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Elfame," and they had come to persuade her to go back to fairy-land with them, where she should have meat and clothing, and be richly dowered in all things. But Bessie refused. Poor crazed Bessie had a loyal heart if but a silly head, and preferred her husband and children to all the substantial pleasures of Elfame, though Thom was angry with her for refusing, and told her "it would be worse for her."

Once, too, the queen of the fairies, a stout, comely woman, came to her, as she was "lying in gissane," and asked for a drink, which Bessie gave her. Sitting on her bed, she said that the child would die, but that the husband would recover; for Andro Jak seems to have been but an ailing body, often like to find out the Great Mysteries for himself, and Bessie was never quite easy about him. Then Thom began to teach her the art of healing. He gave her roots to make into salves and powders for kow or yow (cow or sheep), or for "ane bairne that was tane away with ane evill blast of wind or elfgrippit:" and she cured many people by the old man's fairy teaching. She healed Lady Johnstone's daughter, married to the young Laird of Stanelie, by giving her a drink brewed under Thom's auspices, namely, strong ale boiled with cloves, ginger, aniseed, liquorice, and white sugar, which warmed the "cauld blude that gaed about hir hart, that causit hir to dwam and vigous away," or, as we would say, to swoon. And she cured John Jake's bairn, and Wilson's of the town, and her gudeman's sister's cow; but old Lady Kilbowye's leg was beyond them both. It had been crooked all her life, and now Thom said it would never mend, because "the march of the bane was consumit, and the blude dosinit" (the marrow was consumed, and the blood benumbed). It was hopeless, and it would