Before passing from this district of the Rhinns, reference may be made to what was firmly believed to be the kidnapping by fairies of a little boy of two years of age. The child wandered out unperceived by its mother. On being missed, an anxious search was made during the whole day by almost every person in the neighbourhood, but no trace of the child could be found. Late in the evening, however, from the top of the heugh, beside Slock-an-a-gowre, he was discovered, by the merest accident, asleep on a green plot on the cliff far below, fully two miles from his home. How he got there to this day is a mystery. To assume that any person carried or left him there seems highly improbable, and to suppose the child to have of itself crossed dykes, drains, glens, and cornfields seems even more improbable. It was therefore attributed to the fairies, all the more that the little boy lisped that he had followed other little boys wearing green clothes.[20] Away midst the solitary grandeur of the high lands of Galloway, where the Merrick lordly towers, and where the bleat of the sheep and the cry of the whaup, the tumble and plash of burn and stream, are the only sounds that greet the shepherd's ear as he pursues his long and lonely beat, a beautiful fairy legend lingers, though human and homely enough in its trend:-- "A shepherd's family had just taken possession of a newly-erected onstead, in a very secluded spot among 'the hills o' Gallowa',' when the goodwife was, one day, surprised by the entrance of a little woman, who hurriedly asked for the loan of a 'pickle saut.' This, of course, was readily granted; but the goodwife was so flurried by the appearance of 'a neibor' in such a lonely place, and at such a very great distance from all known habitations, that she did not observe when the little woman withdrew or which way she went. Next day, however, the same little woman re-entered the cottage, and duly paid the borrowed 'saut.' This time the goodwife was more alert, and as she turned to replace 'the saut in the sautkit' she observed 'wi' the tail o' her e'e' that the little woman moved off towards the door, and then made a sudden 'bolt out.' Following quickly, the goodwife saw her unceremonious visitor run down a small declivity towards a tree which stood at 'the house en'.' She passed behind the tree, but did not emerge on the other side, and the goodwife, seeing no place of concealment, assumed she was a fairy. In a few days her little 'neibor' again returned, and continued from time to time to make similar visits--borrowing and lending small articles, evidently with a view to produce an intimacy; and it was uniformly remarked that, on retiring, she proceeded straight to the tree, and then suddenly 'gaed out o' sight.' One day, while the goodwife was at the door, emptying some dirty water into the jaw-hole (sink or cesspool), her now familiar acquaintance came to her and said: