JKR and Bobby Burns

[Carol]

January 25 was the Scottish poet Robert Burns's 250th birthday--or the
250th anniversary of his birth, if you prefer. In a 1787 letter to the
London Scottish novelist Dr John Moore, Burns recalled being
entertained as a child by an elderly female relative with "the largest
collection in the county of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts,
fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles,
dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, inchanted [sic]
towers, dragons and other trumpery."  I wonder whether a certain very
rich author who now lives in Scotland heard or read similar tales. I
realize that she was born in Bristol and that her parent were both
Londoners, but except for devils, spunkies, dead-lights, and
cantraips, Burns's list matches pretty closely the "trumpery" that
appears in the HP stories. (I didn't include elf-candles because I
think they're the same thing as hinkypunks.)

Carol, noting that Steve (bboyminn) would probably enjoy Burns's
poetry if he can get past the Scots dialect ("O wad some power the
giftie gie us/ to see oursels as ithers see us!")