Not far from this classic spot, a favourite haunt of the fairies is located. South of Portankill there is a small fortification called the Dunnan. On this spot there came once upon a time to a man sitting there, on a fine summer evening, an old-fashioned looking, diminutive woman dressed in green, carrying a tiny ailing child on her back, and holding a little wooden water stoup in her hand. She earnestly asked this man to go to the far-famed and quite near "Well of the Co'" and bring her some of the healing water for the decrepit little morsel she carried, as she was tired and done. Churlishly enough the man refused, and roughly told her she could go her own errands. The little woman bore his abuse patiently enough, then, naming him, solemnly warned him "never again to sit down on her hoose-riggin' or he might look to it"--and then somehow she seemed to disappear. The man began to regret his ungracious conduct, all the more that it was generally believed that beneath the "Dunnan" lived the fairies, and if that was so, then at that very moment he was actually on their "hoose-riggin'." Much disturbed in mind, he made for home; but tradition affirms that from that day forward everything went wrong--cattle died and crops failed, and eventually, going one night to the Dunnan to watch a vessel that was likely to come ashore and so help his own evil plight, he was stricken with illness at the hands of the fairies--so the country-side said--and died. There is yet another rather dramatic relic of fairy-lore concerning Kirkmaiden, which tells of an attempt by the fairies to seize upon the newly-born child of a herd and his wife, who were in the service of Sir Godfrey M'Culloch, and who lived in a little cottage at Auchneight, which was frustrated by a timely call for Divine aid. On the afternoon of the day of his son's birth the herd received an urgent message to proceed at once to his master's castle of Cardoness, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. There were many little domestic matters to attend to before the poor man could leave his wife and child to set out on his long journey, and the night was already well advanced before he left his home. It was not without anxiety and misgiving he took his way north along the western shore of Luce Bay, "down the path towards the Loup and the Co' of the Grennan," a place with a very uncanny reputation, for it was the night of the last day of October--of all times of the year the most dreaded by mortals--the night "When Fairies ... dance, Or ower the lays, with splendid blaze, On sprightly coursers prance." [Illustration: "IN FAIRY GLADE." Sketch by J. Copland, Dundrennan.]