Blethering Skite

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Hallowe’en

The Fairies were not contented with abstracting handsome children – beautiful maidens and wives sometimes disappeared. 

“The Miller of Menstrie,” in Clackmannan, who possessed a charming spouse, had given offence to the fairy court, and was, in consequence, deprived of his fair helpmate. His distress was aggravated by hearing his wife singing in the air – 

Oh! Alva woods are bonnie, 

Tillicoultry hills are fair; 

But when I think o’ the bonnie braes o’ Menstrie, 

It mak’s my heart aye sair. 

After many attempts to procure her restoration, the miller chanced one day, in riddling some stuff at the mill-door, to use a posture of enchantment, when the spell was dissolved, and the matron fell into his arms. The wife of the Blacksmith of Tullibody was carried up the chimney, the fairies, as they bore her off, singing – 

Deidle linkum doddie; 

We’ve gotten drucken Davie’s wife, 

The smith o’ Tullibody. 

“Those snatched to Fairyland,” says Dr Buchan, “might be recovered within a year and a day, but the spell for the recovery was only potent when the fairies made, on Hallowe’en, their annual procession.”