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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Brownies and Bogles, by Louise Imogen Guiney
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Brownies and Bogles
+
+Author: Louise Imogen Guiney
+
+Illustrator: Edmund H. Garrett
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2012 [EBook #39782]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNIES AND BOGLES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE LITTLE "NECK" IN THE SWEDISH RIVER.]
+
+
+
+
+BROWNIES AND BOGLES
+
+BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
+
+    Author of
+    Songs at the Start
+    Goose-Quill Papers
+    The White Sail
+
+    _Fifty Illustrations by Edmund H Garrett_
+
+    BOSTON
+    D LOTHROP COMPANY
+    FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS
+
+
+
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1888,
+    BY
+    D. LOTHROP COMPANY.
+
+    PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, BOSTON.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+  WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID      11
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+  FAIRY RULERS                             22
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+  THE BLACK ELVES                          33
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+  THE LIGHT ELVES                          46
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+  DEAR BROWNIE                             63
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+  OTHER HOUSE-HELPERS                      79
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+  WATER-FOLK                               96
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+  MISCHIEF-MAKERS                         109
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+  PUCK; AND POETS' FAIRIES                123
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+  CHANGELINGS                             133
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+  FAIRYLAND                               146
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+  THE PASSING OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE        159
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+  The little river-neck of Sweden                    _Frontis._
+  "God speed you, gentlemen!"                               16
+  The Neapolitan fairy                                      25
+  The elf-monarch who was made court-fool                   29
+  The Isle of Rügen Dwarfs that give presents to children   31
+  The Dwarf that borrowed the silk gown                     35
+  The Black Dwarfs of Rügen planning mischief               38
+  The Troll's children                                      40
+  A Coblynau                                                42
+  "I can't stay any longer!"                                45
+  An elle-maid of Denmark                                   48
+  Bertha, the White Lady                                    49
+  Some Greek fairies                                        51
+  An elf-traveller                                          58
+  Brownie's delight was to do domestic service              65
+  Brownie relishes his bowl of cream                        70
+  All that Pück demanded                                    73
+  "Wag-at-the-Wa'"                                          75
+  An Irish Cluricaune                                       84
+  Japanese children and Brownies                            86
+  A little Fir-Darrig                                       87
+  The persistent Kobold of Köpenick                         93
+  Mer-folk                                                  98
+  The old Nix near Ghent                                   100
+  The work of the Nickel                                   101
+  Hob in Hobhole                                           106
+  The Irish Pooka was a horse too                          111
+  Will o'-the-Wisp                                         113
+  Pisky also chased the farmers' cows                      118
+  Red Comb was a tyrant                                    119
+  The Welsh Puck                                           126
+  A merry night-wanderer                                   127
+  "By the moon we sport and play"                          129
+  The elves whose little eyes glow                         132
+  There was an Irish changeling                            137
+  "The acorn before the oak have I seen"                   139
+  She heard a faint voice singing under a leaf             143
+  "Ainsel"                                                 144
+  Gitto Bach and the fairies                               148
+  Kaguyahime, the moon-maid                                149
+  The little hunchback                                     152
+  Taknakanx Kan                                            156
+  "Al was this loud fulfilled of faeries"                  161
+  Fairy stories                                            163
+  The capture of Skillywidden                              165
+  Good-bye                                                 171
+
+
+
+
+BROWNIES AND BOGLES.
+
+
+
+
+"BROWNIES AND BOGLES."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID.
+
+
+A FAIRY is a humorous person sadly out of fashion at present, who has
+had, nevertheless, in the actors' phrase, a long and prosperous run on
+this planet. When we speak of fairies nowadays, we think only of small
+sprites who live in a kingdom of their own, with manners, laws, and
+privileges very different from ours. But there was a time when "fairy"
+suggested also the knights and ladies of romance, about whom fine
+spirited tales were told when the world was younger. Spenser's Faery
+Queen, for instance, deals with dream-people, beautiful and brave, as do
+the old stories of Arthur and Roland; people who either never lived, or
+who, having lived, were glorified and magnified by tradition out of all
+kinship with common men. Our fairies are fairies in the modern sense. We
+will make it a rule, from the beginning, that they must be small, and we
+will put out any who are above the regulation height. Such as the
+charming famous Melusina, who wails upon her tower at the death of a
+Lusignan, we may as well skip; for she is a tall young lady, with a
+serpent's tail, to boot, and thus, alas! half-monster; for if we should
+accept any like her in our plan, there is no reason why we should not
+get confused among mermaids and dryads, and perhaps end by scoring down
+great Juno herself as a fairy! Many a dwarf and goblin, whom we shall
+meet anon, is as big as a child. Again, there are rumors in nearly every
+country of finding hundreds of them on a square inch of oak-leaf, or
+beneath the thin shadow of a blade of grass. The fairies of popular
+belief are little and somewhat shrivelled, and quite as apt to be
+malignant as to be frolicsome and gentle. We shall find that they were
+divided into several classes and families; but there is much analogy
+and vagueness among these divisions. By and by you may care to study
+them for yourselves; at present, we shall be very high-handed with the
+science of folk-lore, and pay no attention whatever to learned
+gentlemen, who quarrel so foolishly about these things that it is not
+helpful, nor even funny, to listen to them. A widely-spread notion is
+that when our crusading forefathers went to the Holy Land, they heard
+the Paynim soldiers, whom they fought, speaking much of the Peri, the
+loveliest beings imaginable, who dwelt in the East. Now, the Arabian
+language, which these swarthy warriors used, has no letter P, and
+therefore they called their spirits Feri, as did the Crusaders after
+them; and the word went back with them to Europe, and slipped into
+general use.
+
+"Elf" and "goblin," too, are interesting to trace. There was a great
+Italian feud, in the twelfth century, between the German Emperor and the
+Pope, whose separate partisans were known as the Guelfs and the
+Ghibellines. As time went on, and the memory of that long strife was
+still fresh, a descendant of the Guelfs would put upon anybody he
+disliked the odious name of Ghibelline; and the latter, generation after
+generation, would return the compliment ardently, in his own fashion.
+Both terms, finally, came to be mere catch-words for abuse and reproach.
+And the fairies, falling into disfavor with some bold mortals, were
+angrily nicknamed "elf" and "goblin"; in which shape you will recognize
+the last threadbare reminder of the once bitter and historic faction of
+Guelf and Ghibelline.
+
+It is likely that the tribe were designated as fairies because they
+were, for the most part, fair to see, and full of grace and charm,
+especially among the Celtic branches; and people, at all times, had too
+much desire to keep their good-will, and too much shrinking from their
+rancor and spite, to give them any but the most flattering titles. They
+were seldom addressed otherwise than "the little folk," "the kind folk,"
+"the gentry," "the fair family," "the blessings of their mothers," and
+"the dear wives"; just as, thousands of years back, the noblest and
+cleverest nation the world has ever seen, called the dreaded Three
+"Eumenides," the gracious ones. It is a sure and fast maxim that
+wheedling human nature puts on its best manners when it is afraid. In
+Goldsmith's racy play, She Stoops to Conquer, old Mistress Hardcastle
+meets what she takes to be a robber. She hates robbers, of course, and
+is scared half out of her five wits; but she implores mercy with a
+cowering politeness at which nobody can choose but laugh, of her "good
+Mr. Highwayman." Now, fairies, who knew how to be bountiful and tender,
+and who made slaves of themselves to serve men and women, as we shall
+see, were easily offended, and wrought great mischief and revenge if
+they were not treated handsomely; all of which kept people in the habit
+of courtesy toward them. A whirlwind of dust is a very annoying thing,
+and makes one splutter, and feel absurdly resentful; but in Ireland,
+exactly as in modern Greece, the peasantry thought that it betokened the
+presence of fairies going a journey; so they lifted their hats
+gallantly, and said: "God speed you, gentlemen!"
+
+[Illustration: "GOD SPEED YOU, GENTLEMEN!"]
+
+Fairies had their followers and votaries from early times. Nothing in
+the Bible hints that they were known among the heathens with whom the
+Israelites warred; nothing in classic mythology has any approach to
+them, except the beautiful wood and water-nymphs. Yet poet Homer, Pliny
+the scientist, and Aristotle the philosopher, had some notion of them,
+and of their influence. In old China, whole mountains were peopled with
+them, and the coriander-seeds grown in their gardens gave long life to
+those who ate of them. The Persians had a hierarchy of elves, and were
+the first to set aside Fairyland as their dwelling-place. Saxons, in
+their wild forests, believed in tiny dwarves or demons called Duergar.
+Celtic countries, Scotland, Brittany, Ireland, Wales, were always
+crowded with them. In the "uttermost mountains of India, under a merry
+part of heaven," or by the hoary Nile, according to other writers, were
+the Pigmeos, one cubit high, full-grown at three years, and old at
+seven, who fought with cranes for a livelihood. And the Swiss alchemist,
+Paracelsus (a most pompous and amusing old bigwig), wrote that in his
+day all Germany was filled with fairies two feet long, walking about in
+little coats!
+
+Their favorite color, noticeably in Great Britain, was green; the
+majority of them wore it, and grudged its adoption by a mortal. Sir
+Walter Scott tells us that it was a fatal hue to several families in his
+country, to the entire gallant race of Grahames in particular; for in
+battle a Grahame was almost always shot through the green check of his
+plaid. French fairies went in white; the Nis of Jutland, and many other
+house-sprites, in red and gray, or red and brown; and the plump Welsh
+goblins, whose holiday dress was also white, in the gayest and most
+varied tints of all. In North Wales were "the old elves of the blue
+petticoat"; in Cardiganshire was the familiar green again, though it was
+never seen save in the month of May; and in Pembrokeshire, a uniform of
+jolly scarlet gowns and caps. The fairy gentlemen were quite as much
+given to finery as the ladies, and their general air was one of extreme
+cheerful dandyism. Only the mine and ground-fairies were attired in
+sombre colors. Indeed, their idea of clothes was delightfully liberal;
+an elf bespoke himself by what he chose to wear; and fashions ranged all
+the way from the sprites of the Orkney Islands, who strutted about in
+armor, to the little Heinzelmänchen of Cologne, who scorned to be
+burdened with so much as a hat!
+
+People accounted in strange ways for their origin. A legend, firmly held
+in Iceland, says that once upon a time Eve was washing a number of her
+children at a spring, and when the Lord appeared suddenly before her,
+she hustled and hid away those who were not already clean and
+presentable; and that they being made forever invisible after, became
+the ancestors of the "little folk," who pervade the hills and caves and
+ruins to this day. In Ireland and Scotland fairies were spoken of as a
+wandering remnant of the fallen angels. The Christian world over, they
+were deemed either for a while, or perpetually, to be locked out from
+the happiness of the blessed in the next world. The Bretons thought
+their Korrigans had been great Gallic princesses, who refused the new
+faith, and clung to their pagan gods, and fell under a curse because of
+their stubbornness. The Small People of Cornwall, too, were imagined to
+be the ancient inhabitants of that country, long before Christ was born,
+not good enough for Heaven, and yet too good to be condemned altogether,
+whose fate it is to stray about, growing smaller and smaller, until by
+and by they vanish from the face of the earth.
