corn grows and water runs she's there for nae good to us." And they both made a full halt,-gazed as if they would gaze through the rocky side of the glen, nor was it Superstition's fear, that artist of wonderful forms, which was at work to dismay them.

I have, when a boy, drunk water out of the well of this Galwegian saint, which spouts up through a little trough of stone in the glen of Croga. Virtues are imputed to it by the old people; and those whom it frees from sickness or pain leave a small offering at its brink-at the time I saw it two pieces of ribbon and a ring were tied to a branch of holly, which partly shaded it, and a piece of old silver, the coin of one of the earlier Scottish kings, lay shining at the bottom, -the offering of a mother for the health of her child. At the side of this well the miller and his companion saw a woman seated with a child in her bosom, -a fair young woman from a distant place. She seemed unconscious or careless of the presence of strangers, and gazed alone at the moon, with its red edge resting on the hill, and at the stars shining in multitudes above her, and at the little well sending forth its silver thread of water among the grass at her feet. She took from her bosom a token of silver, and dropt it into the well, and in

a low voice began to chaunt, like one singing to soothe a child, the following verses. It is true that but a few scattered words of this mystic lyric survived in the memories of the two listeners, and that, after the lapse of years, the measure of the melody, and the original strain of sentiment, had alone been secured from oblivion. But dismembered and imperfect as it was, I recited it to one of the peasant poets of the district, who assured me it was a genuine antique, modified by some gifted person to suit the circumstances under which the young woman sung it, a kind of change, he observed, which many of our national and domestic lyrics had undergone; and with that tenderness and regard which one man of genius feels for the suffering labours of another, he filled up the gaps which former forgetfulness had made. For this he made something of an apology,-saying, the rudeness of his own interpolations would soon be singled out by the critical sagacity of the age, modern dross was easily distinguished from antique gold; but he had a pleasure of his own in ekeing out the ancient mutilated-melodies of his country, and he cared little for the opinion of those " chippers and hewers," the men who sold their judgment to the public either monthly or quarterly. But for the song.

may be a fairy mother come to wash her imp in the blessed well, so that it may seem every seventh day a douce Christian. Od, I have heard of such things, and it would nae be an unwise thing to ride back to the Manse, and have the minister's opinion. "Whisht, man, whisht," said Barbara, "the young woman has bathed her child; she is now wrapping it up, and see, she comes down the bank:-Hame shall she come with me, for she is a stranger in a strange land, and carries a fatherless babe in her bosom, and that's both right and reason why she should come to the house of Elfknowe." The young woman spoke as she approached. "A pleasant way and welcome at hame to ye baith, and the good wishes of a stranger go with you. I have come from the Solway shore to bathe the babe of my bosom in Saint Dervorgoil's blessed well;-thrice have I come at the full hour of the moon, and the babe is recovering even as a parched flower when the summer rain comes. Sore was it faded, and had ceased to leap in my arms and smile in my face;-but look at the sweet wee innocent now; it has light in its eyes, and life on its brow, and the bloom has come back to its cheek-my blessing upon the blessed well of Croga." And removing the mantle from the face of her child, she held it up amid the light of the departing moon, and smiled.

O woman," said Barbara, "ye are a kind mother, but a wondrous idolater, a worshipper of wells and springs, and times of the moon, and set and appointed places. And yet ye have many a douce body's judgment to countenance ye in your belief in old influences. I had a brother myself who fell asleep once in the Fairy-Ring of Croga, and when he awoke, his bloom had faded, and his strength was nigh gone, and for many a blessed hour he went twofold over a staff. Now my father was an elder of God's kirk, and mickle he prayed for the bairn's health, but health came not, and my mother stole him out, and dipt him thrice in the blessed well of Croga, and he grew a stalwart man, and went to a ripe grave in his grey hairs. So as the night's cold, and the way long, had ye no better come with me to Elfknowe, and stay till JUNE, 1828.

