Norway elves of the Haunted Ships made for his uncle
Sandie Macharg. And I shall tell ye the tale as the honest lad told it
to me.

"Alexander Macharg, besides being the laird of three acres of peatmoss,
two kale gardens, and the owner of seven good milch cows, a pair of
horses, and six pet sheep, was the husband of one of the handsomest women
in seven parishes. Many a lad sighed the day he was brided; and a
Nithsdale laird and two Annandale moorland farmers drank themselves to
their last linen, as well as their last shilling, through sorrow for her
loss. But married was the dame; and home she was carried, to bear rule
over her home and her husband, as an honest woman should. Now ye maun
ken that though the flesh-and-blood lovers of Alexander's bonnie wife all
ceased to love and to sue her after she became another's, there were
certain admirers who did not consider their claim at all abated, or their
hopes lessened by the kirk's famous obstacle of matrimony. Ye have heard
how the devout minister of Tinwald had a fair son carried away, and
wedded against his liking to an unchristened bride, whom the elves and
the fairies provided; ye have heard how the bonnie bride of the drunken
Laird of Soukitup was stolen by the fairies out at the back-window of the
bridal chamber, the time the bridegroom was groping his way to the
chamber door; and ye have heard--but why need I multiply cases? Such
things in the ancient days were as common as candle-light. So ye'll no
hinder certain water elves and sea fairies, who sometimes keep festival
and summer mirth in these old haunted hulks, from falling in love with
the weel-faured wife of Laird Macharg; and to their plots and
contrivances they went how they might accomplish to sunder man and wife;
and sundering such a man and such a wife was like sundering the green
leaf from the summer, or the fragrance from the flower.

"So it fell on a time that Laird Macharg took his halve-net on his back,
and his steel spear in his hand, and down to Blawhooly Bay gaed he, and
into the water he went right between the two haunted hulks, and placing
his net awaited the coming of the tide. The night, ye maun ken, was
mirk, and the wind lowne, and the singing of the increasing waters among
the shells and the peebles was heard for sundry miles. All at once light
began to glance and twinkle on board the two Haunted Ships from every
hole and seam, and presently the sound as of a hatchet employed in