opies from a manuscript in
the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh. He did not put his name on the
book, but Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in a note on his own copy,
affirms that Sir Walter was the editor. {235} Another edition was
edited, for Mr. Nutt, by the present writer, in 1893. In the year
following the completion of his book Mr. Kirk died, or, as local
tradition avers, was carried away to fairyland.

Mr. Kirk has none of the Presbyterian abhorrence of fairies and
fauns, though, like the accusers of the Orkney witches, he believes
that 'phairie control' inspires the second-sighted men, who see them
eat at funerals. The seers were wont to observe doubles of living
people, and these doubles are explained as 'co-walkers' from the
fairy world. This 'co-walker' 'wes also often seen of old to enter
a hous, by which the people knew that the person of that liknes wes
to visite them within a few days'.

Now this belief is probably founded on actual hallucinatory
experience, of which we may give a modern example. In the early
spring of 1890, a lady, known to the author, saw the 'copy, echo, or
living picture,' of a stranger, who intended (unknown to her) to
visit her house, but who did not carry out his intention. The
author can vouch for her perfect integrity, and freedom both from
superstition, and from illusions, except in this case. Miss H.
lives in Edinburgh, and takes in young men as boarders. At the time
of this event, she had four such inmates. Two, as she believed,
were in their study on the second floor; two were in the drawing-
room on the first floor, where she herself was sitting. The hour
was seven o'clock in the evening, and the lamp on the stair was lit.
Miss H. left the drawing-room, and went into a cupboard on the
landing, immediately above the lamp. She saw a young gentleman, of
fair complexion, in a suit of dark blue, coming down the staircase
from the second floor. Supposing him to be a friend of her boarders
whose study was on that floor, she came out of the cupboard, closed
the door to let him pass, and made him a slight bow. She did not
hear him go out, nor did the maid who was standing near the street
door. She did not see her two friends of the upstairs study till
nine o'clock: they had been at a lecture. When they met, she said:
'Did you take your friend with you?'

'What friend?'

'The fair young man who left your rooms at seven.'

'We were out before seven, we don't know whom