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I saw a barghest, late last night on Grassmarket. It wore its hound form, black and huge and terrifying.

A funereal procession of dogs and cats had formed in its wake and crows watched from the eves. I followed for a while, curious to see who the barghest had come for, until I was seized by the idea that it had come for me.

I ran for home and bolted the door with iron.

I found myself on the Dreaming Stair entirely by accident. I was climbing Fleshmarket Close - one of the steep, dark Closes leading to the Royal Mile - when I foolishly let my mind wander.

I didn't notice, at first, that the stairs went on for much longer than they should have done. Only subconsciously did I realise that the light had grown green and leaf dappled and the noises of the streets had fallen away.

It was the smell of honeysuckle that finally woke me from my reverie. So out of place, for an Edinburgh alleyway, that the incongruity brought me back to my senses. I realised I was wandering into the Wilds and gripped my iron amulet tight. It had turned so cold it burnt and the pain anchored me to the mundane.

Suddenly, I stumbled out onto the High Street. Blinded by the light and buffeted by the crowds, I shook myself, and continued with my day.

The golden evening light, in the summer time, sometimes gives glimpses of the other Edinburgh. Last night on the Meadows I saw a pavilion woven from spider silk and raised on dragon bones. Only a glimpse, caught as the breeze bent back a bough on one of the ancient cherry trees that line the paths. The branch shifted, the light changed, and it was gone.

'Hedge witch' is often considered a pejorative, when it should be seen as a mark of respect. After all, they ply the same trade as the titled practioners, but with only the herbs and plants they find as they go along.

No one should be looked down on for weaving charms from speedwell and magpie's feathers, or curing with hawthorn berries and eyebright, or casting their wards with a stick of blackthorn rather than lightening struck oak.

Their ingenuity and resourcefulness is legend. Take common eyebright, for instance. A herbal remedy to treat stys and eye infections, but also a powerful tool to break a glamour of infatuation. And all for the cost of a bed and a meal, or one night's dreams from a contented child.

Do you ever see a solitary stand of trees, alone on a hillside or surrounded by fields, and wonder what it is that protects them? What sleeps there that farmers know not to disturb? What things emerge from knotted roots and dance on moonless nights?

Take the thing you love the most to a forest pool and leave it on the shore.

And perhaps you'll gain what you most desire, or perhaps new desires by the score.

Because in the having, the heart finds wanting, sometimes all the more.

In an attempt to avoid my problems, I'd fled the city for the countryside. Only it became apparent that, of the problems I'd been avoiding, avoidance was my biggest problem. My escape had been foiled by my instance on bringing myself along with me.

Seeing a lone hawthorn tree, I was struck by a sudden desire to unburden myself. Taking out my notebook I scribbled down my darkest worry and impaled it on a thorn.

The paper hung there, twitching in the breeze, until the air's random movements became something more. The note writhed and rolled and wrapped itself inwards, browning as though held to a candle flame. Having formed a sort of a chrysalis, it paused, leaving me alone with the birds and the susurration of the trees.

All at once the chrysalis burst open, unfolding to reveal a dark and enormous moth. We regarded each other for a moment, the moth carefully tending its still damp antenna, before it spread its beautiful blue gold wings and took flight towards the distant hills.

Feeling immeasurably lighter, I continued on my way. Stopping now and then to pick wild raspberries that hung heavy and sun warmed in the hedgerows.

Monday next brings the full moon, and with it the Goblin Market. August's market is in Grassmarket.

Grassmarket was always a place of contrasts. Now a bustling tourist spot, filled with outdoor tables and visitors enjoying Scotland's fleeting sun, it was for a long time the site of Edinburgh's public executions.

The market has a similar duality. Each market has a different setting and different wares. The Grassmarket occurrence brings sellers of rare herbs, flowers, and wild fruits. The cobbles are transformed into a sweet smelling wild flower meadow, and the old Bow Well flows with mead.

Still, visitors should beware that the most beautiful flowers grow on the most deadly plants and the market's rules are still in force. Do not lie down among the grasses, or take without payment the fruits that are offered. Nothing is ever for free and infractions will be punished as the Master of Revels sees fit.

