By some spell this fairy queen made Thomas her slave. She became changed into a hideous hag, yet he was compelled to follow her. They entered a cavern, and after wading through pools of blood, in pitchy darkness for three days, they reached a beautiful orchard, where the lady resumed her former dignity and stateliness. She took him to a gorgeous castle, where he joined with lords, and knights, and ladies in dancing to the most exquisite music. At the end of what he thought a short time, the queen told him that he had been seven years in the castle, and that he might return home. On parting, she gifted him “with a tongue that could never lie”. There are numberless such fairy legends, but one is enough for a specimen. Some of the poor creatures arraigned in Scotland for witchcraft admitted having had correspondence with the fairies. The trials of Bessie Dunlop in 1576, and of Alison Pearson in 1588, illustrate this statement. Bessie Dunlop avowed that the ghost of one Thomas Reid appeared to her—a soldier slain at Pinkie in 1547—that he took her to fairyland, and introduced her to the queen. Alison Pearson also admitted her familiarity with the fairies, from whom she had received herbs for the cure of diseases. It is remarkable that Patrick Adamson, an able scholar and divine, who was created Archbishop of St. Andrews by James VI., actually took the medicines prescribed by this poor woman, in the hope that they would transfer an illness with which he was seized to the body of one of his horses. These poor women were both convicted, and both were put to death at the stake. No doubt there are some in the Highlands and Islands who still believe in the existence of the fairy race. The “sithiche,” or fairy, is the most active sprite in Highland mythology. It is a dexterous child-stealer, and must be carefully guarded against. At birth many covert and cunning ceremonies are still used to baffle the fairy’s power, otherwise the new-born child would be taken off to fairyland, and a withered, little, living skeleton of a child laid in its stead. If offended, they are wantonly mischievous, and hurt severely, and perhaps kill with their arrows, such as annoy them. These arrows are of stone, like a yellow flint, and shaped like a barbed arrow-head. They are called “saighdean sithe,” or fairy arrows. These arrow-heads must have been extensively used in their warfare by the aboriginal people of the Isles (and not, of course, by the fairies), as they are still picked up here and there in the fields, and are all much of the same size and shape. In Skye, and in the Hebrides in general, the fairies dwelt in green knolls or hillocks, called “sitheanan,” and there is hardly a parish or district which has not its “sithean,” or fairy-hill. I knew an old man in Skye who died about thirty years ago, at the age of about 100, whose name was Farquhar Beaton. He so firmly believed in fairies and other superstitions that in his “grace before meat” he prayed thus:—