she refused, he shook his head, and said she would repent it.

If the delicacy of the reader's imagination be a little hurt at
imagining the elegant Titania in the disguise of a _stout_ woman, a
heavy burden for a clumsy bench, drinking what Christopher Sly would
have called very sufficient small-beer with a peasant's wife, the
following description of the fairy host may come more near the idea he
has formed of that invisible company:--Bessie Dunlop declared that as
she went to tether her nag by the side of Restalrig Loch (Lochend, near
the eastern port of Edinburgh), she heard a tremendous sound of a body
of riders rushing past her with such a noise as if heaven and earth
would come together; that the sound swept past her and seemed to rush
into the lake with a hideous rumbling noise. All this while she saw
nothing; but Thome Reid showed her that the noise was occasioned by the
wights, who were performing one of their cavalcades upon earth.

The intervention of Thome Reid as a partner in her trade of petty
sorcery did not avail poor Bessie Dunlop, although his affection to her
was apparently entirely platonic--the greatest familiarity on which he
ventured was taking hold of her gown as he pressed her to go with him to
Elfland. Neither did it avail her that the petty sorcery which she
practised was directed to venial or even beneficial purposes. The sad
words on the margin of the record, "Convict and burnt," sufficiently
express the tragic conclusion of a curious tale.

Alison Pearson, in Byrehill, was, 28th May, 1588, tried for invocation
of the spirits of the devil, specially in the vision of one Mr. William
Sympson, her cousin and her mother's brother's son, who she affirmed was
a great scholar and doctor of medicine, dealing with charms and abusing
the ignorant people. Against this poor woman her own confession, as in
the case of Bessie Dunlop, was the principal evidence.

As Bessie Dunlop had Thome Reid, Alison Pearson had also a familiar in
the court of Elfland. This was her relative, William Sympson aforesaid,
born in Stirling, whose father was king's smith in that town. William
had been taken away, she said, by a man of Egypt (a Gipsy), who carried
him to Egypt along with him; that he remained there twelve years, and
that his father died in the meantime for opening a priest's book and
looking upon it. She declared that she had renewed her acquaintance with
her kinsman so soon as he returned. She further confe