+
+Therefore the poor fairy-folk, with whom theology deals so rudely, were
+supposed to be tired waiting, and anxious to know how they might fare
+everlastingly; and they waylaid many mortals, who, of course, really
+could tell them nothing, to ask whether they might not get into Heaven,
+by chance, at the end. It was their chief cause of doubt and melancholy,
+and ran in their little minds from year to year. And since we shall
+revert no more to the sad side of fairy-life, let us close with a most
+sweet story of something which happened in Sweden, centuries ago.
+
+Two boys were gambolling by a river, when a Neck rose up to the air,
+smiling, and twanging his harp. The elder child watched him, and cried
+mockingly: "Neck! what is the good of your sitting there and playing?
+You will never be saved!" And the Neck's sensitive eyes filled with
+tears, and, dropping his harp, he sank forlornly to the bottom. But when
+the brothers had gone home, and told their wise and saintly father, he
+said they had been thoughtlessly unkind; and he bade them hurry back to
+the river, and comfort the little water-spirit. From afar off they saw
+him again on the surface, weeping bitterly. And they called to him:
+"Dear Neck! do not grieve; for our father says that your Redeemer liveth
+also." Then he threw back his bright head, and, taking his harp, sang
+and played with exceeding gladness until sunset was long past, and the
+first star sent down its benediction from the sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FAIRY RULERS.
+
+
+THE forming of character among the fairy-folk was a very simple and
+sensible matter. You will imagine that the Pagan, Druid and Christian
+elves varied greatly. And they did; still their morals had nothing to do
+with it, nor pride, nor patriotism, nor descent, nor education; nor
+would all the philosophy you might crowd into a thimble have made one
+bee-big resident of Japan different from a man of his own size in Spain.
+
+They saved themselves no end of trouble by setting up the local
+barometer as their standard. The only Bible they knew was the weather,
+and they followed it stoutly. Whatever the climate was, whatever it had
+helped to make the grown-up nation who lived under it, that, every time,
+were the "brownies and bogles." Where the land was rocky and grim, and
+subject to wild storms and sudden darknesses, the fairies were grim and
+wild too, and full of wicked tricks. Where the landscape was level and
+green, and the crops grew peacefully, they were tame, as in central
+England, and inclined to be sentimental.
+
+And they copied the distinguishing traits of the race among whom they
+dwelt. A frugal Breton fairy spoke the Breton dialect; the Neapolitan
+had a tooth for fruits and macaroni; the Chinese was ceremonious and
+stern; a true Provençal fée was as vain as a peacock, flirting a mirror
+before her, and an Irish elf, bless his little red feathered caubeen!
+was never the man to run away from a fight.
+
+If you look on the map, and see a section of coast-line like that of
+Cornwall or Norway, a sunshiny, perilous, foamy place, make up your mind
+that the fairies thereabouts were fellows worth knowing; that you would
+have needed all your wit and pluck to get the better of them, and that
+they would have made live, hearty playmates, too, while in good humor,
+for any brave boy or girl.
+
+We do not know nearly so much about the genuine fairies as we should
+like. They must have been, at one time or another, in every European
+country. Most of the Oriental spirits were taller, and of another brood;
+they figured either as demons, or as what we should now call angels. But
+in the Germanic colonies, from very old days, fairy-lore was finely
+developed, and we count up tribe on tribe of necks, nixies, stromkarls
+and mermaids, who were water-sprites; of bergmännchen (little men of the
+mountain), and lovely wild-women in hilly places; of trolls around the
+woods and rocks; of elves in the air, and gnomes or duergars in caverns
+or mines. Yet from Portugal, and Russia, and Hungary, and from our own
+North American Indians, we learn so little that it is not worth
+counting.
+
+If the good dear peasants who were acquainted with the fairies had made
+more rhymes about them, and handed them down more attentively; if it had
+occurred to the knowing scholar-monks to keep diaries of elfin doings,
+as it would have done had they but known how soon their little friends
+were to be extinct, like the glyptodon and the dodo, how wise should we
+not be!
+
+[Illustration: THE NEAPOLITAN FAIRY.]
+
+But again, though there were hosts of supernatural beings in the beliefs
+of every old land, we have no business with any but the wee ones. And as
+these were settled most thickly in the Teutonic, Celtic and Cymric
+countries, we will turn our curiosity thither, without farther
+grumbling, and be glad to get so much authentic news of them as we may.
+
+Fairies, as a whole, seem at bottom rather weak and disconsolate. For
+all of their magic and cunning, for all of their high station, and its
+feasting and glory, they could not keep from seeking human sympathy.
+They did, indeed, hurt men, resent intrusions, foretell the future, and
+call down disease and storm, but they stood in awe of the weakest mortal
+because of his superior strength and size; they came to him to borrow
+food and medicine, and even to ask the loan of his house for their
+revels. They rendered themselves invisible, but he had always at his
+feet the fern-seed, the talisman of four-leaved clover (or, as in
+Scotland, the leaf of the ash or rowan-tree), with which he could defeat
+their design, and protect himself against the attacks of any witch, imp,
+or fairy whatsoever.
+
+Their government was a happy-go-lucky affair. The various tribes of
+fairies had no common interests which would make them sigh for
+post-offices, or cables, or general synods. Each set of them got along,
+independent of the rest. Once in a while a mine-man would live alone
+with his wife, pegging away at his daily work, without any idea of
+hurrahing for his King or, more likely, his Queen; or even of hunting up
+his own cousins in the next county.
+
+If we had elves in the United States nowadays, they would no doubt be
+American enough to elect a President and have him as honest, and steady,
+and sound-hearted as needs be. But dwelling as they did in feudal days,
+they set up thrones and sceptres all over Fairydom.
+
+According to the poets, Mab and Oberon are the crowned rulers of the
+little people. In reality, they had no supreme head. Among many parties
+and factions, each small agreeing community had its own chief, the
+tallest of his race, who was no chief at all, mind you, to the fairy
+neighbors a mile east. The delicate yellow Chinese fairy-mother was Si
+Wang Mu; and in the Netherlands, the elf-queen, who was also queen of
+the witches, was called Wanne Thekla.
+
+We snatch an item here and there of the royal histories. We find that
+the sweet-natured Elberich in the Niebelungen is the same as Oberon. In
+Germany was a dwarf-king named Goldemar, who lived with a knight, shared
+his bed, played at dice with him, gave him good advice, called him
+Brother-in-law very fondly, and comforted him with the music of his
+harp. But Goldemar, though the knight loved him and could touch and feel
+him, was unseen. He was like a wreath of blue smoke, or a fragment of
+moonlight, and you could run a sword through him, and never change his
+kind smile. His royal hands were lean, and soft, and cold as a frog's.
+After three years, perhaps when Brother-in-law was dead, or when he was
+married, and needed him no longer, the gentle dwarf-king disappeared.
+
+Sinnels, Gübich, and Heiling were other dwarf-princes, probably rivals
+of Goldemar, and ready to have at him till their breath gave out. Their
+little majesties were quarrelsome as cock-sparrows. The elf-monarch
+Laurîn was once conquered by Theodoric; and because he had been
+treacherous in war (which was not "fair" at all, despite the proverb),
+he got a very sad rebuff to his dignity, in being made fool or buffoon
+at the court of Bern.
+
+[Illustration: THE ELF-MONARCH WHO WAS MADE COURT-FOOL.]
+
+We are told in the Mabinogion how the daughter of Llud Llaw Ereint was
+"the most splendid maiden in the three islands of the mighty," and how
+for her Gwyn ap Nudd, the Welsh fairy-king, battles every May-day from
+dawn until sunset. Gwyn once carried her off from Gwythyr, her true
+lord; and both lovers were so furious and cruel against each other that
+blessed King Arthur condemned them to wage bitter fight on each
+first-of-May till the world's end; and to whomsoever is victorious the
+greatest number of times, the fair lady shall then be given. Let us
+hope the reward will not fall to thieving Gwyn.
+
+We have said that we should do pretty much as we pleased in ranging the
+myriad fairy-folk into ranks and species. If, as we prowl about, we see
+a baby in the house of the Elfsmiths, who has a look of the Elfbrowns,
+we will immediately kidnap him from his fond parents, and add him to the
+family he resembles. Now that might make wailing and confusion, and
+bring down vengeance on our heads, if there were any Queen Mab left to
+rap us to order; but as things go, we shall find it a very neat way of
+smoothing difficulties.
+
+[Illustration: THE ISLE OF RÜGEN DWARVES THAT GIVE PRESENTS TO
+CHILDREN.]
+
+Of course there are certain pigwidgeons too accomplished, too slippery,
+too many things in one, to be ticketed and tied down like the rest; such
+versatile fellows as the Brown Dwarves of the Isle of Rügen, for
+instance. They lived in what were called the Vine-hills, and were not
+quite eighteen inches high. They wore little snuff-brown jackets and a
+brown cap (which made them invisible, and allowed them to pass through
+the smallest keyhole), with one wee silver bell at its peak, not to be
+lost for any money. But they did some roguish things; and children who
+fell into their hands had to serve them for fifty years! With caprice
+usual to their kin, they will, on other occasions, befriend and protect
+children, and give them presents; or plague untidy servants, like
+Brownie, or lead travellers astray by night into bogs and marshes, like
+the Ellydan and the Fir-Darrig, and mischievous double-faced Robin
+Goodfellow himself.
+
+An ancient tradition says that while the grass-blades are sprouting at
+the root, the earth-elves water and nourish them; and the moment the
+growth pierces the soil, affectionate air-elves take it in charge.
+Therefore we borrow a hint from the grass; and after first going down
+among the swarthy fairies who burrow underground, we shall pass up to
+companionship with little beings so beautiful that wherever they flock
+there is starlight and song.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE BLACK ELVES.
+
+
+ACCORDING to the very old Scandinavian notion, land-fairies were of two
+sorts; the Light or Good Elves who dwelt in air, or out-of-doors on the
+earth, and the Black or Evil Elves who dwelt beneath it.
+
+We will follow the Norse folk. If we were required to group human beings
+under two headings, we should choose that same Good and Evil, because
+the division occurs to one naturally, because it saves time, and because
+everybody comprehends it, and sees that it is based upon law; and so do
+we deal with our wonder-friends, who have the strange moral sorcery
+belonging to each of us their masters, to help or to harm.
+
+The evil fairies, then, were the scowling underground tribes, who hid
+themselves from the frank daylight, and the open reaches of the fields.
