yet awakened by the shepherds among these lonely braes; and often when
the moon rises over Ben-Cruachan, and counts her attendant stars in soft
reflection beneath the still waters of that long inland sea, she hears
the echoes of harps chiming through the silence of departed years.
Tradition tells, that on no other banks did the fairies so love to
thread the mazes of their mystic dance, as on the heathy, and brackeny,
and oaken banks of the Orchy, during the long summer nights when the
thick-falling dews perceptibly swelled the stream, and lent a livelier
music to every waterfall.

There it was, on a little river-island, that once, whether sleeping or
waking we know not, we saw celebrated a Fairy's Funeral. First we heard
small pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to
the night winds; and more piteous than aught that trills from earthly
instrument was the scarce audible dirge! It seemed to float over the
stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, till the airy anthem
came floating over our couch, and then alighted without footsteps among
the heather. The pattering of little feet was then heard, as if living
creatures were arranging themselves in order, and then there was nothing
but a more ordered hymn. The harmony was like the melting of musical
dewdrops, and sang, without words, of sorrow and death. We opened our
eyes, or rather sight came to them when closed, and dream was vision!
Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest of the lapwing, and all
hanging down their veiled heads, stood in a circle on a green plat among
the rocks; and in the midst was a bier, framed as it seemed of flowers
unknown to the Highland hills; and on the bier, a Fairy, lying with
uncovered face, pale as the lily, and motionless as the snow. The dirge
grew fainter and fainter, and then died quite away; when two of the
creatures came from the circle, and took their station, one at the head
and the other at the foot of the bier. They sang alternate measures, not
louder than the twittering of the awakened wood-lark before it goes up
the dewy air, but dolorous and full of the desolation of death. The
flower-bier stirred; for the spot on which it lay sank slowly down, and
in a few moments the greensward was smooth as ever--the very dews
glittering above the buried Fairy. A cloud passed over the moon; and,
with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed duskily away, heard afar
off, so still was the midnight solit