Whose cunning consists in casting a clew.James Miller, St. Baldred of the Bass: a Pictish legend. The siege of Berwick: a tragedy: with other poems and ballads founded on the local traditions of East Lothian and Berwickshire (Oliver & Boyd, 1824), p. 267After Montgomerie’s poem, the next known mentions of Nicneven date from the early 1800s. In 1801, John Leyden wrote that Nicneven was one of the "popular appellations" of "the gyre-carlin, the Queen of Fairies, the great hag, Hecate, or mother-witch of the peasants." Robert Cromek gave a more colorful description:"We will close our history of witchcraft with the only notice we could collect, of a celebrated personage, called the Gyre Carline; who is reckoned the mother of glamour, and near a-kin to Satan himself. She is believed to preside over the ‘Hallowmass Rades’ and mothers frequently frighten their children by threatening to give them to McNeven, or the Gyre Carline. She is described as wearing a long gray mantle, and carrying a wand, which, like the miraculous rod of Moses, could convert water into rocks and sea into solid land."Writers such as Sir Walter Scott conflated Nicneven not only with Hecate but with other queens of fairies and witches like Diana and Herodias.Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1831), ch, 4
