LETTERS ON
162 the death for
which she was most sorry being in the Milntown of Mains.
William Brown, was also aimed
at
who was
minister
the
that
A
of
shaft
Reverend Harrie Forbes, a
present at the examination of Isobel,
The arrow fell short, and the the confessing party. witch would have taken aim again, but her master forbade her, saying the reverend gentleman's life was not To this strange and very parsubject to their power.
we
ticular confession
shall
have occasion to recur when
more immediate subject. What is above narrated marks the manner in which the belief in that crime was blended with the fairy superstition. To proceed to more modern instances of persons witchcraft
is
the
supposed to have race,
we must
under the power of the fairy forget the Rev. Robert Kirke,
fallen
not
minister of the Gospel, the into Gaelic verse.
He
first
translator of the psalms
was, in the
end of the seven-
teenth century, successively minister of the Highland parishes of Balquidder and Aberfoyle, lying in the most
romantic line.
so
district
of Perthshire, and within the Highland
These beautiful and wild
many
lakes,
regions,
comprehending
rocks, sequestered valleys, and
dim
copse woods, are not even yet quite abandoned by the fairies, who have resolutely maintained secure footing in a region so well suited for their residence. Indeed, so much was this the case formerly, that Mr. Kirke,
while in his
latter
charge of Aberfoyle, found materials
for collecting and compiling his Essay on the " Subterranean, and for the most part Invisible People, heretofore going under the
name of
Elves, Fawnes, and