Visitors will have to judge for themselves, the worth of a taste of the Goblin fruit.

In the wake of the Wild's incursion all was chaos and blood.

The street had been a quiet, suburban affair. Lined with grand sandstone tenements and served by a cafe and green grocer's. It had been changed almost beyond recognition.

The first thing that drew the eye was a car that had been hefted fully into the air by the eruption of a hawthorn tree. The tree's trunk was bent and swollen with the effort and its thick, gnarled branches had crushed the car out of shape, smashing windows and scoring side panels.

The street itself was carpeted in moss and ferns. All distinguishing features buried beneath verdant greenery and street lights transformed into looming monsters by hanging ivy and strangling honey suckle.

It almost looked pretty, until you caught sight of the bodies. Then, like a magic eye puzzle, they were everywhere you looked. That hummock of moss was a women's fleeing form, from a tangle of briars protruded a pair of stained trainers, and in the centre of the road lay a discarded hand. Fingers curled inwards, still grasping at a life that had fled.

Errant might have stood in silent contemplation for some time, had Fey not dumped their heavy leather bag of workings at his feet. Unmoved by the carnage she grinned her feral grin up at him.

"Well, time to go to work".

The only way to keep the Green Roads open is to walk them. Practioners take on this task as an act of service, a meditative act, almost a worshipful thing. They make their way from sacred springs to ancient groves through the old and hidden ways. Winding from the folded valleys to the cloud mountains and inverted forests, their efforts ensure the Wild places of Britain are still there for those with the will to find them.

All across Britain the Wild sleeps in hidden places. Faced with the spread and noise and metal of the modern world the Fae folk retreated, making quiet places of their own where they could wait out the world of men.

Their favourite valleys, with rushing burns and stands of alder and willow, were folded away. The entrance ways placed between standing stones for those that remembered how to open them.

The high wild places in the hills were swathed in cloud and mist. Now and again you might glimpse another peak through the cloud, higher than your own and appearing on no map, where the heather is always in bloom and the living water runs in bright rivulets among emerald moss.

Whole groves were taken into the Other Place, or set on the move. Many travellers have been lost, chasing glimpses of sunlit clearings, bedecked in honeysuckle and orchids, and the sound of music and laughter. If you were to chase them you would find they always seem to be just beyond reach. The day will grow dark, the paths fade away and, as night falls and you realise you are lost, the laughter turns mocking.

Ghasts are foul things that feed off life's darker emotions: anger, sadness, regret. Tattered and bedraggled, they look like the bastard offspring of man and crow.

The man made cliffs and crags of Edinburgh's skyline provide ready nesting places for their gatherings; a sorrow of ghasts.

While ghasts are mostly scavengers, content to leach the stains of feuds and fights past from the stones, beware their claws. If the opportunity presents they are quite capable of creating bright new pain to feed on.

Next time you see the bright splash of graffiti on Edinburgh's streets, look for the jagged shapes of runic writing. The Sly Folk like to tag their territory and leave markers for each other and have readily embraced the convenience of the spray can.

The unwanted offspring of humans and Fae, changeling children, or just those a little too touched by the chime hours, they are the dispossessed of two worlds.

All over the city there are places they have carved out for their own. Pubs still candle lit, announced by no signs. High turrets forgotten by newer tennants. Whole streets paved over and forgotten after the plagues. The most sacred of all these spaces, though, is the Gloaming Garden.

It moves with the moon and greens the slate slopes of Edinburgh's steep roofs. The manmade valleys between high tenement buildings grow soft with moss and night blooming flowers. Clear springs burst from chimney stacks and quiet deer crop the ferns that adorn the roof's ridge.

All quarrels, origins, and inherited feuds are forgotten here. Lie on the soft ground, drink the clear air, and sleep awhile.

There are some places that you can only find when lost. Streets that only exist for the daydreamers, stairs that carry the unwary astray, a glimpse of an impossible landscape never to be seen again.

I found one of these places in Edinburgh, while wandering with my head in the clouds. It was a simple square in the Old Town; heavy walls of golden sandstone reaching up to frame a distant patch of pale grey sky, reached through a narrow, low ceilinged close.

