The fairies of the poets are ordinarily those of the woodland, while those of the legends of the countryside are at least equally often the fairies of the homestead in their association with the daily life, the trivial round, the common task.

The earliest account of the fairies of England will be found in the writings of Gervase, in the thirteenth century, and after that date allusion to them may frequently be found; grave chroniclers like Reginald Scot, poets like Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, all make mention of them. The first of these, Scot, in his “Discoverie of Witchcraft,” tells us that “the faeries do principally inhabit the mountains and caverns of the earth, whose nature is to make strange apparitions on the earth, in meadows or in mountains, being like men and women, soldiers, kings, and ladies, children, and horsemen clothed in green.” Many unfortunate women were persecuted as witches during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and their connection with the fairies was often one of the leading charges against them, as we may see in the indictment of Alison Pearson; she was convicted of associating with the fairies, the definite charge against her being “for haunting and reparing with the Queene of Elfland.” Another woman was found guilty of “taking employment from a woman to speak in her behalf to the Queene of Faerie;” and many other such cases might be brought forward.

Fairies have ordinarily been invisible, and though they have at times permitted mortals to be present at their revels, more frequently they would appear to have resented any intrusion. In Poole’s “English Parnassus” the most circumstantial details are given: the robes are of snowy cobweb and silver gossamer; the lamps are the mystic lights of glowworms; the minstrelry is the music of the nightingale or the chirp of the cricket. Their emperor was Oberon, and his royal consort and empress was the sweet but mischievous Mab:—

The fairies—the good people as they were often called—were on the whole kindly and beneficent. During the Middle Ages these little beings had obtained so much credit that the clergy, who wished to reserve to themselves the power of blessing or banning, grew seriously jealous, and endeavoured earnestly to disestablish them from the hearts of men. That this was by no means in accordance with the feelings of the laity may be very well seen in the following extract from the “Canterbury Tales”:—

The fairy rings to be seen in the meadows and woodlands were accepted with undoubted faith as the scenes of midnight revelry, and in most cases were regarded with some little dread from the belief that they were enchanted ground. Hence when people went to look after their cattle in the morning they were always careful to avoid walking too near these rings:—

The effect produced on those who incautiously entered these charmed circles seems to have been sufficiently startling, if we may credit the old popular beliefs, to justify the greatest precautions and the most open-eyed watchfulness. In some cases the victim of carelessness or short-sightedness would imagine that he had been absent but a few minutes with the fairies, when he had really been away a century or more; while in other cases a man would suppose that he had lived for a long period in Elf-land when he had been but away an hour. Probably in some cases the spirits were alcoholic. We read of a young man who went out one morning and probably trod in one of these rings; however that may be, he was attracted by the especially sweet singing of some unknown bird. After waiting, as he thought, some few minutes, he resumed his journey, when he noticed to his surprise that the fresh and verdant tree in which the sweet songster had been embowered was scathed and leafless. The well-known house to which he was going had disappeared with all its inhabitants, and in its place a new structure had arisen. On going up to it an old man, who was evidently the owner, came out and asked his business, and on learning his name, told him that he had been away a hundred years or more. “I remember when I was a child hearing my grandfather speak of your disappearance one day many years before I was born, and that, after searching for you far and wide, he learned from a wise woman that you had fallen amongst the fairies, and that you would only be released when the sap had ceased to flow in yonder aged tree!” He had scarcely uttered the words when he beheld his long-lost kinsman fall away to a heap of dry dust!!

