"Each one that sent sheep to this common had to offer in sacrifice, to the spirit of the loch, the first lamb of his flock dropped on the common. The omission of this sacrifice brought disaster; for unless the sacrifice was made, half of his flock would be drowned before the end of the grazing season." As in the case of Lochan-nan-Deaan, an attempt was made to break the spell by draining the loch, but this attempt, though less tragic in its result, was equally unavailing. On three successive days a channel was made for the outflow of the water, but each night the work was undone. A watch was set, and at midnight of the third day hundreds of small black creatures were seen to rise from the lake, each with a spade in his hand. They set about filling up the trench and finished their work in a few minutes. Mr. Charles Hardwick, in "Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore," published in 1872, tells of a folk-belief, prevalent in the North of England, particularly in Lancashire. "I remember well," he says, "when very young, being cautioned against approaching to the side of stagnant pools of water partially covered with vegetation. At the time, I firmly believed that if I disobeyed this instruction a certain water 'boggart,' named Jenny Greenteeth, would drag me beneath her verdant screen and subject me to other tortures besides death by drowning." Poetry and superstition regard external nature from the same standpoint, in as much as both think of it as animate. But there is a difference. The one endows nature with human qualities, and knows that it does so through the imagination; the other does the same, and believes that there is no imagination in the matter. The work of the former is well expressed by Dr. E. B. Tylor, when he observes, "In all that water does, the poet's fancy can discern its personality of life. It gives fish to the fisher and crops to the husbandman, it swells in fury and lays waste the land, it grips the bather with chill and cramp and holds with inexorable grasp its drowning victim." That rivers were monsters hungering, or perhaps, one should say, thirsting, for human victims is a fact borne witness to by poetry as well as by superstition. An example of this occurs in the following popular rhyme connected with the Scottish Border:-- "Tweed said to Till, 'What gars ye rin sae still'? Till said to Tweed, 'Though ye rin wi' speed, An' I rin slaw, Yet whare ye droon ae man, I droon twa.'" Some Aberdeenshire lines have the same theme:-- "Bloodthirsty Dee Each year needs three; But bonny Don, She needs none."