the burning fire,
The longer it burns, it but blazes the higher.

“I have won me a youth,” the Elf Queen said,
   “The fairest that earth may see;
This night I have won young Elph Irving
   My cupbearer to be.
His service lasts but seven sweet years,
   And his wage is a kiss of me.”
And merrily, merrily, laughed the wild elves
   Round Corris’s greenwood tree.
But oh! the fire it glows in my brain,
And the hour is gone, and comes not again.

The Queen she has whispered a secret word,
   “Come hither my Elphin sweet,
And bring that cup of the charméd wine,
   Thy lips and mine to weet.”
But a brown elf shouted a loud, loud shout,
   “Come, leap on your coursers fleet,
For here comes the smell of some baptised flesh,
   And the sounding of baptised feet.”
But oh! the fire that burns, and maun burn;
For the time that is gone will never return.

On a steed as white as the new-milked milk,
   The Elf Queen leaped with a bound,
And young Elphin a steed like December snow
   ’Neath him at the word he found.
But a maiden came, and her christened arms
   She linked her brother around,

And called on God, and the steed with a snort
   Sank into the gaping ground.
But the fire maun burn, and I maun quake,
And the time that is gone will no more come back.

And she held her brother, and lo! he grew
   A wild bull waked in ire;
And she held her brother, and lo! he changed
   To a river roaring higher;
And she held her brother, and he became
   A flood of the raging fire;
She shrieked and sank, and the wild elves laughed
   Till the mountain rang and mire.
But oh! the fire yet burns in my brain,
And the hour is gone, and comes not again.

“O maiden, why waxed thy faith so faint,
   Thy spirit so slack and slaw?
Thy courage kept good till the flame waxed wud,
   Then thy might begun to thaw;
Had ye kissed him with thy christened lip,
   Ye had wan him frae ’mang us a’.
Now bless the fire, the elfin fire,
   That made thee faint and fa’;
Now bless the fire, the elfin fire,
The longer it burns it blazes the higher.”

“At the close of this unusual strain, the figure sat down on the grass, and proceeded to bind up her long and disordered tresses, gazing along the old and unfrequented road.  ‘Now God be my helper,’ said the traveller, who happened to be the laird of Johnstone Bank, ‘can this be a trick of the fiend, or can it be bonnie Phemie Irving who chants this dolorous sang?  Something sad has befallen that makes her seek her seat in this eerie nook amid the darkness and tempest; through might from

aboon I will go on and see.’  And the horse, feeling something of the owner’s reviving spirit in the application of spur-steel, bore him at once to the foot of the tree.  The poor delirious maiden uttered a yell of piercing joy as she beheld him, and, with the swiftness of a creature winged, linked her arms round the rider’s waist, and shrieked till the woods rang.  ‘Oh, I have ye now, Elphin, I have ye now,’ and she strained him to her bosom with a convulsive grasp.  ‘What ails ye, my bonnie lass?’ said the laird of Johnstone Bank, his fears of the supernatural vanishing when he beheld her sad and bewildered look.  She raised her eyes at the sound, and seeing a strange face, her arms slipped their hold, and she dropped with a groan on the ground.

“The morning had now fairly broke; the flocks shook the rain from their sides, the shepherds hastened to inspect their charges, and a thin blue smoke began to stream from the cottages of the valley into the brightening air.  The laird carried Phemie Irving in his arms, till he observed two shepherds ascending from one of the loops of Corriewater, bearing the lifeless body of her brother.  They had found him whirling round and round in one of the numerous eddies, and his hands, clutched and filled with wool, showed that he had lost his life in attempting to save the flock of his sister.  A plaid was laid over the body, which, along with the unhappy maiden in a half-lifeless state, was carried

into a cottage, and laid in that apartment distinguished among the peasantry by the name of the chamber.  While the peasant’s wife was left to take care of Phemie, old man and matron and maid had collected around the drowned youth, and each began to relate the circumstances of his death, when the door suddenly opened, and his sister, advancing to the corpse, with a look of delirious serenity, broke out into a wild laugh and said: ‘Oh, it is wonderful, it’s truly wonderful!  That bare and death-cold body, dragged from the darkest pool of Corrie, with its hands filled with fine wool, wears the perfect similitude of my own Elphin!  I’ll tell ye—the spiritual dwellers of the earth, the fairyfolk of our evening tale, have stolen the living body, and fashioned this cold and inanimate clod to mislead your pursuit.  In common eyes this seems all that Elphin Irving would be, had he sunk in Corriewater; but so it seems not to me.  Ye have sought the living soul, and ye have found only its garment.  But oh, if ye had beheld him, as I beheld him to-night, riding among the elfin troop, the fairest of them all; had you clasped him in your arms, and wrestled for him with spirits and terrible shapes from the other world, till your heart quailed and your flesh was subdued, then would ye yield no credit to the semblance which this cold and apparent flesh bears to my brother.  But hearken!  On Hallowmass Eve, when the spiritual people are let loose on earth for

a season, I will take my stand in the burial-ground of Corrie; and when my Elphin and his unchristened troop come past, with the sound of all their minstrelsy, I will leap on him and win him, or perish for ever.’

“All gazed aghast on the delirious maiden, and many of her auditors gave more credence to her distempered speech than to the visible evidence before them.  As she turned to depart, she looked round, and suddenly sank upon the body, with tears streaming from her eyes, and sobbed out, ‘My brother!  Oh, my brother!’  She was carried out insensible, and again recovered; but relapsed into her ordinary delirium, in which she continued till the Hallow Eve after her brother’s burial.  She was found seated in the ancient burial-ground, her back against a broken gravestone, her locks white with frost-rime, watching with intensity of look the road to the kirkyard; but the spirit which gave life to the fairest form of all the maids of Annandale was fled for ever.”

Such is the singular story which the peasants know by the name of “Elphin Irving, the Fairies’ Cupbearer”; and the title, in its fullest and most supernatural sense, still obtains credence among the industrious and virtuous dames of the romantic vale of Corrie.

THE GHOSTS OF CRAIG-AULNAIC.

Two celebrated ghosts existed, once on a time, in the wilds of Craig-Aulnaic, a romantic place in the district of Strathdown, Banffshire.  The one was a male and the other a female.  The male was called Fhuna Mhoir Ben Baynac, after one of the mountains of Glenavon, where at one time he resided; and the female was called Clashnichd Aulnaic, from her having had her abode in Craig-Aulnaic.  But although the great ghost of Ben Baynac was bound by the common ties of nature and of honour to protect and cherish his weaker companion, Clashnichd Aulnaic, yet he often treated her in