A popular Welsh legend tells us that two countrymen were one night crossing the mountains, when one of them, thinking he heard some strains of music, lingered a little behind, and could not afterwards be found. After fruitless search, his friends learned from a Seer that he had fallen amongst the fairies, and that the only way to recover him was to go on the anniversary of his absence to the place where he had disappeared, and that they must then pull him out of a fairy ring. Some few bold spirits were equal to the occasion, and on going to the place at the stipulated time they discovered their lost relative in the midst of an immense number of very small people, who were all dancing round in a circle. They pulled him out, but he died of exhaustion almost directly, as he had been dancing without intermission for the twelve months he had been missing. Another tradition current in Wales tells us of a young shepherd who peacefully tended his flock on the steeps of Brynnan Mawr. One day setting forth as usual at daybreak from his homestead near the hills, the lofty summit was enveloped in mist, but, as he proceeded, it gradually cleared away towards the Pembrokeshire side, a sure sign of a fine day. Our shepherd felt all the elevation of spirit which youth and the early dawn of a day in the “leafy month of June” might be expected to produce. Whilst trudging on his way gaily up the steep, he discerned the extraordinary spectacle of a party of persons, brilliantly dressed, and in active movement near the summit of the mountain. He gazed for some time before he could be convinced that what he saw was real. He climbed farther and farther, forgetting his sheep and all else in the world at the apparition of so many bright beings at that desolate spot. At last he drew very near the party, whom he was now convinced were either the Fairies, or some kindred sprites, concluding their nightly revels. Bursts of gentle music, like the melodious murmuring of an Æolian harp, ever and anon entranced him with delight. They were comely little beings to behold, and seemed very merry, while their habiliments of white, or green, or red, glistened with more than earthly beauty. The male sex wore red bonnets, and their fair companions flaunted in head-dresses outrivalling the gossamer in their texture; and many either galloped about on tiny white steeds, or pursued each other with the swiftness of the breeze. The greater portion of the party, however, were intently engaged in their favourite sport of dancing in the circle. Our shepherd did not know how it was, but he felt an irresistible inclination to make one of this joyous group, and growing bolder as the actors in the scene became more familiar to him, he at last ventured forward, and being encouraged by the friendly signals from all around, he advanced one step within the ring. The most exquisite melody now filled the air, and in an instant all was changed. Brynnan Mawr, with its well-known scenery, was seen no more. He was suddenly transported to a gorgeous palace radiant with gold and precious stones. Groves of odoriferous shrubs, intermingled with flowers unknown in this world, which might have rivalled those of the Valley of Gardens in “Lalla Rookh,” shed around a fragrance excelling that of the “spicy East.” Here did our shepherd wander from day to day amidst porphyry halls, and pavilions of pearl. Time sped away, but years seemed insufficient to explore all the wonders of that veritable Fairyland. He was attended in his wanderings by kind and gentle beings, who anticipated every want, and even invented sports and pastimes to amuse him. In the midst of the gardens there was a well of the clearest water, filled with many rainbow-tinted fish. There was but one limitation affixed to his movements and his curiosity: he was forbidden to drink of this well, on pain of having all his happiness blasted. It might be thought that, surrounded as he was with all that he could desire, there would have been no danger of his violating this command, but the result proved the error of this Utopian way of viewing the probabilities. One day he cautiously advanced toward the forbidden spot, and placing his hand within the well, drew forth some water in his palm and drank it. The shrieks of many voices instantly filled the air, all the fair scenes of enchanting loveliness vanished, and the luckless and too curious shepherd found himself on the summit of Brynnan Mawr with his sheep quietly grazing around him in the early morning just as when he had first entered the fairy-ring. Though years apparently had passed away while he was under the magic spell yet it was evident that in reality not many minutes could have elapsed.

Our readers will doubtless recall Shakespeare’s reference to these “fairy rings,” in the first scene of the fifth act in the “Tempest”:—

The flint arrow-heads or celts so dear to antiquaries, and so commonly to be found in and near the tumuli that mark the resting-places of our remote ancestors, are popularly called fairy-darts or elf-bolts. Though the wound of an elf-bolt was supposed to cause instant death to man and beast when directed by an aggrieved or mischievous fairy, the possession of one of these celts secured its owner from all ill consequences. When cattle or horses fell lame without the reason being forthcoming, it was concluded that they had been wounded by these invisible archers, in which case it was only necessary to touch the tender place with another elf-bolt or to make the animal drink the water in which one had been dipped.

