he was seized by the fairies and carried aloft into the air. Through fields of ether and fleecy clouds he journeyed many a mile, descrying, like Sancho Panza on his clavileno, the earth far distant below him, and no bigger than a nut-shell. Being thus sufficiently convinced of the reality of their existence, they let him down at the door of his own house, where he afterwards often recited, to the wondering circle, the marvellous tale of his adventure. Some people _will_ believe that spirits of a different sort had a little to do with the worthy minister's conviction, and that his "ain gude grey mare" had more to do with bringing him to his own door than the fairies. Toshack, the last chief of clan Mackintosh, occupied a castle or keep on the margin of the river Turret, in Perthshire. He held nocturnal interviews with a fairy whom he had brought with him from abroad. The mode of his reaching the place of meeting, and the nature of his companion, were long a mystery. His wife, at length, became jealous of the frequent departures of her lord; and, being unable to discover whither he proceeded, resorted to the scheme of attaching a piece of worsted to his button. Thus guided, she followed him down a subterraneous passage under the bed of the river, where, after various windings, she discovered him in conversation with a beautiful lady. The discovery so enraged the matron that she insisted on the immediate destruction of the stranger, who fled, and the sun of Toshack set to rise no more. With all the passions and wants of human beings, fairies are represented as great lovers of cleanliness and propriety, for the observance of which they were said frequently to reward good servants by dropping money into their shoes; and, on the other hand, punishing the sluts and slovenly by pinching them black and blue-- "There is Mab, the mistress fairy, That doth nightly rob the dairy, And can help or hurt the churning As she please, without discerning; She that pinches country wenches If they rub not clean their benches, And with sharper nails remembers When they rake not up their embers; But if so they chance to feast her, In their shoe she drops a tester; This is she that empties cradles, Takes out children, puts in ladles, Trains forth midwives in their slumber, With a sieve the holes to number, And then leads them from their boroughs Thorough ponds and water furrows."