+Yet just as the good fairies had many a sad failing to offset their
+grace and charm, the grim, dark-skinned manikins had sudden impulses
+towards honor and kindness. In fact, as we noted before, they were
+astonishingly like our fellow-creatures, of whom scarce any is entirely
+faultless, or entirely warped and ruined.
+
+For instance, the Hill-men, in Switzerland, were very generous-minded;
+they drove home stray lambs at night, and put berry-bushes in the way of
+poor children. And the more modern Dwarves of Germany, frequenting the
+clefts of rocks, were silent, mild, and well-disposed, and apt to bring
+presents to those who took their fancy. Like others of the elf-kingdom,
+they loved to borrow from mortals. Once a little bowing Dwarf came to a
+lady for the loan of her silk gown for a fairy-bride. (You can imagine
+that, at the ceremony, the groom must have had a pretty hunt among the
+wilderness of finery to get at her ring-finger!) Of course the lady gave
+it; but worrying over its tardy return, she went to the Dwarves' hill
+and asked for it aloud. A messenger with a sorrowful countenance
+brought it to her at once, spotted over and over with wax. But he told
+her that had she been less impatient every stain would have been a
+diamond!
+
+[Illustration: THE DWARF THAT BORROWED THE SILK GOWN.]
+
+The huge, terrible, ogre-like Hindoo Rakshas, the weird Divs and Jinns
+of Persia, and the ancient demon-dwarves of the south called Panis, may
+be considered the foster-parents of our dwindled minims, as the glorious
+Peris on the other hand gave their name, and some of their qualities, to
+a little European family of very different ancestry.
+
+The Black Elves will serve as our general name for dwarves and
+mine-fairies. These are closely connected in all legends, live in the
+same neighborhoods, and therefore claim a mention together. They have
+four points in common: dark skin; short, bulky bodies; fickle and
+irritable natures; and occupations as miners, misers, or metalsmiths.
+And because of their exceeding industry, on the old maxim's authority,
+where all work and no play made Jack a dull boy, they are curiously
+heavy-headed and preposterous jacks; and, waiving their plain faces, not
+in any wise engaging. Yet perhaps, being largely German, they may be
+philosophers, and so vastly superior to any little gabbling,
+somersaulting ragamuffin over in Ireland.
+
+In the Middle Ages, they were described as withered and leering, with
+small, sharp, snapping black eyes, bright as gems; with cracked voices,
+and matted hair, and horns peering from it! and as if that were not
+enough adornment, they had claws, which must have been filched from the
+ghosts of mediæval pussy-cats, on their fingers and toes.
+
+The first Duergars belonging to the Gotho-German mythology, were
+muscular and strong-legged; and when they stood erect, their arms
+reached to the ground. They were clever and expert handlers of metal,
+and made of gold, silver and iron, the finest armor in the world. They
+wrought for Odin his great spear, and for Thor his hammer, and for Frey
+the wondrous ship _Skidbladnir_.
+
+Long ago, too, armor-making Elves, black as pitch, lived in
+Svart-Alfheim, in the bowels of the earth, and were able, by their
+glance or touch or breath, to cause sickness and death wheresoever they
+wished.
+
+[Illustration: THE BLACK DWARVES OF RÜGEN PLANNING MISCHIEF.]
+
+Still uglier were the Black Dwarves of the mysterious Isle of Rügen; nor
+had they any frolicsome or cordial ways which should bring up our
+opinion of them. Their pale eyes ran water, and every midnight they
+mewed and screeched horribly from their holes. In idle summer-hours they
+sat under the elder-trees, planning by twos and threes to wreak mischief
+on mankind. They, as well, were once useful, if not beautiful; for in
+the days when heroes wore a panoply of steel, the Black Dwarves wrought
+fair helmets and corselets of cobwebby mail which no lance could pierce,
+and swords flexible as silk which could unhorse the mightiest foe. The
+little blackamoors frequented mining districts, and dug for ore on
+their own account. They were said to be very rich, owning unnumbered
+chests stored underground. The most exciting tales about gnomes of all
+nations were founded on the efforts of daring mortals to get possession
+of their wealth.
+
+To the mining division belong the dwarf-Trolls of Denmark and Sweden
+(for there were giant-Trolls as well), and the whimsical Spriggans of
+Cornwall. The Trolls burrowed in mounds and hills, and were called also
+Bjerg-folk or Hill-folk; they lived in societies or families, baking and
+brewing, marrying and visiting, in the old humdrum way. They made
+fortunes, and hoarded up heaps of money. But they were often obliging
+and benevolent; it gave them pleasure to bestow gifts, to lend and
+borrow, and sometimes, alas! to steal. They played prettily on musical
+instruments, and were very jolly. People used to see the stumpy little
+children of the genteel Troll who lived at Kund in Jutland, climbing up
+the knoll which was the roof of their own house, and rolling down one
+after the other with shouts of laughter. The Trolls were famous
+gymnasts, and very plump and round. Our word "droll" is left to us in
+merry remembrance of them.
+
+[Illustration: THE TROLL'S CHILDREN.]
+
+They were tractable creatures, as you may know from the tale of the
+farmer, who, ploughing an angry Troll's land, agreed, for the sake of
+peace, to go halves in the crops sown upon it, so that one year the
+Troll should have what grew above ground, and the next year what grew
+under. But the sly farmer planted radishes and carrots, and the Troll
+took the tops; and the following season he planted corn; and his queer
+partner gathered up the roots and marched off in triumph. Indeed, it was
+so easy to outwit the simple Troll that a generous farmer would never
+have played the game out, and we should have lost our little story. It
+was mean to take advantage of the sweet fellow's trustfulness. There was
+an English schoolmaster once, a man wise, firm, and kind, and of vast
+influence, of whom one of his boys said to another: "It's a shame to
+tell a lie to Arnold; he always believes it." That was a ray of real
+chivalry.
+
+The Spriggans were fond of dwelling near walls and loose stones, with
+which it was unlucky to tamper, and where they slipped in and out with
+suspicious eyes, guarding their buried treasure. If a house was robbed,
+or the cattle were carried away, or a hurricane swooped down on a
+Cornish village, the neighbors attributed their trouble to the
+Spriggans; whereby you may believe they had fine reputations for
+meddlesomeness. Their cousins, the Buccas, Bockles or Knockers, were
+gentlemen who went about thumping and rapping wherever there was a vein
+of ore for the weary workmen, cheating, occasionally, to break the
+monotony.
+
+[Illustration: A COBLYNAU.]
+
+The Welsh Coblynau followed the same profession, and pointed out the
+desired places in mines and quarries. The Coblynau were copper-colored,
+and very homely, as were all the pigmies who lived away from the sun;
+they were busybodies, half-a-yard high, who imitated the dress of their
+friends the miners, and pegged away at the rocks, like them, with great
+noise and gusto, accomplishing nothing. Their houses were far-removed
+from mortal vision, and unlike certain proper children, now obsolete,
+the Coblynau themselves were generally heard, but not seen.
+
+Their German relation was the Wichtlein (little wight) an extremely
+small fellow, whom the Bohemians named Hans-schmiedlein (little John
+Smith!) because he makes a noise like the stroke of an anvil.
+
+Dwarves and mine-men went about, unfailingly, with a purseful of gold.
+But if anyone snatched it from them, only stones and twine and a pair of
+scissors were to be found in it. The Leprechaun, or Cluricaune, whom we
+shall meet later as the fairy-cobbler, was an Irish celebrity who knew
+where pots of guineas were hidden, and who carried in his pocket a
+shilling often-spent and ever-renewed. He looked, in this banker-like
+capacity, a clumsy small boy, dressed in various ways, sometimes in a
+long coat and cocked hat, unlike the Danish Troll, who kept to homely
+gray, with the universal little red cap. Even the respectable Kobold,
+who was, virtually, a house-spirit, caught the fever of fortune-hunting,
+and often threw up his domestic duties to seek the fascinating nuggets
+in the mines.
+
+There is a funny anecdote of a Troll who, as was common with his race,
+cunningly concealed his prize under the shape of a coal. Now a peasant
+on his way to church one bright Sunday morning saw him trying vainly to
+move a couple of crossed straws which had blown upon his coal; for
+anything in the shape of a cross seemed to shrivel up an elf's power in
+the most startling manner. So the little sprite turned, half-crying, and
+begged the peasant to move the straws for him. But the man was too
+shrewd for that, and took up the coal, straws and all, and ran, despite
+the poor Troll's screaming, and saw, on reaching home, that he had
+captured a lump of solid gold.
+
+All Black Elves were particular about their neighborhoods, and a whole
+colony would migrate at once if they took the least offence, or if the
+villagers about got "too knowing" for them. (An American poet once wrote
+a sonnet "To Science," in which he berated her for having made him "too
+knowing," and for having driven
+
+        --"the Naiad from her flood
+    The elfin from the green grass";
+
+and it was in consequence of his very knowingness, no doubt, that,
+beauty-loving and marvel-loving as were his sensitive eyes, they never
+saw so much as the vanishing shadow of a fairy.) A little dwarf-woman
+told two young Bavarians that she intended to leave her favorite
+dwelling, because of the shocking cursing and swearing of the
+country-people! But they were not all so godly.
+
+[Illustration: "I CAN'T STAY ANY LONGER!"]
+
+Ever since the great god Thor threw his hammer at the Trolls, they have
+hated noise as much as Mr. Thomas Carlyle, who, however, made Thor's own
+bluster in the world himself. They sought sequestered places that they
+might not be disturbed. The Prussian mites near Dardesheim were
+frightened away by the forge and the factory. Above all else,
+church-bells distressed them, and spoiled their tempers. A huckster once
+passed a Danish Troll, sitting disconsolately on a stone, and asked him
+what the matter might be. "I hate to leave this country," blubbered the
+fat mourner, "but I can't stay where there is such an eternal ringing
+and dinging!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE LIGHT ELVES.
+
+
+Over the beautiful Light Elves of the _Edda_, in old Scandinavia, ruled
+the beloved sun-god Frey; and they lived in a summer land called
+Alfheim, and it was their office to sport in air or on the leaves of
+trees, and to make the earth thrive.
+
+But they changed character as centuries passed; and they came to
+resemble the fairies of Great Britain in their extreme waywardness and
+fickleness. For though they were fair and benevolent most of the time,
+they could be, when it so pleased them, ugly and hurtful; and what they
+could be, they very often were; for fairies were not expected to keep a
+firm rein on their moods and tempers.
+
+Norwegian peasants described some of their Huldrafolk as tiny bare boys,
+with tall hats; and in Sweden, as well, they were slender and delicate.
+When a Swedish elf-maid or moon-maid wished to approach the inmates of a
+house, she rode on a sunbeam through the keyhole, or between the
+openings in a shutter.