Any money found by the roadside was in the same way ascribed by our rustics to the fairies, some kindly spirit having dropped it by the way for the benefit of the battered wayfarer. As a boy one day in Anglesea was going out just before daybreak, he saw before him in the grey and obscure light a party of little beings dancing, as usual, in a circle. He hastened home in alarm and without making any further investigation, and on his return found a groat on a stone. He often saw the fairies afterwards at the same place, and as regularly found the money laid for him at the same spot. His possession of funds awakened the paternal curiosity, and he at last confessed the whole matter. Ever after this, though he often passed by the scene of the revels and scanned the wayside stone intently, he never saw either fairy frolic or fairy fee again.

Though fairies had the power of making themselves invisible, and generally resented the intrusion of any human spectator, they were willing to show themselves sometimes, it would appear, though frequently the consequences were not altogether agreeable to the person so favoured. One evening the curiosity of a countryman, in his progress homewards, was powerfully excited by a wild though gentle melody which apparently proceeded from amidst some rocks, resting in picturesque confusion on the slopes of the mountain. After listening for some time he lost his track, and suddenly found himself close beside a troop of elves, who were dancing round a mysterious circle of “stocks and stones.” Before he had much time for thought the elfin-troop surrounded him and quickly hurried him aloft, one of the party first asking the question whether he would prefer to be conveyed with a high, a moderate, or a low wind? Had he chosen the first, or “above the wind,” he would instantly have soared into the most elevated regions; but our poor bewildered farmer unwisely made choice of the low wind, thus rejecting (as is too often the case in life) the middle course, or “with the wind,” where he would have enjoyed an easy and pleasant aerial excursion. The mischievous little spirits then hurried him along the surface of the ground, over bog and briar, thorn and ditch, until at last they threw him in a most miserable plight head foremost in the mire.

In Shakespeare’s time it was a belief that no one could see the fairies and live, for he makes Falstaff exclaim, “They are fairies, he who looks on them shall die;” but any one who desires to see them through the eye of a poet should read most carefully the altogether delightful “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The temptation to quote liberally from it is extreme, but its beauty requires it to be read in its entirety.

The references in that play to changelings reminds us that we have not yet referred to this notable piece of family practice.

Both the good and the bad fairies used to recruit their numbers by carrying off children, or young men and women. The malignant race delighted in spiriting away the unbaptized offspring (for it was only over these that they had any power) of affectionate parents, particularly when heirs, that they might produce as much mischief and vexation as possible; while the benignant fairies never took any recruits but the orphans of pious parents, who had no protectors, or were oppressed by cruel and unjust guardians. Such protégés, or rather naturalised fairies, were permitted twice to resume their original state, and appear to their kindred and acquaintance. The first time was at the end of seven years, when, if they had been children when they were taken away, they appeared to their nearest relatives, and declared to them their state, whether they were pleased with their condition as fairies, or wished to be restored to that of men. If they had been boys or girls when they were removed from this upper earth, and had by this time grown to men or women, they always appeared to persons of a different sex to themselves, with whom they had fallen in love, to whom they declared their state and passion, and, according to circumstances, either wished their lover to accompany them to Fairyland, or suggested to them a method whereby to recover them out of the hands of their elfish lords.

The second appearance, at the end of fourteen years, was for the same purpose, and on this occasion they were either rescued from the power of the fairies or confirmed under their dominion for ever.

When the bad fairies carried off a child, they always left one of their own number in its place. This equivocal creature was always distinguished by being insatiable for food, and if kept, seldom failed to draw its supposed mother into a consumption.

