"But aye, at ilka seven years, They pay the teind to hell; And I'm sae fat and fair of flesh, I fear 'twill be mysel'!" And so the brave Janet, actuated by that greatest of all feelings--a true woman's love--took her lover from the procession on Hallow-e'en, by "pulling him down" from the "milk-white steed" on which he rode, and holding him fast in spite of all the "horrible and awfu'" changes he underwent in her hands, discovering, when he returns to his true likeness, that he is her old boyish love, son of Randolph, Earl of Murray, whom the fairies had, years before, stolen away. There were, as in all communities, a good and a bad section, known as the "seelie" and the "unseelie court." The seelie court were kind, courteous, and charitable to the aged, the poor, and the afflicted, to whom they gave gifts suited to their necessities, as in the rhyme-- "Meddle and mell Wi' the fiends o' hell, And a weirdless wicht ye'll be; But tak' and len' Wi' the fairy men, Ye'll thrive until ye dee." The unseelie court, on the other hand, from those who offended them, stole their goods and killed their cattle by elf-shot, occasionally found on the moors or turned up in the fields now-a-days, but which science ruthlessly asserts to be the arrow-heads of our prehistoric ancestors. They entertained a particular dislike against those who wore clothing of a green colour. To this cause the Highlanders ascribed the death of Viscount Dundee at Killiecrankie. But their most wicked prank of all was the carrying away of handsome unbaptized children from the side of the lying-in mother, substituting their own loathsome and sickly progeny in their stead. To prevent this misfortune, it was customary in the Highlands to perform the Dessil--that is, carrying fire in the right hand, and in the direction from right to left, morning and evening, round the house in which lay the mother and child, until the baptism and churching had taken place. "This was," says Martin, in his "History of the West Highlands," "considered an effectual means to preserve both the mother and infant from the power of evil spirits, who are ready at such times to do mischief, and sometimes carry away the infants and return poor, meagre skeletons; and these infants have voracious appetites. In this case, it was usual for those who believed that their children were thus taken away to dig a grave in the fields on quarter-day, and there to lay the fairy skeleton till next morning, at which time the parents went to the place, where they doubted not to find their own child instead of the skeleton." They had also, in other localities, recourse to the barbarous charm of burning, with a live coal, the toes of the suffering infant, the supposed changeling. They were not content with abstracting handsome children--beautiful maidens and wives sometimes disappeared, and, of course, the fairies were the abductors. The Miller