+
+The German wild-women were like them, going about alone, and having fine
+hair flowing to their feet. They had some odd traits, one of which was
+sermonizing! and exhorting stray mortals who had done them a service, to
+lead a godly life.
+
+The elle-maid in Denmark and in neighboring countries was always winsome
+and graceful, and carried an enchanted harp. She loved moonlight best,
+and was a charming dancer. But her evil element was in her very beauty,
+with which she entrapped foolish young gentlemen, and waylaid them, and
+carried them off who knows whither? She could be detected by the shape
+of her back, it being hollow, like a spoon; which was meant to show that
+there was something wrong with her, and that she was not what she
+seemed, but fit only for the abhorrence of passers-by. The elle-man, her
+mate, was old and ill-favored, a disagreeable person; for if any one
+came near him while he was bathing in the sun, he opened his mouth and
+breathed pestilence upon them.
+
+[Illustration: AN ELLE-MAID, OF DENMARK.]
+
+[Illustration: BERTHA, THE WHITE LADY.]
+
+A common trait of the air-fairies was to assist at a birth and give the
+infant, at their will, good and bad gifts. Dame Bertha, the White Lady
+of Germany, came to the birth of certain princely babes, and the
+Korrigans made it a general practice. Whenever they nursed or tended a
+new-born mortal, bestowed presents on him and foretold his destiny, one
+of the little people was almost always perverse enough to bestow and
+foretell something unfortunate. You all know Grimm's beautiful tale of
+Dornröschen, which in English we call The Sleeping Beauty, where the
+jealous thirteenth fairy predicts the poor young lady's spindle-wound.
+Around the famous Roche des Fées in the forest of Theil, are those who
+believe yet that the elves pass in and out at the chimneys, on errands
+to little children.
+
+The modern Greek fairies haunted trees, danced rounds, bathed in cool
+water, and carried off whomsoever they coveted. A person offending them
+in their own fields was smitten with disease.
+
+The Chinese Shan Sao were a foot high, lived among the mountains, and
+were afraid of nothing. They, too, were revengeful; for if they were
+attacked or annoyed by mortals, they "caused them to sicken with
+alternate heat and cold." Bonfires were burnt to drive them away.
+
+The innocent White Dwarves of the Isle of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, made
+lace-work of silver, too fine for the eye to detect, all winter long;
+but came idly out into the woods and fields with returning spring,
+leaping and singing, and wild with affectionate joy. They were not
+allowed to ramble about in their own shapes; therefore they changed
+themselves to doves and butterflies, and winged their way to good
+mortals, whom they guarded from all harm.
+
+[Illustration: SOME GREEK FAIRIES.]
+
+The Korrigans of Brittainy, mentioned a while ago, were peculiar in many
+ways. They had beautiful singing voices and bright eyes, but they never
+danced. They preferred to sit still at twilight, like mermaids, combing
+their long golden hair. The tallest of them was nearly two feet high,
+fair as a lily, and transparent as dew itself, yet able as the rest to
+seem dark, and humpy, and terrifying. He who passed the night with them,
+or joined in their sports, was sure to die shortly, since their very
+breath or touch was fatal. And again, as in the case of Seigneur Nann,
+about whom a touching Breton ballad was made, they doomed to death any
+who refused to marry one of them within three days.
+
+Of the American Indian fairies we do not know much. In Mr. Schoolcraft's
+books of Indian legends there is a beautiful little Bone-dwarf, who may
+almost be considered a fairy. In the land of the Sioux they tell the
+pretty story of Antelope and Karkapaha, and how the wee warrior-folk,
+thronging on the hill, clad in deerskin, and armed with feathered arrow
+and spear, put the daring heart of a slain enemy into the breast of the
+timid lover, Karkapaha, and made him worthy both to win and keep his
+lovely maiden, and to deserve homage for his bravery, from her tribe
+and his. Some of you will remember one thing against the Puk-Wudjies,
+which is an Algonquin name meaning "little vanishing folk," to wit: that
+they killed Hiawatha's friend, "the very strong man Kwasind," as our
+Longfellow called him. He had excited their envy, and they flung on his
+head, as he floated in his canoe, the only thing on earth that could
+kill him, the seed-vessel of the white pine.
+
+The Scotch, Irish and English overground fairies were, as a general
+thing, very much alike. They had the power of becoming visible or
+invisible, compressing or enlarging their size, and taking any shape
+they pleased. When an Irish Shefro was disturbed or angry, and wanted to
+get a house or a person off her grounds, she put on the strangest
+appearances: she could crow, spit fire, slap a tail or a hoof about,
+grin like a dragon, or give a frightful, weird, lion-like roar. Of
+course the object of her polite attentions thought it best to oblige
+her. If she and her companions were anxious to enter a house, they
+lifted the spryest of their number to the keyhole, and pushed him
+through. He carried a piece of string, which he fastened to the inside
+knob, and the other end to a chair or stool; and over this perilous
+bridge the whole giggling tribe marched in one by one. The Irish and
+Scotch fays were more mischievous than the English, but have not fared
+so well, having had no memorable verses made about them. The little
+Scots were sometimes dwarfish wild creatures, wrapped in their plaids,
+or, oftener, comely and yellow-haired; the ladies in green mantles,
+inlaid with wild-flowers; and dapper little gentlemen in green trousers,
+fastened with bobs of silk. They carried arrows, and went on tiny
+spirited horses, as did the Welsh fairies, "the silver bosses of their
+bridles jingling in the night-breeze." An old account of Scotland says
+that they were "clothed in green, with dishevelled hair floating over
+their shoulders, and faces more blooming than the vermeil blush of a
+summer morning."
+
+Their Welsh cousins were many. A native poet once sang of them:
+
+          ----In every hollow,
+    A hundred wry-mouthed elves.
+
+They were queer little beings, and had notions of what was decorous, for
+they combed the goats' beards every Friday night, "to make them decent
+for Sunday!" They were very quarrelsome; you could hear them snarling
+and jabbering like jays among themselves, so that in some parts of Wales
+a proverb has arisen: "They can no more agree than the fairies!" The
+inhabitants believed that the midgets never had courage to go through
+the gorse, or prickly furze, which is a common shrub in that country.
+One sick old woman who was bothered by the Tylwyth Teg ("the fair
+family") souring her milk and spilling her tea, used to choke up her
+room with the furze, and make such a hedge about the bed, that nothing
+larger than a needle could be so much as pointed at her. In Breconshire
+the Tylwyth Teg gave loaves to the peasantry, which, if they were not
+eaten then and there in the dark, would turn in the morning into
+toadstools! When Welsh fairies took it into their heads to bestow food
+and money, very lazy people were often supported in great style, without
+a stroke of work. And the Tylwyth Teg loved to reward patience and
+generosity. They played the harp continuously, and, on grand occasions,
+the bugle; but if a bagpipe was heard among them, that indicated a
+Scotch visitor from over the border.
+
+King James I. of England mentions in his _Dæmonology_ a "King and Queene
+of Phairie: sic a jolie courte and traine as they had!" Nothing could
+have exceeded the state and elegance of their ceremonious little lives.
+According to a sweet old play, they had houses made all of
+mother-of-pearl, an ivory tennis-court, a nutmeg parlor, a sapphire
+dairy-room, a ginger hall; chambers of agate, kitchens of crystal, the
+jacks of gold, the spits of Spanish needles! They dressed in imported
+cobweb! with a four-leaved clover, lined with a dog-tooth violet, for
+overcoat; and they ate (think of eating such a pretty thing!) delicious
+rainbow-tart, the trout-fly's gilded wing, and
+
+      ----the broke heart of a nightingale
+    O'ercome with music.
+
+But we never heard that Chinese or Scandinavian elves could afford such
+luxury.
+
+Their English dwellings were often in the bubble-castles of sunny
+brooks; and the bright-jacketed hobgoblins took their pleasure sitting
+under toadstools, or paddling about in egg-shell boats, playing
+jew's-harps large as themselves. Beside the freehold of blossomy
+hillocks and dingles, they had dells of their own, and palaces, with
+everything lovely in them; and whatever they longed for was to be had
+for the wishing. They had fair gardens in clefts of the Cornish rocks,
+where vari-colored flowers, only seen by moonlight, grew; in these
+gardens they loved to walk, tossing a posy to some mortal passing by;
+but if he ever gave it away they were angry with him forever after. They
+liked to fish; and the crews put out to sea in funny uniforms of green,
+with red caps. They travelled on a fern, a rush, a bit of weed, or even
+boldly bestrode the bee and the dragon-fly; and they went to the chase,
+as in the Isle of Man, on full-sized horses whenever they could get
+them! and when it came to time of war, their armies laid-to like
+Alexander's own, with mushroom-shield and bearded grass-blades for
+mighty spears, and honeysuckle trumpets braying furiously! There are
+traditions of battles so vehement and long that the cavalry trampled
+down the dews of the mountain-side, and sent many a peerless fellow, at
+every charge, to the fairy hospitals and cemeteries.
+
+[Illustration: AN ELF-TRAVELLER.]
+
+Their chief and all but universal amusement, sacred to moonlight and
+music, was dancing hand-in-hand; and what was called a fairy-ring was
+the swirl of grasses in a field taller and deeper green than the rest,
+which was supposed to mark their circling path. Inside these rings it
+was considered very dangerous to sleep, especially after sundown. If
+you put your foot within them, with a companion's foot upon your own,
+the elfin tribe became visible to you, and you heard their tinkling
+laughter; and if, again, you wished a charm to defy all their anger,
+for they hated to be overlooked by mortal eyes, you had merely to turn
+your coat inside out. But a house built where the wee folks had danced
+was made prosperous.
+
+Hear how deftly old John Lyly, nearly four hundred years ago, put the
+dancing in his lines:
+
+    Round about, round about, in a fine ring-a,
+    Thus we dance, thus we prance, and thus we sing-a!
+    Trip and go, to and fro, over this green-a;
+    All about, in and out, for our brave queen-a.
+
+For the elves, as we know, were governed generally by a queen, who bore
+a white wand, and stood in the centre while her gay retainers skipped
+about her. Fairy-rings were common in every Irish parish. At Alnwick in
+Northumberland County in England, was one celebrated from antiquity; and
+it was believed that evil would befall any who ran around it more than
+nine times. The children were constantly running it that often; but
+nothing could tempt the bravest of them all to go one step farther. In
+France, as in Wales, the fairies guarded the cromlechs with care, and
+preferred to hold revel near them.
