Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
and the day was further enlivened with a public dinner, 
sports, a selection of music, and Highland dances from the 
Buccleuch Pipe and Drum Band. A grand ball in the 
evening closed the proceedings, which are memorable, as it 
is not likely anything of the kind will be seen again.” 
For kind permission to reprint this I am indebted both 
to the writer and to the editor of the Border Magazine , a 
nice little periodical which takes note of Border worthies 
and Border local topics. 
Sir Walter Scott, in his fascinating “ Minstrelsy of the 
Border,” notes that it was a common belief that gipsies had 
the power of throwing upon bystanders a spell ... to 
make them see the thing that is not. This is alluded to in 
the old ballad of Johnnie Faa. He further tells of a 
gipsy who so bewitched a number of folk near Haddington 
that they deemed they saw a barndoor- cock dragging a big 
oak-tree. A man passing with a cart full of clover chanced 
to pick out a sprig of four-leafed clover, when the glamour 
was removed from the eyes of the onlookers, and they saw 
the oak-tree to be but a bulrush. Similar tales of gramarye 
are told of the Indian conjurers. 
NEW YEAR’S EVE.-— CAROL. 
I cannot sleep, the sound of distant bells 
Fills all the air, and bids me look abroad ; 
The Year is flying, fleeting from our earth, 
To the far heavens by a star-strewn road. 
He hath the horses of the resting Night, 
“ Grey Cloud ” and “ Storm wind,” speedy in their tracks. 
I see his hair streaming like lightning bright, 
I hear the echo of the song he sings ; 
A weird lament for all the prison’d souls 
He bears behind him in his sleigh from earth ; 
A wail of sorrow for the empty hearts 
He leaves rejoicing at a New Year’s birth. 
Yet are there tears shed in this idle world, 
Because the Year to us at last is dead ; 
I see them on his mantle shine empearled, 
I hear the sighing borne upon the wind, 
I see high heaped the sleigh with broken hearts, 
Reft joys and dead delights that came to some, 
Day-dreams of youth, the sadder dreams of age, 
He gathers all, for he is going home. 
92 
