Robbie Oliver, an old shepherd of Southdean in Jedwater who died about 1830, told of the last fairy he knew of hereabouts. His father, Peter Oliver, was a young man herding the Brocklaw and living at Hyndlee. He was milking the ewes in the bucht at gloaming with two young women when he saw a small creature all in green, with long yellow hair hanging round her shoulders, coming straight for him and crying, "Hae ye seen Hewie Milburn?"
Peter jumped over the bucht rail to be near the lasses. One of them, Bessie Elliot, a free spoken Liddesdale girl, told him a wife had come for him. He said all his life that his hair stood on end. The creature was no bigger than a three year old girl but shaped like a grown woman, with a face of perfect beauty and something wild and unearthly in her eyes. She did not harm them, and seemed to have lost her companion. She followed them to the Hyndlee kitchen and refused the ewe brose they offered. When a lad made as if to grip her with red hot tongs she took offence and went away down the burnside, crying her old cry more eerily than ever, and vanished in a bush of sedges.
Henderson's text gives the tale as told by Robbie Oliver and records no other witness. Hyndlee lies up Jed Water and the pin is placed at Southdean as an approximation.
Comments