_Mary Burnet_ is the story of a
maiden who is drowned when keeping tryst with her lover. She
returns to earth, like Kilmeny, and assures her parents of her
welfare. A demon woman, whose form resembles that of Mary, haunts
her lover, and entices him to evil. Since Hogg can give to his
legends a "local habitation and a name," pointing to the very
stretch of road on which the elfin lady first appeared, it seems
ungracious to doubt his veracity. The Ettrick Shepherd's most
memorable achievement, however, is his _Confessions of a Fanatic_
(1824), a terribly impressive account of a man afflicted with
religious mania, who believes himself urged into crime by a
mysterious being. The story abounds in frightful situations and
weird scenes, one of the most striking being the reflection, seen
at daybreak on Arthur's Seat, of a human head and shoulders,
dilated to twenty times its natural size. Professor Saintsbury
has suggested that Lockhart probably had the principal hand in
this story. "Christopher North" was another member of the
_Noctes_ confraternity who came sometimes under the spell of the
unearthly.
The supernatural tales of Mrs. Gaskell, whose gift for
story-telling made Dickens call her his Scheherazade, were, like
those of Cunningham, based directly on tradition.
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