Nor was this belief held by the uneducated alone; many who moved in respectable situations in society were infected by it; and otherwise sensible and well-informed people on this head were deaf to the voice of reason and the dictates of common sense, and would as soon doubt the truth of Holy Writ as the existence of supernatural agency; and so interwoven was the superstition in the social system, that no event could happen poor mortality from the cradle to the grave, in which the _good people_ were not implicated for good or evil. Did the head or a member of a leading family die, the wail of the banshee was sure to be heard in the twilight. Was a favourite child smitten with disease, the beautiful, the beloved one was believed to be changed for a squalling, ravenous, and decrepid starveling. Did your cattle pine, or was your dairy not productive, your cows were either elf-shot or bewitched. Was the wife of your bosom snatched away in her bloom, in the most interesting though dangerous moment of her existence, the fairies were whispered to be the authors of your misfortune--to have spirited her off, and to have left in her stead a wooden substitute. Well do I remember the thrill of fear, mingled with a degree of pleasurable awe, with which I listened some forty years since to the narratives of a venerable aunt, who was lingering out the evening of her existence at my father’s fireside--her only occupation being, rocking the cradle and keeping the youngsters from mottling their shins. She was an experienced dame, and withal pious, but would as soon doubt her own identity as that of witches and fairies, and her memory was well stored with instances of their interference. These I then believed most implicitly, particularly as in many of them “the family” was concerned. She could relate how her grandfather one morning detected a hare in the act of milking one of his cows, which he fired at and wounded, and on tracking the blood, discovered it to flow from the thigh of an old crone who inhabited a neighbouring hovel. She also could tell how an elder brother had surprised a leprahaun in the act of making shoes for the gentle people--could describe his dress minutely, and how he had escaped captivity by making a feint with his awl at my uncle’s eye, and causing him to wink when in the very act of seizing him, and thereby marred his fortune. She also knew a child which was taken from its mother’s arms at night, but luckily was missed before he could be conveyed through the key-hole, and on the outcry of the bereaved parent, was dropped “with a whack” on the floor uninjured. It never occurred to her that probably the child had rolled out of the bed accidentally. There was another tale often related by her, which it would be worse than heresy to doubt, as she knew the parties intimately.