Part 19

The Fairy, for it was a fairy, chatted away to her for a little, and gradually won from her the whole story of her troubles; then, as she rose to go, she said, "If ye've still got that queer little stone ye fand to-day wi' the hole in it, just tie a little bit grey wurset thread through it, and lay it on the meal-ark. It'll maybes be a help."

Next night, about the same time (as it afterwards appeared), the old woman's son Godfrey, who lived with his wife on his own little croft at Portencockerie, was startled to find when he came home a little tiny woman perched on a high stool at his fireside.

"What want ye here?" he cried; and his wife, joining him, began to scold also. "Tak' yer gait, we want nae beggars here," she shouted.

The Fairy looked at them steadily with her little grey piercing eyes, then stepping from the stool on to the long wooden kitchen settle she turned to the frightened man and woman, and in a tiny penetrating voice that made them even more frightened, said--"The poor folk! much they get at your hands! But thy old mother shall never want; she shall live at your cost. Her meal-ark will be always full, and yours shall supply it!"

And so it came about. Godfrey and his wife, under the influence of fear, tried hard to make amends, but the old woman received their advances with the utmost indifference.

The Compass Stone, on the hill above Port Logan towards the south, was also a favourite place for the fairies holding their gatherings, and there is a small field at Logan known as the Fairy Park. It is said that a large company of fairies were observed by two individuals, who at the time were not near each other, crossing the fields near Kenmure, in the parish of Stoneykirk. One of the individuals said they seemed to be all talking together, and there was a continual buzz of conversation as of a large assemblage of people gathered together.

A hill between Ringuinea and the Float is associated with the fairies. Two young women went from Ringuinea one summer morning to bring the cows home to be milked, when they met what seemed to be a very beautiful child, whom they unsuccessfully made every endeavour to catch hold of. Skilfully, however, and with evident little exertion, the little figure eluded their grasp, with the result that their futile chase led to their being hopelessly behind time for the milking.

Another story tells that the farmer of Ringuinea was going down the Black Brae, when he met a very small person handsomely dressed in green. Thinking it was a strange child, he enquired where he was going so early in the morning. The supposed child answered that there was an ox down below that had annoyed him and his people for a long time by always standing on the top of their dwelling-place, but that he would trouble them no more. The farmer proceeded down the brae, and found one of his best bullocks lying dead. He went for assistance, and proceeding to skin the bullock, and knowing what to look for, they found an elf-shot right through the heart.

Kirkmaiden seems to have been a much-favoured district of the "wee fouk." The Nick of the Balloch, on the road from Barncorkerie to Castle Clanyard, Curghie Glen, and the Grennan were notoriously fairy-occupied; and between Kirkbride and Killumpha their imaginary tracks left on the stones and rocks used to be pointed out and traced. There is a curious lingering tradition in the Rhinns that the fairies of Kirkmaiden always wore red caps instead of green.

Before passing from this district of the Rhinns, reference may be made to what was firmly believed to be the kidnapping by fairies of a little boy of two years of age. The child wandered out unperceived by its mother. On being missed, an anxious search was made during the whole day by almost every person in the neighbourhood, but no trace of the child could be found. Late in the evening, however, from the top of the heugh, beside Slock-an-a-gowre, he was discovered, by the merest accident, asleep on a green plot on the cliff far below, fully two miles from his home. How he got there to this day is a mystery. To assume that any person carried or left him there seems highly improbable, and to suppose the child to have of itself crossed dykes, drains, glens, and cornfields seems even more improbable. It was therefore attributed to the fairies, all the more that the little boy lisped that he had followed other little boys wearing green clothes.

Away midst the solitary grandeur of the high lands of Galloway, where the Merrick lordly towers, and where the bleat of the sheep and the cry of the whaup, the tumble and plash of burn and stream, are the only sounds that greet the shepherd's ear as he pursues his long and lonely beat, a beautiful fairy legend lingers, though human and homely enough in its trend:--

"A shepherd's family had just taken possession of a newly-erected onstead, in a very secluded spot among 'the hills o' Gallowa',' when the goodwife was, one day, surprised by the entrance of a little woman, who hurriedly asked for the loan of a 'pickle saut.' This, of course, was readily granted; but the goodwife was so flurried by the appearance of 'a neibor' in such a lonely place, and at such a very great distance from all known habitations, that she did not observe when the little woman withdrew or which way she went. Next day, however, the same little woman re-entered the cottage, and duly paid the borrowed 'saut.' This time the goodwife was more alert, and as she turned to replace 'the saut in the sautkit' she observed 'wi' the tail o' her e'e' that the little woman moved off towards the door, and then made a sudden 'bolt out.' Following quickly, the goodwife saw her unceremonious visitor run down a small declivity towards a tree which stood at 'the house en'.' She passed behind the tree, but did not emerge on the other side, and the goodwife, seeing no place of concealment, assumed she was a fairy.

In a few days her little 'neibor' again returned, and continued from time to time to make similar visits--borrowing and lending small articles, evidently with a view to produce an intimacy; and it was uniformly remarked that, on retiring, she proceeded straight to the tree, and then suddenly 'gaed out o' sight.'

One day, while the goodwife was at the door, emptying some dirty water into the jaw-hole (sink or cesspool), her now familiar acquaintance came to her and said:

'Goodwife, ye're really a very obliging bodie! Wad ye be sae good as turn the lade o' your jaw-hole anither way, as a' your foul water rins directly in at my door? It stands in the howe there, on the aff-side o' that tree, at the corner o' your house en'.'

