The arrows are the ancient flint arrow-heads, which Mr. Kirk later asserts to be too delicate for human artificers. On this matter Isabel Gowdie, the witch, confessed, “As for Elf arrows, the Divell sharpes them with his ain hand, and deliveris them to Elf boys, wha whyttlis and dightis them with a sharp thing lyk a paking needle; bot whan I was in Elfland, I saw them whyttling and dighting them.” Isabel described the manner in which witches use this artillery: “We spang them from the naillis of our thoombs,” and with these she and her friends shot and slew many men and women. The confessions of Isabel Gowdie are in the third volume of Pitcairn’s _Scottish Criminal Trials_. They contain little or nothing of the “psychical;” all is mere folk-lore, fairy tales, and charms derived from the old Catholic liturgy. The poor woman, having begun to fable, fabled with manifest enjoyment and considerable power. It seems from her account that each “Covin,” or assembly of witches, had a maiden in it, and “without our maiden we could do no great thing.” On the other hand, an extraordinary case of an epileptic boy, who was hurled about, and beheld distant occurrences in trance, may be read in Chambers’s _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, iii. 449. Candles used to go out when this boy, a third son of Lord Torpichen, was in the room. The date (1720) and the place (Mid-Lothian) prevented any one from being burned for bewitching him. A fast was proclaimed. The boy recovered, and did good service in the navy. He is said to have been “levitated” frequently. _Note_ (_b_), p. 11.—“Milk thorow a hair-tedder.” Isabel Gowdie confessed to stealing milk from the cow by magic. “We plait the rope the wrong way, in the Devil’s name, and we draw the tether between the cow’s hind feet, and out betwixt her forward feet, in the Devil’s name, and thereby take with us the cow’s milk.” Mr. Kirk, it will be observed, does not connect the Fairy kingdom with that of Satan, as some of his contemporaries were inclined to do. _Note_ (_c_), p. 19.—“The Wreath (wraith) ... is only exuvious fumes of the Man, ... exhaled and congealed into a various likeness.” What is this theory of “Men illiterate and unwary in their Observations,” but Von Hartmann’s doctrine of “the nerve force which issues from the body of the medium, and then proceeds to set up fresh centres of force in all neighbouring objects ... while it still remains under the control of the medium’s unconscious will”? See Mr. Walter Leaf on Hartmann’s _Der Geisterhypothese des Spiritismus_, _Proc. S. P. R._, xix. 293. It is amusing to find a learned German coinciding in scientific theory with “ignorant and unwary” Highland seers. Both regard the phantasms as manifestations of “nerve-force,” “exuvious fumes,” and as “neither souls nor counterfeiting spirits.” _Note_ (_d_), p. 23.—“Fairy hills.”