Whenever a family suspected that a child had been changed for a fairy, they had recourse to the following strange, but, in the opinion of the country, infallible ordeal. A sufficient quantity of clay was produced from the eastern side of a hill, with which all the windows, doors, and every aperture through the house, excepting the chimney, were built up. A large fire was then made of peats, and the supposed fairy, wrapped in the sheets or blankets of the woman’s bed, was laid on the fire when it was at the briskest, while one of the bystanders repeated—

If the child actually was the woman’s it instantly rolled off the fire upon the floor; but, if it was a fairy, it flew away up the chimney with a tremendous shriek, and was never more seen, while the real infant was found lying upon the threshold.

Spenser also refers to this belief in the following lines:—

In some parts of the country, it is, or perhaps we should more correctly say was, customary to protect a child against fairy influences by tying a red thread round its throat or by letting its head hang down for awhile in the early morning. One does not of course see why either of these remedies should be efficacious against fairies or against anything else; but any one who has had occasion to talk matters over with rustics will have found that all their remedies, whether for ills spiritual or material, are of the most inconsequent character, and that the gift of faith in them is one of the most necessary accompaniments. This belief in fairy changelings is of great antiquity, for we read in Holingshead’s “Chronicles” that the common people, on the death of King Arthur, held that he was not really dead at all, “but carried away by fairies into some place, where he would remain for a time and then return again and reign in as great authority as ever.” It was also an old belief that people who had once lived with the fairies never again looked quite like other people, an ingenious way of accounting for any peculiarity in any one. Sir Walter Scott, in speaking of elf-possession, says that even “full-grown persons, especially such as in an unlucky hour were doomed to the execration of parents or of masters, or those who were found asleep after sunset under a rock or on a green hill belonging to the fairies, or finally those who unwarily joined their orgies, were believed to be subject to their power. The accounts they gave of their situation differ in some particulars. Sometimes they were represented as living a life of constant restlessness and wandering by moonlight. According to others, they inhabited a pleasant region, where, however, their situation was rendered horrible by the sacrifice of one or more individuals to the devil every seventh year. This is the popular reason assigned for the desire of the fairies to abstract young children as substitutes for themselves in this dreadful tribute.”

Persons, as we have seen, could occasionally be recovered from the fairies, and if changelings were taken before dark to a place where three rivers met, the stolen child would be brought back in the night and the fairy youngster would return whence it came. A poor woman who once had twins had them adroitly carried away soon after birth, and two of these elf-changelings substituted. For some months the change was not suspected, but as the mother began to perceive that the children never increased in size her suspicions were aroused, and she consulted one of the wise men of the district. This friend in need amply confirmed her suspicions, and in answer to her appeal for help and counsel, told her that she must get two eggshells, fill them with wort and hops, place them where these dubious infants could see them, and then secretly observe what came next. After a few minutes of watching the children began to stir, and these sweet little innocents, who were supposed to be unable to either walk or talk, crept up to the table, and after studying the matter awhile, one said to the other, “We were born before the acorn which produced the oak of which these cottage beams are made, but this is the first time we ever saw anybody brewing in an egg-shell!” The secret was now fairly out, and the woman was so exasperated at the trick played on her, that she fell on the changelings with the greatest fury, and only desisted when she got a solemn promise that her own dear children should at once be returned to her. One egg-shell story leads to another, and in an old book we came across the following:—