The mystery was now fully cleared up--the little woman was indeed a fairy; and the door of her invisible habitation being situated 'on the aff-side o' the tree at the house en',' it could easily be conceived how she must there necessarily 'gae out o' sight' as she entered her sight-eluding portal."(50)

Probably the most characteristic fairy story extant in the whole south-western district of Scotland is that which centres round the green mound on which the ruined Castle of Myrton, a stronghold of the M'Cullochs in bygone days, stands. Within the policies of Monreith House, in the parish of Mochrum, on the beautifully-wooded shore of the White Loch of Myrton, this mound of Myrton is peculiarly interesting in the links its story joins of prehistoric days, fairy tradition, and seventeenth century family history.

The following account is drawn from The Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway:--

"Sir Godfrey M'Culloch, having squandered his patrimony and sold his estates in Mochrum to the Maxwells of Monreith, took up house at Cardoness. Here a neighbour, William Gordon, having poinded some cattle straying on his lands, Sir Godfrey joined a party illegally convened to release them. A fray was the result, in which M'Culloch, in the words of his indictment, 'did shot at the said Gordon with a gun charged, and by the shot broke his thigh-bone and leg, so that he immediately fell to the ground, and within a few hours thereafter died of the same shot wound.' Sir Godfrey fled the country, and some years after ventured on a Sunday to attend a Church in Edinburgh. A Galloway man was among the congregation, who, recognising him, jumped up and cried: 'Pit to the door; there's a murderer in the kirk!' This was done, M'Culloch arrested, tried, condemned, and his head 'stricken fra his body' the 5th of March, 1697."

So say the Criminal Records. There is a very different local version of the story:--

Long before the fatal encounter, and before he had entered on the evil courses which led to his ruin, Sir Godfrey, young and curly, sat at a window in the Tower of Myrtoun watching the operations of a gang of workmen forming a new sewer from his house to the White Loch below it. Suddenly he was startled by the apparition close beside him of a very little old man whose hair and beard were snowy white, whose strangely-cut costume was green, and who seemed in a state of furious wrath. Sir Godfrey received him, notwithstanding, with the greatest urbanity, and begged to be told in what way he could serve him.

The answer was a startling one: "M'Culloch," said the visitor, "I am the King of the Brownies! My palace has been for ages in the mound on which your Tower stands, and you are driving your common sewer right through my chalmer of dais."

Sir Godfrey, confounded, threw up the window and ordered the workmen to stop at once, professing his perfect readiness to make the drain in any such direction as might least incommode his Majesty, if he would graciously indicate the same. His courtesy was accepted, and Sir Godfrey received a promise in return from the now mollified potentate that he, the said King, would stand by and help him in the time of his greatest need.

It was long after this that the Knight of Myrtoun disposed of his enemy in the summary way we have already mentioned, and for which he was condemned to die. The procession had started for the place of execution; a crowd was collected to see the awful sight, when the spectators were surprised by seeing a very little man with white hair and beard, dressed, too, in an antique suit of green, and mounted on a white horse. He issued from the castle rock, crossed the loch without a moment's hesitation, and rode straight up to the cart on which Sir Godfrey, accompanied by the executioner and a minister, was standing. They plainly saw Sir Godfrey get on the horse behind the little man, who was no other than the King of the Brownies (and thus fulfilled his promise by arriving in his hour of need): the two recrossed the loch, and, mounting the castle rock, they disappeared. When the astonished crowd again turned their eyes to the cart a figure was still there, and wondrous like Sir Godfrey; it was, therefore, generally believed that he had met a felon's doom, and most people thought no more about it. A few only knew better, but these cared little to speak about the matter. At rare intervals, however, one of the initiated would impart the story to a friend, and tell how a head had rolled upon the ground, leaving a bleeding trunk upon the scaffold; then adding in a confidential whisper, "It was no' him ava; it was just a kin' o' glamour."(51)

The presence of fairies was not unknown in the Whithorn district, and a realistic account of the last appearance of the fairies there has been preserved in Droll Recollections of Whithorn, by James F. Cannon:--

"A farmer's wife on the Glasserton estate was engaged in washing at a stream near her house, when a trig little creature of her own sex, and perfectly human in shape and general semblance, suddenly arrested her attention. The mistress stared with amazement at the mite of a body that stood by her side, and the astonishment of the former was not lessened when, with an appealing look on her tiny features, the elf solicited the favour of 'a wee sowp o' milk for an unweel wean.' They then entered freely into conversation, and walked together to the byre, where the Fairy was duly supplied with what she had asked for. She was very profuse with her thanks, and foretold that her donor would never be without a pinch of snuff (of all things) while she should require it. It was not a very hazardous prediction, nor did it give promise of great remuneration for the obligation conferred; but there was a note of gratitude in it which was thoroughly appreciated by her to whom it was spoken. I believe, however, there was an additional hint dropped that the milk pails of the elf's patroness would always be well filled, and her husband's field crops abundant."(52)

A poetical version of the above tradition has been elaborated by Mr Cannon, and appears in the Bards of Galloway, under the title of "The Langhill Fairy."

"Riddling in the reek" was the common country-side expression for a rough-and-ready method of treating a fairy changeling so that it might be restored to its proper human constitution. A realistic account of such an ordeal is preserved in Galloway Gossip (Wigtownshire). It sets forth how a child, whose parents lived in Sorbie village, behaved in such a fretful, passionate, and vixenish way that the parents were at last forced to the unwelcome conclusion that it was not their child at all, but a changeling. Much distressed they sought the advice of a wise woman living at Kirkinner, who plainly enough substantiated the suspicion. Beseeching her help, the sybil pointed out the great risk they all ran with interference with things uncanny, but on their consenting to place themselves entirely in her hands and implicitly obey her in every detail, she promised to make the attempt to restore their child on the following Aul' Hallowe'en Nicht.