Letters on demonology and witchcraft. Addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq / by Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
- Walter Scott
- Date:
- 1831
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Letters on demonology and witchcraft. Addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq / by Sir Walter Scott, Bart. Source: Wellcome Collection.
192/428
![The advice was taken, and the pei’plexed widower liad no more visitations from his former spouse. An instance, perhaps the latest wliich has been made public, of communication with the Restless People—(a more proper epithet than that of Daoine Shi, or Men of Peace, as they are called in Gaelic) —came under Pennant’s notice, so late as during that observant traveller’s tour in 1769. Being per- haps the latest news from the invisible common- wealth, we give the tomdst’s OAvn words. “ A poor visionary who had been working in his cabbage garden, (in Breadalbane,) imagined that he was mised suddenly up into the air, and conveyed over a wall into an adjacent cornfield ; that he found himself surrounded by a crowd of men and women, many of whom he knew to have been dead for some years, and who ajjpeared to him skimming over the tops of the unbending corn, and mingling together like bees going to hive ; that they spoke an unknown language, and with a hollow sound ; that they very roughly pushed him to and fro, but on his uttering the name of God, all vanished but a female sprite, who, seizing him by the shoulder, obliged him to promise an assignation, at that very hour that day seven-night; that he then found his hair was all tied in double knots, (well known by the name of elf-locks,) and that he had almost lost his s])eech ; that he kejit his word with the spectre, whom he soon saw^ floating through the air towards him; that he spoke to her, but she told him she was at that time in too much haste to attend to him, but bid him go away and no harm should befall him, and so the affair rested wdien I left the country. But it is incredible the mischief these a>gri somnia](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22029667_0194.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)


