The Langs report that in Teviotdale the belief in fairies persisted long after it faded elsewhere in the Border. If the husband's blue bonnet was not kept lying on the mother's bed when a child was born, the child was in danger of being taken and a changeling left. A woman at Minto Cragfoot laid her baby beside a bush on the hillside while she gathered sticks. She heard and saw nothing, but when she came back she found instead of her smiling boy a thin, wasted creature that yammered and wept.
The Reverend Mr Borland, said to have been the first Presbyterian minister of Bedrule after the Reformation, declared at once that it was no human child. He had the mother gather foxglove flowers from the cliffs, boiled them, poured some of the extract into the child's mouth, scattered the flowers over its body, and left it wrapped in a blanket in a locked barn all night. The mother watched at the door and heard no sound. In the morning she was given back her own child, fat and smiling.
The Langs comment that this was a heroic remedy, that foxglove is digitalis, and that had the worst happened the fairies would have taken the blame. The pin is placed at Minto village and is approximate.
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