. Charms, however, against spiritual enemies, were yet
more common than those intended to cure corporeal complaints. This
is not surprising, as a fantastic remedy well suited an imaginary
disease.

[Footnote 48: This small church is founded upon a little hill of sand,
in which no stone of the size of an egg is said to have been found,
although the neighbouring soil is sharp and gravelly. Tradition
accounts for this, by informing us, that the foundresses were two
sisters, upon whose account much blood had been spilt in that spot;
and that the penance, imposed on the fair causers of the slaughter,
was an order from the pope to sift the sand of the hill, upon which
their church was to be erected. This story may, perhaps, have some
foundation; for, in the church-yard was discovered a single grave,
containing no fewer than fifty skulls, most of which bore the marks of
having been cleft by violence.]

[Footnote 49: An epithet bestowed upon the borderers, from the names
of their various districts; as Tiviotdale, Liddesdale, Eskdale,
Ewsdale, Annandale, &c. Hence, an old ballad distinguishes the north
as the country,

"Where every river gives name to a dale,"

_Ex-ale-tation of Ale_.]

[Footnote 50: Among these may be reckoned the supposed influence
of Irish earth, in curing the poison of adders, or other venomous
reptiles.--This virtue is extended by popular credulity to the
natives, and even to the animals, of Hibernia. A gentleman, bitten by
some reptile, so as to occasion a great swelling, seriously assured
the editor, that he ascribed his cure to putting the affected finger
into the mouth of an Irish mare!]

There were, upon the borders, many consecrated wells, for resorting
to which the people's credulity is severely censured, by a worthy
physician of the seventeenth century; who himself believed in a
shower of living herrings having fallen near Dumfries. "Many run
superstitiously to other wells, and there obtain, as they imagine,
health and advantage; and there they offer bread and cheese, or money,
by throwing them into the well." In another part of the MS. occurs the
following passage. "In the bounds of the lands of Eccles, belonging to
a lyneage of the name of Maitland, there is a loch called the Dowloch,
of old resorted to with much superstition, as medicinal both for men
and beasts, and that with such ceremonies, as are _shrewdly_ suspected
to have been begun with witchcraft, and increased afterward by mag