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Nor would he let them go until they promised to come back another moonlit eve, and as a pledge of their promise he would seize from the children a toy, from the maidens a ring, or it might be their mantle of green. Now about two miles from the plain of Carterhaugh stood a castle, and in the castle there lived a fair maiden named Janet.
'But weep not, Janet; an you wish to bring me back to the land of mortals, I will e'en show you how that may be done. Little time is there to lose, for to-night is Hallowe'en, and this same night must the deed be done. 'On Hallowe'en, at the midnight hour, the fairy court will ride a mile beyond Carterhaugh to the cross at Milestone. Wait for me there, Janet, and ye will win your own true knight.
Wise mortals would warn the merry children and the winsome maidens lest they should venture too near the favourite haunts of fairydom. To Carterhaugh came, as I have told you, many of the fairy folk; but more often than any other came a little elfin knight, and he was the young Tamlane, who had been carried away to Fairyland when he was only nine years old.
Nor will I ever ask leave of you as I come to and fro across the plain of Carterhaugh. Ye shall know that the moor belongs to me, me! and Janet stamped her foot. 'My father made it all my own. But the young Tamlane took the white hand of the lady Janet in his own, and so gentle were his words, so kind his ways, that soon the maiden had no wish to leave the little wee man.
Scott is not an author like another, but our earliest known friend in letters; for, of course, we did not ask who Shakespeare was, nor inquire about the private history of Madame d'Aulnoy. Scott peopled for us the rivers and burnsides with his reivers; the Fairy Queen came out of Eildon Hill and haunted Carterhaugh; at Newark Tower we saw "the embattled portal arch"
'Ye have come to Carterhaugh, Janet, he cried, 'and yet ye have not asked my leave. Ye have plucked my red roses and broken a branch of my bonny rose-tree. Have ye no fear of me, Janet? The lady Janet tossed her head, though over her she felt creeping slow the spell of the little elfin knight. She tossed her head and she cried, 'Nay, I have no fear of you, ye little wee man.
One day her father sent for his daughter and said, 'Janet, ye may leave the castle grounds, an ye please, but never may ye cross the plain of Carterhaugh. For there ye may be found by young Tamlane, and he it is who ofttimes casts a spell o'er bonny maidens. Now Janet was a wilful daughter.
Once more the moonbeams peeped in at her lattice window, and Janet smiled, put on her fairest gown, and combed her yellow locks. She was off and away to Carterhaugh. She reached the moor, she ran to the well, and there as before, there, stood the steed of the little elfin man.
Now the maidens might play as they listed, little did the lady Janet care. When evening fell, her four-and-twenty ladies would play their games of chess. Many a game had Janet won in bygone days. Now the ladies might win or lose as they pleased, little did the lady Janet care. Her heart was away on the plain of Carterhaugh with her little wee elfin knight, and soon she herself would be there.
Yet neither hill nor dell pleased them more than the lone plain of Carterhaugh, where the soft-flowing rivers of Ettrick and Yarrow met and mingled. Many a long day after fairies were banished from the plain of Carterhaugh would the peasant folk come to gaze at the circles which still marked the green grass of the lone moor.
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