+
+At these merry festivals, in the pauses of action, meat and drink were
+passed around. A Danish ballad tells how Svend-Fälling drained a horn
+presented by elf-maids, which made him as strong as twelve men, and gave
+him the appetite of twelve men, too; a natural but embarrassing
+consequence. It used to be proclaimed that any one daring enough to rush
+on a fairy feast, and snatch the drinking-glass, and get away with it,
+would be lucky henceforward. The famous goblet, the Luck of Edenhall,
+was seized after that fashion, by one of the Musgraves; whereat the
+little people disappeared, crying aloud:
+
+    If that glass do break or fall,
+    Farewell the Luck of Edenhall!
+
+Once upon a time the Duke of Wharton dined at Edenhall, and came very
+near ruining his host, and all his race; for the precious Luck slipped
+from his hand; but the clever butler at his elbow happily caught it in
+his napkin, and averted the catastrophe: so the beautiful cup and the
+favored family enjoy each other in security to this day.
+
+In the Song of Sir Olaf, we are told how he fell in, while riding by
+night, with the whirling elves; and how, after their every plea and
+threat that he should stay from his to-be-wedded sweetheart at home, and
+dance, instead, with them, he hears the weird French refrain:
+
+    O the dance, the dance! How well the dance goes under the trees!
+
+And through their wicked magic, after all his steadfast resistance, with
+the wild music and the dizzy measure whirling in his brain, there he
+dies.
+
+All the gay, unsteady, fantastic motion broke up at the morning
+cock-crow, and instantly the little bacchantes vanished. And, strangest
+of all! the betraying flash of the dawn showed their peach-like color,
+their blonde, smooth hair, and bodily agility changed, like a Dead Sea
+apple, and turned into ugliness and distortion! It was not the lovely
+vision of a minute back which hurried away on the early breeze, but a
+crowd of leering, sullen-eyed bugaboos, laughing fiercely to think how
+they had deceived a beholder.
+
+These, then, were the Light Elves, not all lovable, or loyal, or gentle,
+as they were expected to be, but cruel to wayfarers like poor Sir Olaf,
+and treacherous and mocking; beautiful so long as they were good, and
+hideous when they had done a foul deed. It is hard to say wherein they
+were better than the Underground Elves, who were, despite some kindly
+characteristics, professional doers of evil, and had not the choice or
+chance of being so happy and fortunate. But we record them as we find
+them, not without the sobering thought that here, as at every point, the
+fairies are a running commentary on the puzzle of our own human life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+DEAR BROWNIE.
+
+
+BROWNIE, the willing drudge, the kind little housemate, was the most
+popular of all fairies; and it is he whom we now love and know best.
+
+He was a sweet, unselfish fellow; but very wide awake as well, full of
+mischief, and spirited as a young eagle, when he was deprived of his
+rights. He belonged to a tribe of great influence and size, and each
+division of that tribe, inhabiting different countries, bore a different
+name. But the word Brownie, to English-speaking people, will serve as
+meaning those fairies who attached themselves persistently to any spot
+or any family, and who labored in behalf of their chosen home.
+
+The Brownie proper belonged to the Shetland and the Western Isles, to
+Cornwall, and the Highlands and Borderlands of Scotland. He was an
+indoor gentleman, and varied in that from our friends the Black and
+Light Elves. He took up his dwelling in the house or the barn, sometimes
+in a special corner, or under the roof, or even in the cellar pantries,
+where he ate a great deal more than was good for him. In the beginning
+he was supposed to have been covered with short curly brown hair, like a
+clipped water-spaniel, whence his name. But he changed greatly in
+appearance. Later accounts picture him with a homely, sunburnt little
+face, as if bronzed with long wind and weather; dark-coated, red-capped,
+and shod with noiseless slippers, which were as good as wings to his
+restless feet. Along with him, in Scotch houses, and in English houses
+supplanting him, often lived the Dobie or Dobbie who was not by any
+means so bright and active ("O, ye stupid Dobie!" runs a common phrase),
+and therefore not to be confounded with him.
+
+[Illustration: BROWNIE'S DELIGHT WAS TO DO DOMESTIC SERVICE.]
+
+Brownie's delight was to do domestic service; he churned, baked, brewed,
+mowed, threshed, swept, scrubbed, and dusted; he set things in order,
+saved many a step to his mistress, and took it upon himself to manage
+the maid-servants, and reform them, if necessary, by severe and original
+measures. Neatness and precision he dearly loved, and never forgot to
+drop a penny over-night in the shoe of the person deserving well of him.
+But lax offenders he pinched black and blue, and led them an exciting
+life of it. His favorite revenge, among a hundred equally ingenious, was
+dragging the disorderly servant out of bed. A great poet announced in
+Brownie's name:
+
+    'Twixt sleep and wake
+    I do them take,
+    And on the key-cold floor them throw!
+    If out they cry
+    Then forth I fly,
+    And loudly laugh I: "Ho, ho, ho!"
+
+Like all gnomes truly virtuous, he could be the worst varlet, the most
+meddlesome, troublesome, burdensome urchin to be imagined, when the whim
+was upon him. At such times he gloried in undoing all his good deeds;
+and by way of emphasizing his former tidiness and industry, he tore
+curtains, smashed dishes, overturned tables, and made havoc among the
+kitchen-pans. All this was done in a sort of holy wrath; for be it to
+Brownie's credit, that if he were treated with courtesy, and if the
+servants did their own duties honestly, he was never other than his
+gentle, well-behaved, hard-working little self.
+
+He asked no wages; he had a New England scorn of "tipping," when he had
+been especially obliging; and he could not be wheedled into accepting
+even so much as a word of praise. A farmer at Washington, in Sussex,
+England, who had often been surprised in the morning at the large heaps
+of corn threshed for him during the night, determined at last to sit up
+and watch what went on. Creeping to the barn-door, and peering through a
+chink, he saw two manikins working away with their fairy flails, and
+stopping an instant now and then, only to say to each other: "See how I
+sweat! See how I sweat!" the very thing which befell Milton's "lubbar
+fiend" in L'Allegro. The farmer, in his pleasure, cried: "Well done, my
+little men!" whereupon the startled sprites uttered a cry, and whirled
+and whisked out of sight, never to toil again in his barn.
+
+It is said that not long ago, there was a whole tribe of tiny, naked
+Kobolds (Brownie's German name) called Heinzelmänchen, who bound
+themselves for love to a tailor of Cologne, and did, moreover, all the
+washing and scouring and kettle-cleaning for his wife. Whatever work
+there was left for them to do was straightway done; but no man ever
+beheld them. The tailor's prying spouse played many a ruse to get sight
+of them, to no avail. And they, knowing her curiosity and grieved at it,
+suddenly marched, with music playing, out of the town forever. People
+heard their flutes and viols only, for none saw the little exiles
+themselves, who got into a boat, and sailed "westward, westward!" like
+Hiawatha, and the city's luck is thought to have gone with them.
+
+But Brownie, who would take neither money, nor thanks, nor a glance of
+mortal eyes, and who departed in high dudgeon as soon as a reward was
+offered him, could be bribed very prettily, if it were done in a polite
+and secretive way. He was not too scrupulous to pocket whatever might be
+dropped on a stair, or a window-sill, where he was sure to pass several
+times in a day, and walk off, whistling, to keep his own counsel, and
+say nothing about it. And for goodies, mysterious goodies left in queer
+places by chance, he had excellent tooth. Housewives, from the era of
+the first Brownie, never failed slyly to gladden his favorite haunt with
+the dish which he liked best, and which, so long as it was fresh and
+plentiful, he considered a satisfactory squaring-up of accounts. One of
+these desired treats was knuckled cakes, made of meal warm from the
+mill, toasted over the embers, and spread with honey. To other tidbits,
+also, he was partial; but, first and last, he relished his bowl of cream
+left on the floor overnight. Cream he drank and expected the world over;
+and in Devon, and in the Isle of Man, he liked a basin of water for a
+bath.
+
+[Illustration: BROWNIE RELISHES HIS BOWL OF CREAM.]
+
+Fine clothes were quite to his mind; he was very vain when he had them;
+and it was what Pet Marjorie called "majestick pride," and no whim of
+anger or sensitiveness, which sent him hurrying off the moment his
+wardrobe was supplied by some grateful housekeeper, to eschew work
+forever after, and set himself up as a gentleman of leisure. Many funny
+stories are told of his behavior under an unexpected shower of dry
+goods. Brownie, who in his humble station, was so steadfast and
+sensible, had his poor head completely turned by the vision of a new
+bright-colored jacket. The gentle little Piskies or Pixies of
+Devonshire, who are of the Brownie race, and very different from the
+malicious Piskies in Cornwall, were likewise great dandies, and sure to
+decamp as soon as ever they obtained a fresh cap or petticoat. Indeed,
+they dropped violent hints on the subject. Think of a sprite-of-all-work,
+recorded as being too proud to accept any regular payment even in fruit
+or grain, standing up brazenly before his mistress, his sly eyes fixed
+on her, drawling out this absurd, whimpering rhyme (for Piskies scorned
+to talk prose!):
+
+    Little Pisky, fair and slim,
+    Without a rag to cover him!
+
+With his lisp, and his funny snicker, and his winning impudence
+generally, don't you think he could have wheedled clothes out of a
+stone? Of course the lady humored him, and made him a costly, trimmed
+suit; and the ungrateful small beggar made off with it post-haste,
+chanting to another tune:
+
+    Pisky fine, Pisky gay!
+    Pisky now will run away.
+
+The moment the Brownie-folk could cut a respectable figure in
+fashionable garments, they turned their backs on an honest living, and
+skurried away to astonish the belles in Fairyland.
+
+Very much the same thing befell some German house-dwarves, who used to
+help a poor smith, and make his kettles and pans for him. They took
+their milk evening by evening, and went back gladly to their work, to
+the smith's great profit and pleasure. When he had grown rich, his
+thankful wife made them pretty crimson coats and caps, and laid both
+where the wee creatures might stumble on them. But when they had put the
+uniforms on, they shrieked "Paid off, paid off!" and, quitting a task
+half-done, returned no more.
+
+The Pisky was not alone in his bold request for his sordid little
+heart's desire. A certain Pück lived thirty years in a monastery in
+Mecklenburg, Germany, doing faithful drudgery from his youth up; and one
+of the monks wrote, in his ingenious Latin, that on going away, all he
+asked was "_tunicam de diversis coloribus, et tintinnabulis plenam!_"
+You may put the goblin's vanity into English for yourselves. Brownie is
+known as Shelley-coat in parts of Scotland, from a German term meaning
+bell, as he wears a bell, like the Rügen Dwarves, on his parti-colored
+coat.
+
+[Illustration: "_Tunicam de diversis coloribus, et tintinnabulis
+plenam!_" WAS ALL THAT PÜCK DEMANDED.]
+
+The famous Cauld Lad of Hilton was considered a Brownie. If everything
+was left well-arranged in the rooms, he amused himself by night with
+pitching chairs and vases about; but if he found the place in confusion,
+he kindly went to work and put it in exquisite order. But the Cauld Lad
+was, more likely, by his own confession, a ghost, and no true fairy.
