the far
different Fata of the Italians. But this is a question which we
willingly leave for the decision of better etymologists than ourselves.

LETTER V.

Those who dealt in fortune-telling, mystical cures by charms, and
the like, often claimed an intercourse with Fairyland--Hudhart or
Hudikin--Pitcairn's "Scottish Criminal Trials"--Story of Bessie
Dunlop and her Adviser--Her Practice of Medicine--And of Discovery
of Theft--Account of her Familiar, Thome Reid--Trial of Alison
Pearson--Account of her Familiar, William Sympson--Trial of the Lady
Fowlis, and of Hector Munro, her Stepson--Extraordinary species of
Charm used by the latter--Confession of John Stewart, a Juggler, of
his Intercourse with the Fairies--Trial and Confession of Isobel
Gowdie--Use of Elf-arrow Heads--Parish of Aberfoyle--Mr. Kirke, the
Minister of Aberfoyle's Work on Fairy Superstitions--He is himself
taken to Fairyland--Dr. Grahame's interesting Work, and his
Information on Fairy Superstitions--Story of a Female in East
Lothian carried off by the Fairies--Another instance from Pennant.

To return to Thomas the Rhymer, with an account of whose legend I
concluded last letter, it would seem that the example which it afforded
of obtaining the gift of prescience, and other supernatural powers, by
means of the fairy people, became the common apology of those who
attempted to cure diseases, to tell fortunes, to revenge injuries, or to
engage in traffic with the invisible world, for the purpose of
satisfying their own wishes, curiosity, or revenge, or those of others.
Those who practised the petty arts of deception in such mystic cases,
being naturally desirous to screen their own impostures, were willing to
be supposed to derive from the fairies, or from mortals transported to
fairyland the power necessary to effect the displays of art which they
pretended to exhibit. A confession of direct communication and league
with Satan, though the accused were too frequently compelled by torture
to admit and avow such horrors, might, the poor wretches hoped, be
avoided by the avowal of a less disgusting intercourse with sublunary
spirits, a race which might be described by negatives, being neither
angels, devils, nor the souls of deceased men; nor would it, they might
flatter themselves, be considered as any criminal alliance, that they
held communion with a race not properly hostile to man, and wi