the sun shines?" "Alas! no, goodwife," said the sailor's spouse, " for I maun be on the shore of Solway at the first come of the tide, and all to dip my bairn in the increasing waters. There's a charm in the full moontide; and it's sweet to hear it sughing and singing among the shells and pebbles; away maun I gang, and I am o'er long here." "Woman, woman," said the dame of Elfknowe, "thou wilt slay the child with spells, and take away its sweet life with charms but go thy ways, for a mother who wishes weel to her babe is a wilful creature, go thy ways:" and the woman and her child were soon lost among the woods of Croga. Miller Milroy and his companion moved quietly homewards along the bank of the water, till they came near the mill, on the dusty summit of which the moon threw a level and a parting beam. The miller rode foremost, he passed the shellen-hill, where several worn-out barley millstones and fragments of old machinery lay strewn about, and when he came between the mill-dam and the door he made a full halt, raised the broad blue bonnet from his brow, muttered a hasty prayer, and said; "God have his hands about us! saw ever man such a sight? there, the Elfin Miller of Croga has loosed my dam, and flooded the wheel;-hear ye nae how the wheels and stones dunner and shake? - Alas! there will be a fairy curse pronounced on hopper and sieve, and what will come of my merry mill and my deep milldam?" He wrung his hands in agony.

Now the dame of Elfknowe drew up her horse close to that of the miller, held her hand before her eyes to concentrate her powers of vision, laid back the remainder locks from her ears, to let all sounds have free access, and gazed with an earnest eye on the mill and the mill-dam, and said, May the powers aboon open my sight that I may see all these marvels;-nor elf nor fairy see I. There stands the dusty mill with the door closed, -the milldam flowing o'er, the outer wheel standing still, and nought hear I save the drop and dribble of the trows, and nought see I save five ducks sleeping with their heads aneath their wings. Preserve me, miller, are ye sure ye're no win

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nelskewed?" "Winnelskewed!" reechoed the miller; "I would give my barley millstones for a pair of quairns to think that my een wrong-: ed the scene before me. Round dunner the wheels, the dust flies out from the wicket, the lights stream from door and window;-see ye nae that long gleam of blue will-o'-wisp light quivering as far as our horses' feet? and there's the clap clattering as audible as a woman's tongue when the brandy flows free at the gossipings. Deil mend your een, d'ye no see the diminished dam?" "Nothing of all you have named see I," said the dame of Elfknowe, and another earnest and considerate look took she.

The miller laid his chin close to the horse's mane, motioned with his forefinger to his companion, and nodded as if he had got something particularly curious to say. "Goodwife," said the hero of the sieve and hopper, "I can read this fairy riddle now. Ye maun ken, lass, that dues are paid to the folk of Elfland just the same as multure is paid to a miller, or kain to the laird of the ground. To them belong all the o'er-ripened grain which is shaken before the sickle cuts it, all the leamed nuts which drop out of the husks with ripeness and all the wild apples, and all the honeycombs of the wild heath bees, and many more perquisites which ye would laugh to hear named. Now at or about this time of the year, the elves gather in all the shed grain, which they call 'crop of the mools,' and carry it to some noted mill to grind it into elvemeal; and this is the very work they are this night about. They are a conscientious race, and will leave me the mill dues in the lewder, so let us pass away home in quietness and in peace."

"All this is mere moonshine in the mill-dam, like your golden palace," said Barbara, who mustered up all her superstitious faculties in vain, to make something of the miller's vision. "Behold your outer wheel, it's as dry on its axle as ye're in the saddle; and as for the mill, it's as dark as the grave, and as silent as Glencairn kirk." "Nay, but woman," said the miller, rubbing his elbow, and puckering his face like an ill-tied sack-mouth with sheer vexa

tion, "Will ye no be convinced? D'ye no see that faint stream of light glimmering out at the door?" She shook her head. "And d'ye no see that little brown elf tasting the new meal in the hollow of his hand?-he's nae longer than a new born bairn, and as white with meal as a bootingbag,-he's the Elfin Miller doubtless." She looked as if she would look through the mill door, and sighed to think the mysteries of Elfland were hidden from her sight. "Аweel," continued the miller, " and there can be no doubt that ye see the new warm meal gushing like snow from the mill-ee, and three elves, no longer than ane's leg, all sifting like distraction. Lord! woman, but they are the queerest wee bodies I ever saw,-see, see, some half a score of them are fluttering like gray moorcocks in the middle of that long stream of elfin light which comes glancing out so gaily. O for drunken Frank Farish here, with his gun loaded with silver sixpences, that he might have a shot at these bastard imps begotten between grace and perdition."

