In most cases it is not wise or safe to give entertainment to these wanderers of the night, whether they come in fair shape or in foul. They are apt to prove to be of the race of the _succubi_, from whom a kiss means death or worse. More than one of our Scottish ballads are reminiscent of the beautiful old Breton lay, _The Lord Nann_, so admirably translated by Tom Taylor, wherein the young husband, stricken to the heart by the baleful kiss given to him against his will by a wood-nymph, goes home to die, and his fair young wife follows him fast to the grave. _Alison Gross_ is another of those Circes who, by incantation of horn and wand, seek to lower the shape and nature of her lovers to those of the beasts that crawl on their bellies. Sometimes the tempter is of the other sex. Thus _The Demon Lover_ is a tale known in several versions in Scotland, and lately brought under notice by Mr. Hall Caine in its Manx form. The frail lady is enticed from her home, and induced to put foot on board the mysterious ship by an appeal, a pathetic echo of which has lingered on in later poetry, and has been quoted as the very dirge of the Lost Cause: 'He turned him right and round about, And the tear blindit his e'e; "I would never have trodden on Irish ground If it hadna been for thee."' They have not sailed far, when his countenance changes, and he grows to a monstrous stature; the foul fiend is revealed. They are bound on a drearier voyage than that of True Thomas--to a Hades of ice and isolation that bespeaks the northern origin of the tale: '"O whaten a mountain 's yon," she said, "So dreary wi' frost and snow?" "O yon 's the mountain of hell," he cried, "Where you and I must go." He strack the tapmast wi' his hand, The foremast wi' his knee; And he brake the gallant ship in twain And sank her in the sea.' Other spells and charms not a few, for the winning of love and the slaking of revenge, are known to the old balladists. We hear of the compelling or sundering power of the bright red gold and the cold steel. Lovers at parting exchange rings, as in _Hynd Horn_, gifted with the property of revealing death or faithlessness: 'When your ring turns pale and wan, Then I 'm in love wi' another man.'