+Romances were told of him, and he had been heard to sing this canticle,
+which makes you wonder whether he had ever heard of the House that Jack
+Built:
+
+                  Wae's me, wae's me!
+    The acorn's not yet fallen from the tree
+    That's to grow the wood that's to make the cradle
+    That's to rock the bairn that's to grow to the man
+                  That's to lay me!
+
+It was only ghosts who could be "laid," and to "lay" him meant to give
+him freedom and release, so that he need no longer go about in that
+bareboned and mournful state.
+
+But the merriest grig of all the Brownies was called in Southern
+Scotland, Wag-at-the-Wa'. He teased the kitchen-maids much by sitting
+under their feet at the hearth, or on the iron crook which hung from the
+beam in the chimney, and which, of old, was meant to accommodate pots
+and kettles. He loved children, and he loved jokes; his laugh was very
+distinct and pleasant; but if he heard of anybody drinking anything
+stronger than home-brewed ale, he would cough virtuously, and frown
+upon the company. Now Wag-at-the-Wa' had the toothache all the time,
+and, considering his twinges, was it not good of him to be so cheerful?
+He wore a great red-woollen coat and blue trousers, and sometimes a grey
+cloak over; and he shivered even then, with one side of his poor face
+bundled up, till his head seemed big as a cabbage. He looked impish and
+wrinkled, too, and had short bent legs. But his beautiful, clever tail
+atoned for everything, and with it, he kept his seat on the swinging
+crook.
+
+[Illustration: "WAG-AT-THE-WA'."]
+
+Scotch fairies called Powries and Dunters haunted lonely
+Border-mansions, and behaved like peaceable subjects, beating flax from
+year to year. The Dutch Kaboutermannekin worked in mills, as well as in
+houses. He was gentle and kind, but "touchy," as Brownie-people are.
+Though he dressed gayly in red, he was not pretty, but boasted a fine
+green tint on his face and hands. Little Killmoulis was a mill-haunting
+brother of his, who loved to lie before the fireplace in the kiln. This
+precious old employee was blest with a most enormous nose, and with no
+mouth at all! But he had a great appetite for pork, however he managed
+to gratify it.
+
+Boliéta, a Swiss Kobold, distinguished himself by leading cows safely
+through the dangerous mountain-paths, and keeping them sleek and happy.
+His branch of the family lived as often in the trunk of a near tree, as
+in the house itself.
+
+In Denmark and Sweden was the Kirkegrim, the "church lamb," who
+sometimes ran along the aisles and the choir after service-time, and to
+the grave-digger betokened the death of a little child. But there was
+another Kirkegrim, a proper church-Brownie, who kept the pews neat, and
+looked after people who misbehaved during the sermon.
+
+As queer as any of these was the Phynodderee, or the Hairy One, the Isle
+of Man house-helper. He was a wild little shaggy being, supposed to be
+an exile from fairy society, and condemned to wander about alone until
+doomsday. He was kind and obliging, and drove the sheep home, or
+gathered in the hay, if he saw a storm coming.
+
+The Klabautermann was a ship-Brownie, who sat under the capstan, and in
+time of danger, warned the crew by running up and down the shrouds in
+great excitement. This eccentric Flying Dutchman had a fiery red head,
+and on it a steeple-like hat; his yellow breeches were tucked into heavy
+horseman's boots.
+
+Hüttchen was a German Brownie, who lived at court, but who dressed like
+a little peasant, with a flapping felt hat over his eyes. The Alraun, a
+sort of house-imp shorn of all his engaging diligence, was very small,
+his body being made of a root; he lived in a bottle. If he was thrown
+away, back he came, persistently as a rubber ball. But that instinct
+was common to the Brownie race.
+
+The Roman Penates, _Vinculi terrei_, which brave old Reginald Scott
+called "domesticall gods," were Brownie's venerable and honorable
+ancestors. We shall see presently what names their descendants bore in
+various countries. But the Russian Domovoi we shall not count among
+them, because they were ghostly, like the poor Cauld Lad, and seem to
+have been full-sized.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+OTHER HOUSE-HELPERS.
+
+
+IN modern Greece the Brownie was known as the Stoechia. He was called
+Para in Finland; Trasgo or Duende in Spain; Lutin, Gobelin, Follet, in
+France and Normandy; Niss-god-drange in Norway and Denmark; Tomte, in
+Sweden; Niss in Jutland, Denmark and Friesland; Bwbach or Pwcca in
+Wales; in Ireland, Fir-Darrig and, sometimes, Cluricaune; Kobold, in
+Germany; and in England, Brownie figured as Boggart, Puck, Hobgoblin,
+and Robin Goodfellow.
+
+Often the Stoechia, a wayward little black being, went about the house
+under the shape of a lizard or small snake. He was harmless; his
+presence was an omen of prosperity; and great care was taken that no
+disrespect was shown him.
+
+The services of the Para, who was a well-meaning rascal, were rather
+singular, and not at all indispensable. He had a way of following the
+neighbor's cows to pasture, and milking them himself, in a calf's
+fashion, until he had swallowed quart on quart, and was as full as a
+little hogshead. Then he went home, uncorked his thieving throat, and
+obligingly emptied every drop of his ill-gotten goods into his master's
+churn! How his feelings must have been hurt if anybody criticized the
+cheese and butter!
+
+The Spanish house-goblin was a statelier person, and wore an enormous
+plumed hat, and threw stones in a stolid and haughty manner at people he
+disliked. But occasionally the Duende had the form of a little busy
+friar, like the Monachiello at Naples.
+
+The Lutin, or Gobelin, or Follet of French belief, was likewise a
+stone-thrower. He was fond of children, and of horses; taking it upon
+himself to feed and caress his landlord's children when they were good,
+and to whip them when they were naughty; and he rode the willing horses,
+and combed them, and plaited their manes into knotty braids, for which,
+we may fear, the stable-boy never thanked him. He knew, too, how to
+worry and tease; and certain French mothers threatened troublesome
+little folk with the "Gobelin:" "_Le gobelin vous mangera!_" which we
+may translate into: "The goblin will gobble you!" or into the whimsical
+lines of an American poet:
+
+    The gobble uns'll git you,
+    Ef
+        You
+            Don't
+                  Watch
+                        Out!
+
+The Norwegian Nis was like a strong-shouldered child, in a coat and
+peaky cap, who carried a pretty blue light at night. He enjoyed hopping
+or skating across the farmyard under the moon's ray. Dogs he would not
+allow in his house. If he was first promised a gray sheep for his own,
+he would teach any one to play the violin. Like many another of the
+Brownie race, he was a dandy, and loved nothing better than fine
+clothes.
+
+Tomte of Sweden lived in a tree near the house. He was as tall as a
+year-old boy, with a knowing old face beneath his cap. In harvest-time
+he tugged away at one straw, or one grain, until he laid it in his
+master's barn; for his strength was not much greater than an ant's. If
+the farmer scorned his diligent little servant, and made fun of his tiny
+load, all luck departed from him, and the Tomte went away in anger. He
+liked tobacco, played merry pranks, and doubled up comically when he
+laughed. But he had another laugh, scoffing and sarcastic, which he
+sometimes gave at the top of his voice.
+
+Like the Devon Piskies, the Niss-Puk required water left at his disposal
+over-night. The Nis of Jutland was the Puk of Friesland. He also liked
+his porridge with butter. He lived under the roof, or in dark corners of
+the stable and house. He was of the Tomte's size; he wore red stockings
+on his stumpy little legs, and a pointed red cap, and a long gray or
+green coat. For soft, easy slippers he had a great longing; and if a
+pair were left out for him, he was soon heard shuffling in them over the
+floor. He had long arms, and a big head, and big bright eyes, so that
+the people of Silt have a saying concerning an inquisitive or astonished
+person: "He stares like a Puk." Puk, too, played sorry tricks on the
+servants, and was indignant if he was ever deprived of his nightly bowl
+of groute.
+
+The Bwbach of Wales churned the cream, and begged for his portion, like
+a true Brownie; he was a hairy blackamoor with the best-natured grin in
+the world. But he had an unpleasant habit of whisking mortals into the
+air, and doing flighty mischiefs generally.
+
+[Illustration: AN IRISH CLURICAUNE.]
+
+The unique Irish Cluricaune, who had that name in Cork, was called
+Luricaune and Leprechaun in other parts of the country. He differed from
+the Shefro in living alone, and in his queer appearance and habits. For
+though he was a house-spirit and did house-work, his ambitions ran in an
+opposite direction, and in his every spare minute, when he was not
+smoking or drinking, you might have seen him, a miniature old man, with
+a cocked hat, and a leather apron, sitting on a low stool, humming a
+fairy-tune, and perpetually cobbling at a pair of shoes no bigger than
+acorns. The shoes were occasionally captured and shown. And as we have
+seen, Mr. Cluricaune was a fortune-hunter, and a very wide-awake,
+versatile goblin altogether. In his capacity of Brownie, he once wreaked
+a hard revenge on a maid who served him shabbily. A Mr. Harris, a
+Quaker, had on his farm a Cluricaune named Little Wildbeam. Whenever the
+servants left the beer-barrel running through negligence, Little
+Wildbeam wedged himself into the cock, and stopped the flow, at great
+inconvenience to his poor little body, until some one came to turn the
+knob. So the master bade the cook always put a good dinner down cellar
+for Little Wildbeam. One Friday she had nothing but part of a herring,
+and some cold potatoes, which she left in place of the usual feast. That
+very midnight the fat cook got pulled out of bed, and thrown down the
+cellar-stairs, bumping from side to side, so that it made her very sore
+indeed, and meanwhile the smirking Cluricaune stood at the head of the
+steps, and sang at the luckless heap below:
+
+    Molly Jones, Molly Jones!
+    Potato-skin and herring-bones!
+    I'll knock your head against the stones,
+              Molly Jones!
+
+In Japanese houses, even, Brownies were familiar comers and goers. They
+were important and smooth-mannered pigmies, and serenely dealt out
+rewards and punishments as they saw fit. When they were engaged in
+befriending commendable boys and girls, their features had, somehow, the
+ingenious likeness of letters signifying "good;" and if they made it
+their business to plague and hinder naughty idlers, who, instead of
+doing their errands promptly, stopped at the shops to buy goodies, their
+queer little faces were screwed up to mean "bad," as you see in
+Japanese artists' pictures.
+
+[Illustration: JAPANESE CHILDREN AND BROWNIES.]
+
+The English names for the affable Brownie-folk bring to our minds the
+most wayward, frolicsome elves of all fairydom. Boggart was the
+Yorkshire sprite, and the Boggart commonly disliked children, and stole
+their food and playthings; wherein he differed from his kindly kindred.
