Much has been written on the subject of the Devil and his influence in religion, mythology, superstition, and literature, as well as on topographical features. The subject is discussed from a historical point of view in the learned volumes of Professor Roskoff of Vienna; but there is probably still room for a dissertation on the part which the Devil has played in colouring the national imagination of Scotland. As is well known, all over the country instances may be found where remarkable natural features are assigned to his handiwork. Thus we have ‘Devil’s punchbowls’ among the hills and ‘Devil’s cauldrons’ in the river-channels. Perched boulders are known as ‘Deil’s putting stanes,’ and natural heaps and hummocks of sand or gravel have been regarded as ‘Deil’s spadefuls.’ Even among the smaller objects of nature a connection with the enemy of mankind has suggested itself to the popular mind. The common puff-ball is known as the ‘Deil’s snuff-box’; some of the broad-leaved water-plants have been named ‘Deil’s spoons’; the dragonfly is the ‘Deil’s darning-needle.’ Then the unlucky number thirteen has been stigmatised as the ‘Deil’s dozen,’ and a perverse unmanageable person as a ‘Deil’s buckie.’ In association with witches and warlocks Satan plays a leading part in the legends, myths, and superstitions of the country. The general popular estimation of him in Scotland has never been so admirably expressed in words as by Burns, more particularly in his _Address to the Deil_. But even in his day ocular proofs of the evil spirit’s presence and activity were becoming scanty, and the poet had to rely partly on the testimony of his ‘rev’rend grannie.’ In the interval since that poem was written, now nearly a century and a quarter ago, the belief in a personal devil, ready to present himself as a hairy monster with a tail, cloven feet, and horns--‘Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie’--has still further faded. The late Dr. Sloan of Ayr, however, told me that in the year 1835, after he came out from making the post-mortem examination of a poor miner who was taken out alive from a coal-pit near the village of Dailly, after having been shut up for three weeks without food, but who died three days after his rescue, he was accosted by some of the older miners with the question, ‘Did ye fin’ his feet?’ The doctor had to confess that he had not specially looked at the man’s feet, whereat the miners went off with a knowing expression on their faces, as much as to say, ‘We thought you had not, for if you had, you would have found them to be cloven hoofs. We believe that the body was not that of our John Brown, but the Devil himself, who had come for some bad purpose of his own.’ [Sidenote: BELIEF IN THE DEIL]