But, independent of these numerous occasional residences of the fairy tribe, a firm belief in the existence of a fixed court, or _Elf-land_ peculiarly so denominated, as the centre of their empire and the abode of their Queen, was so prevalent in Scotland, during the sixteenth century, as to have been acted upon in a court of justice. A woman named _Alison Pearson_ having been convicted, on the 28th of May, 1586, of holding intercourse with and visiting the Queen of Elf-land; "for hanting and repairing," says the indictment, "with the gude neighbours, and Queene of Elfland, thir divers years by past, as she had confest; and that she had friends in that court, which were of her own blude, who had gude acquaintance of the Queene of Elfland,—and that she was seven years ill handled in the Court of Elfland[319:A]," and for this notable crime was the poor creature burnt to death! When such was the credulity of a bench of judges, we need not wonder that Fairy Land had become a professed article of the poetical creed, and that Lindsay in 1560, and Montgomery in 1584, should allude to it as a subject of admitted notoriety: thus the former, in his _Complaynt of the Papingo_, says "Bot sen my spreit mon from my bodye go, I recommend it to the Quene of Fary, Eternally into her court to tarry In wilderness amang the holtis hair;"[319:B] and the latter, in his _Flyting against Polwart_, speaking of Hallow'een, tells us, that "The king of Pharie and his court, with the elf queen, With many elfish incubus was ridand that night."[319:C] According to the _Tale of the Young Tamlane_, a poem in its original state coeval with the _Complaynt of Scotland_, and on the authority of the _Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer_, said also to be of considerable antiquity[319:D], Elf-land is represented as a terrestrial paradise, the opening of the road to which was in the desert "Where living land was left behind;" it is described as a "bonny road" "that winds about the fernie brae," but the roaring of the sea is heard in the descent, and at length the traveller wades knee-deep through rivers of blood, "For a' the blude that's shed on earth, Rins thro' the springs o' that countrie;"[320:A] yet, when arrived, the land is full of pleasantness, a garden of the loveliest green, self-illumined, and whose halls have roofs of beaten gold, and floors of purest chrystal.[320:B] In conformity to these Scottish traditionary features of Fairy-land, and in reference to the popular tale of Thomas the Rhymer, who, daring to salute the Fairy Queen, was carried off in early life to this region of enchantment, and there broke the vow of silence enjoined on all who entered its precincts[320:C], Dr. Leyden has executed the following glowing picture:—