Overtoun Faeries

The Victorians, a word used to describe the subjects of Queen Victoria, who had the longest reign of any British monarch (1837 - 1901), sometimes appear obsessed with all things of natural, and supernatural, wonder and drama. The working class read titillating tales of horror about vampires and werewolves in the cheap magazines known as "Penny Dreadfuls" (because they cost around a penny). The upper classes were similarly enraptured by legends and myths involving high drama and supernatural goings on. Books such as Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" were very popular amongst all sections of society, and indeed there was a local legend concerning Overtoun itself.

Detailed in a book called "The Clyde District of Dunbartonshire" by Macleod written in 1886, is a story about the "Overtoun Faeries". Supposedly around 1800 a man called Roderick MacTavish wandering back over the moor late one night with a barrel of contraband whisky, ran into a band of the 'wee folk' who demanded he share the liquor with them, which they drank from bluebell cups. He woke next morning with an enormous hangover (having finished the barrel) and spent the rest of his days as a drunken tramp because of the encounter. It was also mentioned that his ghost forever wanders "up and down the burn howling and jibbering after its lost brains".
The setting of Overtoun Castle against the brooding cliffs and moor with the waterfall and expansive views makes sense in this context.
This is not to say James White was particularly interested in this kind of thing, but that it was fashionable at the time.