air by the invisible beings
who strove to carry him off. Only he did not bear witness to the passage
which seems to call the purchase of cards an unlawful errand.[25]

[Footnote 25: "Sadducismus Triumphatus," by Joseph Glanville, p. 131.
Edinburgh, 1790.]

Individuals, whose lives had been engaged in intrigues of politics or
stratagems of war, were sometimes surreptitiously carried off to
Fairyland; as Alison Pearson, the sorceress who cured Archbishop
Adamson, averred that she had recognised in the Fairy court the
celebrated Secretary Lethington and the old Knight of Buccleuch, the one
of whom had been the most busy politician, the other one of the most
unwearied partisans of Queen Mary, during the reign of that unfortunate
queen. Upon the whole, persons carried off by sudden death were usually
suspected of having fallen into the hands of the fairies, and unless
redeemed from their power, which it was not always safe to attempt, were
doomed to conclude their lives with them. We must not omit to state that
those who had an intimate communication with these spirits, while they
were yet inhabitants of middle earth, were most apt to be seized upon
and carried off to Elfland before their death.

The reason assigned for this kidnapping of the human race, so peculiar
to the elfin people, is said to be that they were under a necessity of
paying to the infernal regions a yearly tribute out of their population,
which they were willing to defray by delivering up to the prince of
these regions the children of the human race, rather than their own.
From this it must be inferred, that they have offspring among
themselves, as it is said by some authorities, and particularly by Mr.
Kirke, the minister of Aberfoyle. He indeed adds that, after a certain
length of life, these spirits are subject to the universal lot of
mortality--a position, however, which has been controverted, and is
scarcely reconcilable to that which holds them amenable to pay a tax to
hell, which infers existence as eternal as the fire which is not
quenched. The opinions on the subject of the fairy people here
expressed, are such as are entertained in the Highlands and some remote
quarters of the Lowlands of Scotland. We know, from the lively and
entertaining legends published by Mr. Crofton Croker--which, though in
most cases told with the wit of the editor and the humour of his
country, contain points of curious antiquarian information--that the
opinions of the