Note 19 — Part IV.

A superstition long prevalent, and scarcely yet eradicated in some parts of Scotland. The mother was not safe from the power of fairies until she had been ‘kirk’t,’ and the child, until baptised, was in danger of being carried away by them, a changeling being substituted in its stead. Jockey’s mother seems to have had a touch of the same superstition when she spoke of the difference between a child and a dog—‘A dog is a brute beast, an’ a wean is a christen’d creature.’