Tam Lin - a "strong female protagonist", folklore faeries, and low magic - in the Scottish Borders

We recently visited Carterhaugh and "Tamlane's Well" in Eskdale, in the Scottish Borders west of Selkirk - which is the location for one of the most famous of the supernatural ballads: Tam Lin.

(Note - the above are not my pictures.)

While Thomas the Rhymer is a high magical ballad, dealing with matters of elves as a third kind (neither Men nor angels) death and prophecy - and a possible source of insight and enhanced power; Tam Lin is much more of a folkloric depiction of faeries: beautiful yet dangerous because alien. 

And the ballad of Tam Lin is a love/lust story, focused on the need for human courage and ingenuity in dealing with the Fair Folk.

While the most famous recording of Tam Lin is by Fairport Convention; I personally don't much enjoy it, nor any of the others I have encountered except for the incomplete version by The Pentangle, used in that weird, flawed, but somewhat interesting, 1970 movie. 

Tam Lin continues to exert a fascination across recent decades, especially for women singers; probably because it may be taken as a prototype of a currently dominant narrative trope of a spunky heroine who falls in love with, and redeems, a dangerously attractive Bad Boy.

...Although naturally; being a traditional and orally-transmitted poem (with many, and contradicting, variants!) the original Tam Lin does this now-clichéd trope much better than modern Hollywood!

Stephanie Beacham as Janet, Ian McShane as Tam ("Tom") Lin, in the 1970 movie - depicting her "Have I just made a terrible mistake?" moment.