She said--"I was in Downie Hills,
and got meat there from the queen of the fairies, more than I could eat.
The queen is brawly clothed in white linen, and in white and brown
cloth; and the king is a braw man, well-favoured, and broad-faced. There
were plenty of elf bulls rowting and skoyling up and down, and
affrighted me." Mr. Kirk says "that in fairyland they have also books of
various kinds--history, travels, novels, and plays--but no sermons, no
Bible, nor any book of a religious kind." Every reader of Hogg's
_Queen's Wake_ knows the beautiful legend of the abduction of "Bonny
Kilmeny"; but in Dr. Jamieson's _Illustrations of Northern Antiquities_
we have found amongst these heroic and romantic ballads another legend
more fully descriptive of fairyland. In this legend, a young lady is
carried away to fairyland, and recovered, by her brother:--
"King Arthur's sons o' merry Carlisle
Were playing at the ba',
And there was their sister, burd Ellen,
I' the midst, amang them a'.
Child Rowland kicked it wi' his foot,
And keppit it wi' his knee;
And aye as he played, out o'er them a'.
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