“My mother lived in the immediate neighbourhood of a farm-house that was positively infested by fairies. It was one of those old-fashioned houses among the hills of Cambria, constructed after the manner of ancient days, when farmers considered the safety and comfort of their cattle as much us that of their children and domestics, and the kitchen and cow-house were on the same floor adjoining each other, with a half-door over, so that the good man could see the animals from his chimney-corner without moving. My mother and the farmer’s wife were intimate friends, and she used often to complain to her that the fairies annoyed her and her family to that degree that they had no peace;—that whenever the family dined, or supped, or ate any meal, or were together, these mischievous little beings would assemble in the next apartment. For instance, when they were sitting in the kitchen, they were at high gambols in the dairy, or when they were yoking the cows, they would see the fairies in the kitchen, dancing and laughing, and provokingly merry. One day, as there was a great number of reapers partaking of a harvest-dinner, which was prepared with great care and nicety by the housewife, they heard music and dancing and laughing above, and a great shower of dust fell down, and covered all the victuals which were upon the table. The pudding in particular was completely spoiled, and the keen appetites of the party were most grievously disappointed. Just at this moment of trouble and despair an old woman entered, who saw the confusion and heard the whole affair explained. ‘Well,’ said she in a whisper to the farmer’s wife, ‘I’ll tell you how to get rid of the fairies. To-morrow morning ask six of the reapers to dinner, and be sure that you let the fairies hear you ask them. Then make no more pudding than will go into an egg-shell, and put it down to boil. It may be a scanty meal for six hungry reapers, but it will be quite sufficient to banish the fairies; and if you follow these directions you will not be troubled with them any more.’ She did accordingly, and when the fairies heard that a pudding for six reapers was boiling in an egg-shell there was a great noise in the next apartment and an angry voice called out, ‘We have lived long in this world. We were born just after the earth was made, and before an acorn was planted, and yet we never saw a harvest dinner prepared in an egg-shell. Something must be wrong in this house, and we will no longer stop under its roof.’ From that time the disturbances ceased, and the fairies were never seen or heard there any more.”

Some authorities on the subject—and there are no greater authorities on it than the most superstitious old crones one can lay hold of—have averred that if any persons find themselves unwillingly in the company of the fairies they can cause their instantaneous departure by drawing out their knives. This acts not as a threat, for these puny immortals have no need to fear the weapons of carnal warfare, but from some inherent property in the cold bright steel.

Many of the fairies are such kindly, genial little souls that one is rather grieved to find that they are entirely antagonistic to any religious influence. Many stories illustrate this unfortunate peculiarity, but to give one only will suffice. As a village fiddler was returning home one evening from some festivities that had doubtless owed much of their success to his enlivening strains, he was met in the darkness by a stranger. This stranger wished to make a somewhat curious arrangement with him, to the effect that on the following night at midnight he should bring his fiddle to a certain wild spot on the moorland, while he promised him ample reward for so doing. Though the fiddler presently agreed to do so, the more he thought it over the less he liked the bargain, and he would have gladly thrown it up had he dared. In his strait he bethought him of the minister of the parish, and determined to lay the whole matter before him and take his advice upon it. His clerical adviser liked the look of the affair no better than he did, but he advised him to keep to his bargain, while he strongly cautioned him to play nothing but psalm tunes. The fiddler kept his appointment, but no sooner had the sacred strains arisen than a great shriek rent the air and he was thrown violently down, and after receiving no slight castigation from invisible adversaries he returned home sore and stiff in the early morning. Unbelievers will no doubt say that the germ of truth in the story will be found in the fact, that if the jovial musician so far yielded to the charms of the revels as to be unable to steer a straight course home within reasonable hours, the early morning would probably find him stiff and sore with rheumatism.

The spirits of the mine were as firmly believed in amongst the miners as the woodland and meadow sprites were by the dwellers on the country side. They were generally called knockers, and any sound heard in the stillness of the earth, that was evidently not the work of a fellow-toiler, was at once attributed to supernatural agency. The miners assert that these fairies may be frequently heard assiduously at work in the remoter parts, and that by their knocking they draw the attention of the workmen to the richest veins of ore. In the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for 1754 we found a curious letter from a mine-owner, and the extract we give shows that the belief in such beings was not by any means confined to the rude and uncultivated miners, men a great part of whose lives were spent in the bowels of the earth, far removed from the cheering light of day, and who were in an especial degree under the influence of superstition:—

