sh, and dull mortality.
_Faithful Shepherdess._

It is sometimes accounted unlucky to pass such places, without
performing some ceremony to avert the displeasure of the elves. There
is, upon the top of Minchmuir, a mountain in Peebles-shire, a spring,
called the _Cheese Well_, because, anciently, those who passed that way
were wont to throw into it a piece of cheese, as an offering to the
Fairies, to whom it was consecrated.

Like the _feld elfen_ of the Saxons, the usual dress of the Fairies
is green; though, on the moors, they have been sometimes observed in
heath-brown, or in weeds dyed with the stoneraw, or lichen.[A] They
often ride in invisible procession, when their presence is discovered by
the shrill ringing of their bridles. On these occasions, they sometimes
borrow mortal steeds; and when such are found at morning, panting and
fatigued in their stalls, with their manes and tails dishevelled and
entangled, the grooms, I presume, often find this a convenient excuse
for their situation; as the common belief of the elves quaffing the
choicest liquors in the cellars of the rich (see the story of Lord
Duffus below), might occasionally cloak the delinquencies of an
unfaithful butler.

[Footnote A: Hence the hero of the ballad is termed an "elfin grey."]

The Fairies, beside their equestrian processions, are addicted it would
seem, to the pleasures of the chace. A young sailor, travelling by night
from Douglas, in the Isle of Man, to visit his sister, residing in Kirk
Merlugh, heard the noise of horses, the holla of a huntsman, and the
sound of a horn. Immediately afterwards, thirteen horsemen, dressed in
green, and gallantly mounted, swept past him. Jack was so much delighted
with the sport, that he followed them, and enjoyed the sound of the horn
for some miles; and it was not till he arrived at his sister's house
that he learned the danger which he had incurred. I must not omit to
mention, that these little personages are expert jockeys, and scorn to
ride the little Manks ponies, though apparently well suited to their
size. The exercise therefore, falls heavily upon the English and Irish
horses brought into the Isle of Man. Mr Waldron was assured by a
gentleman of Ballafletcher, that he had lost three or four capital
hunters by these nocturnal excursions.--WALDRON'S _Works_, p. 132.
From the same author we learn, that the Fairies sometimes take more
legitimate modes of procuring horses. A person of the u