not travel beyond
its own sphere of knowledge, and that even hallucinations are bounded by
experience, and clairvoyance by the past actual vision.

Then Isobell went to the Downie Hills, to see the gude wichtis who had
wrought Bessie Dunlop and Alesoun Peirsoun such sad mishap. The hill side
opened and she went in. Here she got meat more than she could eat, which
was a rare thing for her to do in those days, and seemed to her one of the
most noticeable things of the visit. The Queen of Faerie was bravely
clothed in white linen, and white and brown clothes, but she was nothing
like the glorious creature who bewitched Thomas of Ercildoun with her
winsom looks and golden hair; and the king was a braw man, well favoured
and broad faced; just an ordinary man and woman of the better classes,
buxom, brave, and comely, as Isobell Gowdie and her like would naturally
take to be the ultimate perfection of humanity. But it was not all
sunshine and delight even in the hill of Faerie, for there were "elf
bullis rowting and skoylling" up and down, which frightened poor Isobell,
as well as her auditory: for here she was interrupted and bidden on
another track. She then went on to say that when they took away any cow's
milk they did so by twining and platting a rope the wrong way and in the
devil's name, drawing the tether in between the cow's hinder feet, and out
between her fore feet. The only way to get back the milk was to cut the
rope. When they took away the strength of any one's ale in favour of
themselves or others, they used to take a little quantity out of each
barrel, in the devil's name (they never forgot this formula), and then put
it into the ale they wished to strengthen; and no one had power to keep
their ale from them, save those who had well sanctified the brewing. Also
she and others made a clay picture of a little child, which was to
represent all the male children of the Laird of Parkis. John Taylor
brought home the clay in his "plaid newk" (corner), his wife brake it very
small like meal, and sifted it, and poured water in among it in the
devil's name, and worked it about like rye porridge ("vrought it werie
sore, lyk rye-bowt") and made it into a picture of the Laird of Parkis'
son. "It haid all the pairtis and merkis of a child, such as heid, eyes,
nose, handis, foot, mowth, and little lippes. It wanted no mark of a
child; and the handis of it folded down by its sydes." This precious
image, which was like a lump o