Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
one can well imagine the Queen of Elfland and her maidens 
not caring to tarry among the upturned stones and heavy 
earth-clods, but clad in their gowns dyed elfin grey, as 
tradition declares, with lichen, or green as grass, mounting 
their faery steeds, which to dull earthly eyes, untouched by 
fernseed, are but branches of broom or ragwort, and 
away, shrilly piping on their hemlock and oaten pipes, to 
the 
Land of love and land of lychte 
Withouten sonne or mone or nychte ; 
through the rivers of red blood which bar the way to 
bonnie Elfland, since, as Thomas the Rhymer tells us, 
A’ the blude that’s shed on earth, 
Rins thro’ the springs o’ that countrie. 
Dark was the malison which protected the lands the 
fairies loved. There was an old rhyme, once well known, 
which warned any would-be upsetting churl that 
He who tills the fairies’ green, 
Nae luck again shall hae, 
And he who spoils the fairies’ ring 
Betide him want and woe : 
For weirdless days and weary nights 
Are his till his dying day. 
This and many other curious and popular Border rhymes, 
sayings and proverbs, have been saved from oblivion by 
Dr. Henderson, whose interesting little book is now, I am 
sorry to say, out of print. In a bundle of quaint rhymes 
by the Ettrick Shepherd, known as “ A Queer Book,” the 
origin of the Border fairies is given, a tale of glamour and 
mystery, describing the elves in the gold and green, who 
frolic in the moonbeams or on the bridge of the rain- 
bow, and haunt the woodland bowers, and live in the 
heart of the wayside rose. 
In olden days Brownies or House Elves are said to have 
haunted the Borderland, for there is an old saying, when a 
child gets something good to eat, “ Here’s a piece wad 
please a Brownie ! ” Scones and heather honey were 
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