I stopped short on entering, bewildered by the scene before me. Clearly no one had set foot here for many years. The cobbles had been pushed aside for a riotous display of butterfly bushes and willow herb. Their pink and purple flowers transformed the dour space and filled it with perfume. In the centre, a gnarled old hazel tree grew. At some point its roots must have burst a water pipe, because a spring now flowed from beneath its twisted trunk. The path the water took was the only clear space in the square, a trail of green moss and white water flowers, glinting in the low light.

I was tempted to sit awhile, until I saw the crumpled figure sitting slumped against the tree, empty sockets still staring at the sky. I made a hasty exit.

I never found that square again.

Much is made of the magics of the forests, high places, or mighty rivers, but those of the hedgerows are often overlooked.

This is more of a matter of snobbery than anything else: hedgerow herbs are just as efficacious as those from the wood and an imp trap made from hawthorn twigs works just as one made from storm glass and ivory.

An ancient and mysterious grimoire is a must for any would-be-practioner. Make sure you get it translated *before* showing it off to any rivals, just incase your book of devastating battle spells turns out to be a collection of de-worming charms for goats.

Major Thomas Weir, the 'Wizard of Bowhead', never admitted to having a grimoire in his lifetime. He insisted that his powers were bestowed on him by the devil, or, at other times, that magic was simply "in his bones". It wasn't until he was burnt and then gibbeted that this latter claim was truly understood.

If you have ever experienced an infestation of imps, you will understand what a nightmare it can be. Never fear, however, there a number of simple steps you can take to address your noisy, destructive and often drunken pests:

A) set humane traps around your house and relocate any caught imps to a suitably distant woodland

B) realise the imps are deliberately getting caught, eating the bait and then walking back from the wood

C) resolve to live in peace with the imps as fellow sentients

D) after about a week, give up and burn your house to the ground, along with all your possessions.

I hope this helps!

The changing of the seasons is a good time to look for portents; autumn leaves provide the perfect medium.

Collect your leaves and throw them onto glowing embers. The last leaf to burn will give an insight into the season ahead.

Oak for life, holly for death. Rowan for safety, blackthorn for danger. Hawthorn for mischief, ash for stability.

Of course this is a cheat, because the holly leaf will invariably last the longest. Though death always comes next, on a long enough timeline, so who's to say it doesn't work?

When Hansel and Gretel return home their father is delighted to see them. When their stepmother sees the witch's jewels they have brought with them, she is delighted as well.

The people of the village welcome them as heroes, the children that killed a witch and stole her treasure! No one questions what the children were doing in the woods and the jewels mean there is always enough to eat. For awhile, everything is good.

The thing about heroes in stories, is that they don't need anything from the listener. They are brave and good and don't hang about after "the end". They don't have panic attacks in the kitchen, or struggle to eat without flashbacks.

The siblings hold fast to each other, though, and slowly Hansel comes back to himself. His wealth means that he has no trouble finding a wife and soon he has a house and children of his own. No time to sit up late, on nights neither he nor Gretel can sleep. No patience with his sister, who "won't" move on.

Hansel heals, Gretel does not. She sees fire in everyone's eyes, sees judgement - no matter how many times she is told that she did the right thing, the only thing, to save herself and her brother, she still hears the witch's all too human screams. No one else can understand that. No one else can forgive her.

After another morning waking in the village bakery, her fingers scraped bloody clawing at the oven door, Gretel gives up and simply walks into the forest.

For two days she wanders aimlessly, licking rain from leaves and eating what berries she can find. On the third day she finds the cottage.

The bread walls are still a shinning gold, the cake roof perfectly iced, candied windows clear and clean. In a daze she wanders inside. A bird has roosted in the chimney and there is no wood by the oven, but this is easily fixed and quickly she brings the cottage back to life.

So many nights have passed seeing this place, repeating the same moment over and over again. It feels right to be back here. The only place she understands.

Days, months, years pass. She is content in her solitude. No judging eyes, no questions she cannot answer, nothing to forgive. Until one day a lost boy stumbles out of the forest, hungry and alone.

"Oh little boy", says the witch, "you look ever so hungry. Won't you come in?"