The Black Dwarf

ely settled without an
appeal to the gentlemen of the long robe. My LEARNED AND WORTHY patron
failed not to attend, both on account of the refreshment promised to the
mind and to the body, ALTHOUGH HE IS KNOWN TO PARTAKE OF THE LATTER IN
A VERY MODERATE DEGREE; and the party, with which my Landlord was
associated, continued to sit late in the evening, seasoning their liquor
with many choice tales and songs. The last incident which I recollect,
was my LEARNED AND WORTHY patron falling from his chair, just as he
concluded a long lecture upon temperance, by reciting, from the "Gentle
Shepherd," a couplet, which he RIGHT HAPPILY transferred from the vice
of avarice to that of ebriety:

He that has just eneugh may soundly sleep,
The owercome only fashes folk to keep.

In the course of the evening the Black Dwarf had not been forgotten,
and the old shepherd, Bauldie, told so many stories of him, that they
excited a good deal of interest. It also appeared, though not till the
third punch-bowl was emptied, that much of the farmer's scepticism on
the subject was affected, as evincing a liberality of thinking, and a
freedom from ancient prejudices, becoming a man who paid three hundred
pounds a-year of rent, while, in fact, he had a lurking belief in the
traditions of his forefathers. After my usual manner, I made farther
enquiries of other persons connected with the wild and pastoral district
in which the scene of the following narrative is placed, and I was
fortunate enough to recover many links of the story, not generally
known, and which account, at least in some degree, for the circumstances
of exaggerated marvel with which superstition has attired it in the more
vulgar traditions.

[The Black Dwarf, now almost forgotten, was once held a formidable
personage by the dalesmen of the Border, where he got the blame of
whatever mischief befell the sheep or cattle. "He was," says Dr. Leyden,
who makes considerable use of him in the ballad called the Cowt of
Keeldar, "a fairy of th

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