+Hobgoblin (Hop-goblin) was so called because he hopped on one leg.
+Hobgoblin is the same as Rob or Bob-Goblin, a goblin whose full name
+seemed to be Robert. Robin Hood, the famous outlaw, dear to all of us,
+was thought to have been christened after Robin Hood the fairy, because
+he, too, was tricksy and sportive, wore a hood, and lived in the deep
+forest.
+
+[Illustration: A LITTLE FIR-DARRIG.]
+
+In Ireland lived the mocking, whimsical little Fir-Darrig, Robin
+Goodfellow's own twin. He dressed in tight-fitting red; Fir-Darrig
+itself meant "the red man." He had big humorous ears, and the softest
+and most flexible voice in the world, which could mimic any sound at
+will. He sat by the fire, and smoked a pipe, big as himself, belonging
+to the man of the house. He loved cleanliness, brought good-luck to his
+abode, and, like a cat, generally preferred places to people.
+
+Puck and Robin Goodfellow were the names best known and cherished.
+There is no doubt that Shakespeare, from whom we have now our prevailing
+idea of Puck, got the idea of him, in his turn, from the popular
+superstitions of his day. But Puck's very identity was all but
+forgotten, and since Shakespeare was, therefore, his poetical creator,
+we will forego mention of him here, and entitle Robin Goodfellow, the
+same "shrewd and meddling elf," under another nickname, the true Brownie
+of England.
+
+He was both House-Helper and Mischief-Maker, "the most active and
+extraordinary fellow of a fairy," says Ritson, "that we anywhere meet
+with." He was said to have had a supplementary brother called Robin
+Badfellow; but there was no need of that, because he was Robin Badfellow
+in himself, and united in his whimsical little character so many
+opposite qualities, that he may be considered the representative elf the
+world over; for the old Saxon Hudkin, the Niss of Scandinavia, and
+Knecht Ruprecht, the Robin of Germany, are nothing but our masquerading
+goblin-friend on continental soil. And in the red-capped smiling
+Mikumwess among the Passamaquoddy Indians, there he is again!
+
+By this name of Robin he was known earlier than the thirteenth century,
+and "famosed in everie olde wives' chronicle for his mad merrie
+prankes," two hundred years later. His biography was put forth in a
+black-letter tract in 1628, and in a yet better-known ballad which
+recited his jests, and was in free circulation while Queen Bess was
+reigning. The forgotten annalist says very heartily, alluding to his
+string of aliases:
+
+    But call him by what name you list;
+    I have studied on my pillow,
+    And think the name he best deserves
+    Is Robin, the Good Fellow!
+
+We class him rightly as a Brownie, because he skimmed milk, knew all
+about domestic life, and was the delight or terror of servants, as the
+case might be. He was fond of making a noise and clatter on the stairs,
+of playing harps, ringing bells, and misleading passing travellers; and
+despite his knavery, he came to be much beloved by his house-mates. Very
+like him was the German Hempelman, who laughed a great deal. But the
+laugh of Master Robin sometimes foreboded trouble and death to people,
+which Hempelman's never did.
+
+The jolly German Kobold had a laugh which filled his throat, and could
+be heard a mile away. Bu he was a gnome malignant enough if he was
+neglected or insulted. He very seldom made a mine-sprite of himself, but
+stayed at home, Brownie-like, and "ran" the house pretty much as he saw
+fit. To the Dwarves he was, however, closely related, and dressed after
+their fashion, except that sometimes he wore a coat of as many colors as
+the rainbow, with tinkling bells fastened to it. He objected to any
+chopping or spinning done on a Thursday. Change of servants, while he
+held his throne in the kitchen, affected him not in the least; for the
+maid going away recommended her successor to treat him civilly, at her
+peril. A very remarkable Kobold was Hinzelmann, who called himself a
+Christian, and came to the old castle of Hüdemühlen in 1584; whose
+history, too long to add here, is given charmingly in Mr. Keightley's
+Fairy Mythology.
+
+A certain bearded little Kobold lived with some fishermen in a hut, and
+tried a trick which was quite classic, and reminds one of the Greek
+story of Procrustes, which all of you have met with, or will meet with,
+some day. Says Mr. Benjamin Thorpe: "His chief amusement, when the
+fishermen were lying asleep at night, was to lay them even. For this
+purpose he would first draw them up until their heads all lay in a
+straight line, but then their legs would be out of the line! and he had
+to go to their feet and pull them up until the tips of their toes were
+all in a row. This game he would continue till broad daylight."
+
+Now all Brownies, Nissen, Kobolds and the rest, were very much of a
+piece, and when you know the virtues and faults of one of them, you know
+the habits of the race. So that you can understand, despite the slight
+but steady help given in household matters, that a person so variable
+and exacting and high-tempered as this curious little sprite might
+happen sometimes to be a great bore, and might inspire his master or
+mistress with the sighing wish to be rid of him. It was a tradition in
+Normandy that to shake off the Lutin or Gobelin, it was merely necessary
+to scatter flax-seed where he was wont to pass; for he was too neat to
+let it lie there, and yet tired so soon of picking it up, that he left
+it in disgust, and went away for good. And there was a sprite named
+Flerus who lived in a farm-house near Ostend, and worked so hard,
+sweeping and drawing water, and turning himself into a plough-horse that
+he might replace the old horse who was sick, for no reward, either, save
+a little fresh sugared milk--that soon his master was the wealthiest man
+in the neighborhood. But a giddy young servant-maid once offended him,
+at the day's end, by giving him garlic in his milk; and as soon as poor
+Flerus tasted it, he departed, very wrathful and hurt, from the
+premises, forever.
+
+There were few such successful instances on record. Though Brownie was
+ready, in every land under the sun, to leave home when he took the
+fancy, or when he was puffed up with gifts of lace and velvet, so that
+no mortal residence was gorgeous enough for him, yet he would take no
+hint, nor obey any command, when either pointed to a banishment.
+
+[Illustration: THE PERSISTENT KOBOLD OF KÖPENICK.]
+
+Near Köpenick once, a man thought of buying a new house, and turning his
+back on a vexatious Kobold. The morning before he meant to change
+quarters, he saw his Kobold sitting by a pool, and asked him what he was
+doing. "I am doing my washing!" said the sharp rogue, "because we move
+to-morrow." And the man saw very well that as he could not avoid him, he
+had better take the little nuisance along. The same thing happened in
+the capital Polish anecdote of Iskrzycki (make your respects to his
+excruciating name!) and over Northern Europe the sarcastic joke "Yes,
+we're flitting!" prevails in folk-song and story.
+
+There is many and many an example of families selling the old house, and
+going off in great glee with the furniture, thinking the elf-rascal
+cheated and left behind; and lo! there he was, perched on a rope, or
+peering from a hole in the cart itself, on his congratulated master.
+
+The funniest hap of all befell an ungrateful farmer who fired his barn
+to burn the poor Kobold in it. As he was driving off, he turned to look
+at the blaze, and what should he see on the seat behind him but the same
+excited Kobold, chattering, monkey-like, and shrieking sympathizingly:
+"It was about time for us to get out of that, wasn't it?"
+
+The dark-skinned little house-sprites came to stay; and as for being
+snubbed, they were quite above it. They were the sort of callers to
+whom you could never show the door, with any dignity; for if you had
+done so, the grinning goblin would have examined knob and panels with a
+squinted eye, and gone back whistling to your easy-chair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+WATER-FOLK.
+
+
+OF old, there were Oreads and Naiads to people the rivers and the sea,
+but they were not fairies; and in after-years the beautiful, bright
+water-life of Greece, with its shells and dolphins, its palaces, its
+subaqueous music, and its happy-hearted maids and men, faded wholly out
+of memory. No one dominant race came to replace them. Merpeople, Tritons
+and Sirens we meet now and then, as did Hendrik Hudson's crew, and the
+Moruachs of Ireland, the Morverch (sea-daughters) of Brittainy; but
+they, too, were grown, and half-human. They were beautiful and swift,
+and usually sat combing their long hair, with a mirror in one hand, and
+their glossy tails tapering from the waist. The Danish Mermaid was
+gold-haired, cunning and treacherous; the Havmand or Merman was
+handsome, too, with black hair and beard, but kind and beneficent.
+
+The Swedish pair offered presents to those on shore, or passing in
+boats, in hopes to sink them beneath the waves.
+
+England and Ireland had no water-sprites which answered to the Nix and
+the Kelpie, only the Merrow, who was a Mermaid. She was a fair woman,
+with white, webbed fingers. She carried upon her head a little
+diving-cap, and when she came up to the rocks or the beach, she laid it
+by; but if it were stolen from her, she lost the power of returning to
+the sea. So that if her cap were taken by a young man, she very often
+could do nothing better than to marry him, and spend her time hunting
+for it up and down over his house. And once she had found it, she forgot
+all else but her desire to go home to "the kind sea-caves," and despite
+the calling of her neighbors and husband and children, she flitted to
+the shore, and plunged into the first oncoming billow, and walked the
+earth no longer.
+
+[Illustration: MER-FOLK.]
+
+Tales of these spirit-brides who suddenly deserted the green earth for
+their dear native waters, are common in Arabian and European folk-lore.
+And this characteristic was noted also in the Sea-trows of the Shetland
+Islands, who divested themselves of a shining fish-skin, and could not
+find the way to their ocean-beds if it were kept out of their reach. It
+was the Danish sailor's belief that seals laid by their skins every
+ninth night, and took maiden's forms wherewith to sport and sleep on the
+reefs. And for their capture as they were, warm, living and human, one
+had only to snatch and hide away their talisman-skin.
+
+The strange German Water-man wore a green hat, and when he opened his
+mouth, his teeth as well were green; he appeared to girls who passed his
+lake, and measured out ribbon, and flung it to them.
+
+But we must search for smaller sprites than these.
+
+The little water-fairies who devoted themselves to drawing under
+whomsoever encroached on their pools and brooks, were called Nixies in
+Germany, Korrigans (for this was part of their office) in Brittainy;
+Ondins about Magdebourg, and Roussalkis, the long-haired, smiling ones,
+among the Slavic people.
+
+[Illustration: THE LITTLE OLD NIX NEAR GHENT.]
+
+The engaging Nixies were very minute and mischievous, and abounded in
+the Shetland Isles and Cornwall, as did, moreover, the Kelpies, who were
+like tiny horses, known even in China; sporting on the margin, and
+foreboding death by drowning, to any who beheld them; or tempting
+passers-by to mount, and plunging, with their victims, headlong into
+the deep. The Nix-lady was recognized when she came on shore by the
+edges of her dress or apron being perpetually wet. The dark-eyed Nix-man
+with his seaweed hair and his wide hat, was known by his slit ears and
+feet, which he was very careful to conceal. Once in a while he was
+observed to be half-fish. The naked Nixen were draped with moss and
+kelp; but when they were clothed, they seemed merely little men and
+women, save that the borders of their garments, dripping water, betrayed
+them. They did their marketing ashore, wheresoever they were, and,
+according to all accounts, with a sharp eye to economy. Like the
+land-elves, they loved to dance and sing. Nix did not favor divers,
+fishermen, and other intruders on his territory, and he did his best to
+harm them. He was altogether a fierce, grudging, covetous little
+creature. His comelier wife was much better-natured, and befriended
+human beings to the utmost of her power.