“People who know very little of arts or sciences, or the powers of nature, will laugh at us Cardiganshire miners, who maintain the existence of knockers in mines, a kind of good-natured impalpable people, not to be seen but heard, and who seem to us to work in the mines; that is to say, they are types or forerunners of working in mines, as dreams are of some accidents which happen to us. Before the discovery of the Esgair y Mwyn mine, these little people worked hard through day and night, and there are abundance of sober honest people who have heard them. But after the discovery of the great mine they were heard no more. When I began to work at Lwyn Lwyd, they worked so fresh there for a considerable time, that they frightened away some young workmen. This was when they were driving levels, and before we had got any ore, but when we came to the ore they then gave over, and I heard no more of them. These are odd assertions, but they are certainly facts, although we cannot and do not pretend to account for them. We have now (October 1754) very good ore at Lwyn Lwyd, where the knockers were heard to work. But they have now yielded up the place, and are heard no more. Let who will laugh; we have the greatest reason to rejoice and thank the knockers, or rather God, who sends these notices.”

In the coal districts one meets with a similar belief in goblin miners. These spirits are ordinarily of a friendly disposition, and perform such kindly offices for their human fellow-workers as assisting to pump up superfluous water or loosening masses of coal. Of course one can readily see that when the men went to their work and found their toil diminished, owing to a heavy fall of coal in the working, superstition would at once have material to work on. Some of these spirits would appear to have been of less amiable disposition, and the sounds heard were at times the warnings and forerunners of coming disaster. As the fairies of the household or of the moonlighted forest glades were of uncertain and variable natures, though inclining on the whole to beneficence, so the spirits of the earth were divisible into those of gentle race and others of fierce and malevolent disposition. In Milton’s “Comus” we find these earth spirits referred to in the following passage:—

and in Pope’s prefatory letter to the “Rape of the Lock” we find a further allusion—“The four elements are inhabitated by spirits called sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and salamanders. The gnomes, or demons of the earth, delight in mischief; but the sylphs, whose habitation is in air, are the best-conditioned creatures imaginable.”

A belief in kindly spirits of the household was widely spread, for besides our own Robin Goodfellow we find the Nis of Denmark and Norway, the Kobold of Germany, the Brownie of Scotland, and many others. Brownie, we may remark, is a tawny, good-natured spirit, and derives his name from his colour as distinctive from fair-ie. Robin Goodfellow was a merry domestic sprite, full of practical jokes, a terror to the lazy, but a diligent rewarder of industry:—

The “shrewd and knavish sprite” and the good luck he brings to the deserving are referred to very happily again in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Prudent and considerate housewives who wished to gain the goodwill of these spirits of the night were careful to leave a bowl of milk on the table for their use. Milton, in his poem of “L’Allegro”—

the task he set himself in recompense for the attention shown him being the threshing during the night of as much corn as would have required the labour of ten men. What thrifty housewife would grudge a bowl of milk or cream for so great a reward!

Queen Mab shares with Robin his functions as critic of household management, for it will be remembered that in the “English Parnassus” we find her described as—

Housewives would see their account in keeping such a belief vividly before the eyes of their serving-maids, and may even themselves have sometimes dropped a tester where their diligent hand-maidens would fancy it a fairy-reward for their zeal in her service, while the vague threats of fairy vengeance would come in most opportunely in support of their own chidings of the careless and indolent.

