Eve's daugh- 

 ters, very much alike. Fools deny it openly, but wise men hardly 

 escape from it." 



THE GLEN OF GREEN SPIRITS. 



The traveller who designs to visit Dun duffle, must cross a 

 bridge composed of two shattered pines laid from the edge of a 

 table-rock to another nearly of the same height and even surface, 

 but divided by a chasm above fifty feet in depth. Tremendous 

 and confused sounds announce to the ear a waterfall undiscovera- 

 ble by the eye in the depths of this fearful gulf Steps hewn in 

 the precipice, with a rude ballus trade of dwarf firs and ragged 

 shrubs, conduct the traveller who dares trust this copy of Michael 

 Scott's Stair in the isle of Bute, to a sudden break or angle in the 

 rocks, from whence he beholds a broad, silent, and slumbering 

 lake, circled by clifls of abrupt shape but softer colour; all being- 

 tinged with jDurple heath-moss, or dimly seen through mists which 

 ascend continually from this sheltered mass of water. These clifls 

 are indented with shallo n and frequent creeks, and one romantic 

 headland starts forward on the sight with a rude resemblance to 

 some aged fortress broken by decay into fantastic heaps of stone. 

 A narrow current divides it from the shore ; but, when dry sea- 

 sons have abated the lake, the passage is easily fordable by a High- 

 land visitor. Few, even in our exploring period, ever reach this 

 profound solitude ; and some lean sheep are all that modern farm- 

 ers have been able to introduce as inhabitants on a spot which, at 

 the era of my story, shewed no signs of human visitation, except 

 the smoke creeping from among the pinnacles of the island-rock. 



It was dead midnight when the witch-woman, who dwelt in a 

 miserable hut under these pinnacles, saw a livid and meagre youth 