"Whisht ye, fool man," said Barbara; speak lowne, ye profane body, speak lowne. If the race be there ye describe, ye may as well shoot at a sunbeam with the hope of putting out day-light, as bend a gun against them." "If there be aught there!" said the miller, incensed at having his accuracy of sight questioned; " Lord! woman, the elves are sporting on my mill floor as thick as motes in the summer sunbeam,as thrang as shellen seeds in the west wind,-as plentiful as mill dust when I grind by candle light. But bide ye a bit,-ye shall speedily be sensible of their presence by the ear, since ye will not by the eye, there's a fairy film drawn over your eyes, so that they can see nought less gross than mere mortality. Lend your ears now." And Barbara bent forwardwith her hand held up, and her lips apart;-the stirring of a grasshopper would not have escaped her. The miller went on. "Now look at yon queer, wee, out-of-the-world elf, that sits nae bigger than a cock partridge on one of the sack-heads; it has got a bog reed in its hand, and meikle mirth it will make wi' it. And then see yon wee elf dancing about like a

leaf in an eddy:-it has got a long paddock-pipe in its hand, and it moves it round and round like an unskilful fifer seeking a hole to blow music out of. But most of all see the miller elf himsel; he has got a flute of hollow hemlock, and he sits on the rim of the mill sieve; Lord! goodwife, we'll have rare music belyve. Hearken now. There they begin deil split my hopper into brimstone spunks, if that's no the queerest thing I ever saw or heard. I ken the tune; the Miller and his Multure' is but chaff to corn compared with it;-how can ane's heels hold from dancing when we hearken it ?-this surpasses all.” And having stopt a second or two to give breathing for fresh enthusiasm, he exclaim ed, "Hearken ;-there's a sang too, -and such a sang ;-hear how the rooftree rings with it;-d'ye hear it distinctly now?-I'll answer for't, ye may hear it on the top of Crogahill. The elf who made it has been a miller himself, for the verses have all the harmony of well hung machinery, well laid-on water, and well geared millstones; the music of mere men's tongues is but an auld wife's cough compared with it ;-I ken the the sang every word."

Barbara looked east and looked west, and, like the shepherd in the old ballad, she gave an under look, and in a tone between resignation and sorrow said," Aweel, ye see what I cannot see, and ye hear what I cannot hear; and since all sense of

spiritual presence is denied me, even let me hear ye repeat this same song, which ye heard sung by the elfin miller. I'll warrant it will give ye some new light anent increase of multure. This will be a brave sang to sing when ye tell the tale of the palace of burning gold, ye ken."

With much earnestness, and with no subdued voice, did the miller of Croga chaunt in the marvelling ears of his companion the song of his elfin associate in the labours of the mill. Of this curious and genuine fairy lyric, it was the unhoped-for good fortune of him who seeks to revive for a few brief days the story of the Elves of Croga, to obtain a copy, and that too from a descendant of the miller himself, even Reuben Milroy. That it has escaped the research of our ballad antiquaries, and eluded association with music and ten thousand thousand accompaniments for all manner of instruments, must be imputed to its intense locality, and to Croga being an unrifled nook, into which those gentlemen who describe all the milestones and molehills in the country had failed to penetrate. To such associations I deliver it up now; and as the lyric itself is of an original character, and altogether unlike any of the gentle songs which flutter in the world, I have some hope that the name of the old minstrel will be discovered; so that Galloway may have to boast of another bard whose fame rests upon a single song.