We turn, in conclusion, to the fourth class, the evil spirits of the water and the storm. Of such is the Cornish Bucca, a weird goblin of the winds, whose scream was heard amid the roar of the elements as some gallant vessel was hurled to destruction on the rocks. In Ireland the same creature was the dreaded Phoca or Pooka, in Wales the Pwcca, while in Scottish legends it is the Kelpie. The creature sometimes assumed the human form, and at others that of the eagle or the horse; thus in Graham’s “Sketches of Perthshire” we read—“Every lake has its kelpie or water-horse, often seen by the shepherd sitting upon the brow of a rock, dashing along the surface of the deep, or browsing upon the pasture on its verge.” The Nech is a similar creature in the folk-lore of Scandinavia. In Wales we meet with the belief in a creature called Cyoeraeth, so named, we are told, from its deadly chilling voice. We find it thus described in an old book:—“The Cyoeraeth is a being in the dress of a female, with tangled hair, a bloodless and ghastly countenance, long black teeth, and withered arms of great length;” in short, it is invested with a description which conveys to the mind the idea of a blasted tree as compared to the flourishing monarch of the forest, rather than as possessing the similitude of anything human. This being (fortunately for the people) seldom made itself visible, but its scream or shriek at night had a terrible and overpowering effect on all who heard it. It generally foreboded death or fearful disaster, and always occurred when the spirit approached a cross road or drew near to a river or llyn, when it would commence to splash and agitate the water with its long bloodless hands, wailing all the time so as to ‘make night hideous.’ Those who heard its dreary moaning (or thought they did, the case doubtless of the majority) fled in horror, fearing for their reason, while many were really affected in mind, and ever after had the shriek resounding in memory.

In Brecon a romantic gorge called the Cwm Pwcca bears record in its name of the old belief in the phoca. As a justification of its title we read the following story:—A countryman was wandering in the darkest of dreary winter nights in vain endeavour to find the path that would have guided him to his home, when he saw a light before him on the dreary waste, which he naturally took for the lantern of some wayfarer. He quickened his steps and made for it. As he rapidly neared it he was on the point of hailing its bearer when the roar of waters smote his ear in the silence of the night, and, barely arresting his steps in time, he found himself at the edge of a lofty chasm, the awful gulf at the base of which the torrent was sweeping with resistless fury. At this instant the bearer of the lantern took a flying leap to the opposite side of the gorge, burst into a scornful and unearthly peal of laughter, and vanished from the eyes of the affrighted rustic.

The ignis fatuus, will-of-the-wisp, or Jack o’ lantern was doubtless at the bottom of such a story as this, and in Milton’s “Paradise Lost” we find the following powerful illustrative passage, referring both to the natural phenomenon and the myth built upon it:—

In the same author’s poem of “L’Allegro” we find the will-of-the-wisp again referred to, this time under the title of “Friar’s lantern;” while Sir Walter Scott in his “Marmion” writes—

Shakespeare in 1 “Henry IV.” calls it a “ball of wildfire,” and also used the Latin name, ignis fatuus.

This bewilderment of the rustics by false fires does not always seem to have been the result of diabolical malice on the part of the fairies, but sometimes assumed the form of a practical joke. Like most practical jokes, it was probably much more amusing to the joker than the joked, and the benighted wanderer had little cause to thank him of whom it could be said—

An old legend tells us how on the advent of Christianity great Pan and all the woodland deities deserted their old haunts and were never seen of men again; and in the same way the march of science and the spread of education must ere now have killed off all the fairies, except in the most out-of-the-way districts. Once coaxed and propitiated, or shudderingly dreaded, they now but serve to make a pleasant fancy for a Christmas-card, or aid in the grand spectacular effects of the Christmas pantomime. Those, then, who would see these denizens of elf-land and all the grace and beauty that even the very name of fairy-land suggests, will seek them no longer in the ferny glades of some fair woodland or beneath the silvery beams of the moon, but reduce the matter to a prosaic visit to some great theatre, and endeavour to find in the great array of “supers” and the glowing of coloured fires the realisation of their fair ideal. The fairies are, in fact, as dead, as hopelessly defunct, as the proverbial door-nail, which seems to have been accepted by the wisdom of our ancestors as the most expressive symbol of mortality and the stern decrees of irreversible Fate.[26]

The Pigmies had not the same glamour of romance about them that was associated with the dwellers in elf-land. The consideration of them nevertheless comes well within the same chapter, as, like the fairies, they were a race of beings of human mould, but differing from the ordinary standard of humanity by reason of the exceeding smallness of their stature.

References to them will be found in the writings of Herodotus, Philostratus, Pliny, and many other authors, the first allusion to them being in the third book of the Iliad, where the Trojans are compared to cranes fighting against pigmies:—