16 



RELICS OF POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 



it, without cloubt, to the good green people, whose skill in knead- 

 ing is notorious. The infant throve as if it had been fed on magic 

 food ; but but on the seventh night after its arrival, while she lay- 

 awake, she saw the lean face of her friend. Tarn Len, at the case- 

 ment. But there was fern-seed scattered there, and on that ac- 

 count, perhaps, he did not enter. In the next hour she slept, and 

 the face of Tam in her dream awakening her, she started up, and 

 saw by the clear moonlight that the babe was exchanged. In- 

 stead of a fair, blooming boy, with large blue eyes and bright 

 hair, she saw a new born creature, with a ghastly face, and limbs 

 that seemed unnaturally long. These were symptoms of elfin 

 deception, and Mause almost shrank from her new foster-child ; 

 but the morning gift found at her door was a wrapper of the finest 

 linen, and a mattrass of floss-silk. Gay Carhne took courage, and 

 in a few days, though it performed the functions of eating, sleep- 

 ing, and even breathing, very feebly, she imagined that it became 

 of more human aspect. Even in her prejudiced eyes, its female 

 sex and its helplessness, gave it some attraction, and by degrees it 

 seemed beautiful. Nothing indeed could surpass the soft texture 

 of its skin, the silvery lightness of its hair, and its perfect symme- 

 try of shape ; but when its nurse murmured or sung certain 

 rhymes against witchcraft, she thought the infant gazed on her 

 with eyes of singular expression. She concluded, therefore, that 

 the body was mortal, but that a fairy soul had been breathed into 

 it instead of its own. In the increase of the March moon, she 

 twisted wreaths or circles of oak and ivy ; and having passed it 

 thrice through these circles to disenchant it, the pious dame touch- 

 ed her foster-child's brow with a cross of wood which had been 

 dipped in St. Fillan's well. She was in this act when Tam Len 

 appeared at the door, and sang with a gesture of strange joy the 

 words which she had found in the amulet. Mause now conceived 

 the gold mine of Dundufl3e was designed to recompense her, and 

 determined to hazard a search, after the sanctifying rite she had 

 just performed. Under the whin-bush beneath the appointed spot, 

 she found with more awe than astonishment, a pitcher of clay 

 filled with gold coin. It was enough to have tempted Thomas of 

 Ercildoune, or the Hermit of Tweed-dale himself ; yet Mause for- 

 bore even to touch a doit. But the Gay Carline was a woman : 

 she lay awake three nights meditating whether she might safely 

 expend fairy gold without being sodden in a brass cauldron" 



