hills, and all the flax grown on his land was sent to old Habetrot to be converted into yarn.[1] Such are the tales of Border sprites which Mr. Wilkie has collected. He adds that the villages of Bowden and Gateside had a strange belief that on a certain night in the year (thence called “Cowlug e’en”) a number of sprites were abroad with ears resembling those of cows; but he could not discover the origin of the belief, nor which night was thus distinguished.
He mentions also that in the South of Scotland every person was supposed to be attended by a sprite, who had the power of taking away his life a strange perversion of the doctrine of Guardian Angels. This is called by the old name of “Thrumpin,” and is mentioned in these obscure verses:—
When the hullers o’ night are loosin’,
When the quakers are cramplin eerie;
When the moon is in the latter fa’,
When the owlets are scraughin drearie;
When the elleried are clumperin,
When the toweries hard are thrumping,
When the hawkie bird he kisses the yud,
Then, then’s the time for thrompin.
And gif ye miss the mystic hour,
When vengeful sprites are granted power,
To thrump ilk faithless wight;
The heavens will gloom like a wizard smile,
An’ the foremost will dim his carcase vile
Fra’ all uncannie sight.
For man and beast by the three stones light,
Hae little chance to thrive;
Till the sixty are past, and not till the last,
Can man and beast survive.
- ↑ This story, though not without variations, is radically the same as the three spinners of German household tales—Grimm, K.M. 14; Pretorius’ Gluckstopf, 404; Pescheck’s Nachrichten, i. 355; Müllenhoff, No. 8. In Norway we find the same story (Asbjörnsen, p. 69); and again in the collection of Neapolitan Household Tales made by Basile in the seventeenth century. We meet with it too in Lithuania (Schleicher, p. 12). The outline of the plot in all is as follows: A poor woman beats her daughter for idleness, and tells a merchant who is passing that she does it to compel her daughter to spin six hanks of yarn. The merchant at once proposes for the daughter, marries her, and then sets her to spin a large quantity of yarn during his absence on a journey. She is assisted by a fairy, who deceives the husband into forbidding his wife to spin any more.—S. B. G.