+
+[Illustration: THE WORK OF THE NICKEL.]
+
+Near Ghent was a little old Nix who lived in the Scheldt; he cried and
+sighed much, and did mischief to no one. It grieved him when children
+ran away from him, yet if they asked what troubled his conscience, he
+only sighed heavily, and disappeared.
+
+The modern Greeks believed in a black sprite haunting wells and springs,
+who was fond of beckoning to strangers. If they came to him, he bestowed
+gifts upon them; if not, he never seemed angry, but turned patiently to
+wait for the next passer-by.
+
+There was a curious sea-creature in Norway, who swam about as a thin
+little old man with no head. About the magical Isle of Rügen lived the
+Nickel. His favorite game was to astonish the fishers, by hauling their
+boats up among the trees.
+
+At Arles and other towns near the Spanish border in France, were the
+Dracs, who inhabited clear pools and streams, and floated along in the
+shape of gold rings and cups, so that women and children bathing should
+grasp them, and be lured under.
+
+The Indian water-manittos, the Nibanaba, were winning in appearance, and
+wicked in disposition. They, joining the Pukwudjinies, helped to kill
+Kwasind.
+
+In Wales were the Gwragedd Annwn, elves who loved the stillness of
+lonely mountain-lakes, and who seldom ventured into the upper world.
+They had their own submerged towns and battlements; and from their
+little sunken city the fairy-bells sent out, ever and anon, muffled
+silver voices. The Gwragedd Annwn were not fishy-finned, nor were they
+ever dwellers in the sea; for in Wales were no mermaid-traditions, nor
+any tales of those who beguiled mortals--
+
+    Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave.
+
+The Neck and the Strömkarl of Swedish rivers were two little chaps with
+hardly a hair's breadth of difference. Either appeared under various
+shapes; now as a green-hatted old man with a long beard, out of which he
+wrung water as he sat on the cliffs; now loitering of a summer night on
+the surface, like a chip of wood or a leaf, he seemed a fair child,
+harping, with yellow ringlets falling from beneath a high red cap to his
+shoulders. Both fairies had a genius for music; and the Strömkarl,
+especially, had one most marvellous tune to which he put eleven
+variations. Now, to ten of them any one might dance decorously, and with
+safety; but at the eleventh, which was the enchanted one, all the world
+went mad; and tables, belfries, benches, houses, windmills, trees,
+horses, cripples, babies, ghosts, and whole towns full of sedate
+citizens began capering on the banks about the invisible player, and
+kept it up in furious fashion until the last note died away.
+
+You know that the wren was hunted in certain countries on a certain day.
+Well, here is one legend about her. There was a malicious fairy once in
+the Isle of Man, very winsome to look at, who worked a sorry
+Kelpie-trick, on the young men of the town, and inveigled them into the
+sea, where they perished. At last the inhabitants rose in vengeance, and
+suspecting her of causing their loss and sorrow, gave her chase so hard
+and fast by land, that to save herself, she changed her shape into that
+of an innocent brown wren. And because she had been so treacherous, a
+spell was cast upon her, inasmuch as she was obliged every New Year's
+Day to fly about as that same bird, until she should be killed by a
+human hand. And from sunrise to sunset, therefore, on the first bleak
+day of January, all the men and boys of the island fired at the poor
+wrens, and stoned them, and entrapped them, in the hope of reaching the
+one guilty fairy among them. And as they could never be sure that they
+had captured the right one, they kept on year by year, chasing and
+persecuting the whole flock. But every dead wren's feather they
+preserved carefully, and believed that it hindered them from drowning
+and shipwreck for that twelvemonth; and they took the feathers with them
+on voyages great and small, in order that the bad fairy's magic may
+never be able to prevail, as it had prevailed of yore with their unhappy
+brothers.
+
+The presence of the sea-fairies had a terror in it, and against their
+arts only the strongest and most watchful could hope to be victorious.
+Their sport was to desolate peaceful homes, and bring destruction on
+gallant ships. They, dwelling in streams and in the ocean, the world
+over, were like the waters they loved: gracious and noble in aspect, and
+meaning danger and death to the unwary. We fear that, like the
+earth-fairies, they were heartless quite.
+
+[Illustration: HOB IN HOBHOLE]
+
+But it may be that the gentle Nixies had only a blind longing for human
+society, and would not willingly have wrought harm to the creatures of
+another element. We are more willing to urge excuses for their
+wrong-doing than for the like fault in our frowzly under-ground folk;
+for ugliness seems, somehow, not so shocking when allied with evil as
+does beauty, which was destined for all men's delight and uplifting. As
+the air-elves had their Fairyland whither mortal children wandered, and
+whence they returned after an unmeasured lapse of time, still children,
+to the ivy-grown ruins of their homes, so the water-elves had a reward
+for those they snatched from earth; and legends assure us the
+wave-rocked prisoners a hundred fathoms down, never grew old, but kept
+the flush of their last morning rosy ever on their brows.
+
+Among a little community full of guile, there is great comfort in
+spotting one honest, kind water-boy, who, not content with being
+harmless, as were the Flemish and Grecian Nixies, put himself to work to
+do good, and charm away some of the worries and ills that burdened the
+upper world. His name was Hob, and he lived in Hobhole, which was a cave
+scooped out by the beating tides in old Northumbria.
+
+The lean pockets of the neighboring doctors were partly attributed to
+this benignant little person; for he set up an opposition, and his
+specialty was the cure of whooping-cough. Many a Scotch mother took her
+lad or lass to the spray-covered mouth of the wise goblin's cave, and
+sang in a low voice:
+
+            Hobhole Hob!
+    Ma bairn's gotten t' kink-cough:
+    Tak't off! tak't off!
+
+And so he did, sitting there with his toes in the sea. For Hobhole Hob's
+small sake, we can afford to part friends with the whole naughty race of
+water-folk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MISCHIEF-MAKERS.
+
+
+THE fairy-fellows who made a regular business of mischief-making seemed
+to have two favorite ways of setting to work. They either saddled
+themselves with little boys and spilled them, sooner or later, into the
+water, or else they danced along holding a twinkling light, and led any
+one so foolish as to follow them a pretty march into chasms and
+quagmires. Their jokes were grim and hurtful, and not merely funny, like
+Brownie's; for Brownie usually gave his victims (except in Molly Jones's
+case) nothing much worse than a pinch. So people came to have great awe
+and horror of the heartless goblins who waylaid travellers, and left
+them broken-limbed or dead.
+
+Very often quarrelsome, disobedient or vicious folk fell into the snare
+of a Kelpie, or a Will-o'-the-Wisp; for the little whipper-snappers had
+a fine eye for poetical justice, and dealt out punishments with the
+nicest discrimination. We never hear that they troubled good, steady
+mortals; but only that sometimes they beguiled them, for sheer love,
+into Fairyland.
+
+We know that all "ouphes and elves" could change their shapes at will;
+therefore when we spy fairy-horses, fairy-lambs, and such quadrupeds, we
+guess at once that they are only roguish small gentlemen masquerading.
+Never for the innocent fun of it, either; but alas! to bring silly
+persons to grief.
+
+In Hampshire, in England, was a spirit known as Coltpixy, which, itself
+shaped like a miniature neighing horse, beguiled other horses into bogs
+and morasses. The Irish Pooka or Phooka was a horse too, and a famous
+rascal. He lived on land, and was something like the Welsh Gwyll: a
+tiny, black, wicked-faced wild colt, with chains dangling about him.
+Again, he frisked around in the shape of a goat or a bat. Spenser has
+him:
+
+    "Ne let the Pouke, ne other evill spright, . . .
+     Ne let hobgoblins, names whose sense we see not,
+     Fray us with things that be not."
+
+"Fray," as you are likely to guess, means to frighten or to scare.
+
+[Illustration: THE IRISH POOKA WAS A HORSE TOO.]
+
+Kelpies, who were Scotch, haunted fords and ferries, especially in
+storms; allured bystanders into the water, or swelled the river so that
+it broke the roads, and overwhelmed travellers.
+
+Very like them were the Brag, the little Shoopil-tree of the Shetland
+Islands, and the Nick, who was the Icelandic Nykkur-horse; gamesome
+deceivers all, who enticed children and others to bestride them, and who
+were treacherous as a quicksand, every time. And there were many more of
+the Kelpie kingdom, of whom we can hunt up no clews.
+
+A man who saw a Kelpie gave himself up for lost; for he was sure, by
+hook or crook, to meet his death by drowning. Kelpie, familiar so far
+away as China, never stayed in the next-door countries, Ireland or
+England, long enough to be recognized. They knew nothing of him by
+sight, nor of the Nix his cousin, nor of anything resembling them. In
+Ireland lived the merrow; but she was only an amiable mermaid.
+
+[Illustration: WILL-O'-THE-WISP.]
+
+The Japanese had a water-dragon called Kappa, "whose office it was to
+swallow bad boys who went to swim in disobedience to their parents'
+commands, and at improper times and places." In the River Tees was a
+green-haired lady named Peg Powler, and in some streams in Lancashire
+one christened Jenny Greenteeth; two hungry goblins whose only
+delight was to drown and devour unlucky travellers. But we know already
+that the water-sprites were more than likely so to behave.
+
+In Provence there is a tale told of seven little boys who went out at
+night against their grandmother's wishes. A little dark pony came
+prancing up to them, and the youngest clambered on his sleek back, and
+after him, the whole seven, one after the other, which was quite a
+wonderful weight for the wee creature; but his back meanwhile kept
+growing longer and larger to accommodate them. As they galloped along,
+the children called such of their playmates as were out of doors, to
+join them, the obliging nag stretching and stretching until thirty pairs
+of young legs dangled at his sides! when he made straight for the sea,
+and plunged in, and drowned them all.
+
+The Piskies, or Pigseys, of Cornwall, were naughty and unsociable. Their
+great trick was to entice people into marshes, by making themselves look
+like a light held in a man's hand, or a light in a friendly cottage
+window. Pisky also rode the farmers' colts hard, and chased the
+farmers' cows. For all his diabolics, you had to excuse him in part,
+when you heard his hearty fearless laugh; it was so merry and sweet. "To
+laugh like a Pisky," passed into a proverb. The Barguest of Yorkshire,
+like the Osschaert of the Netherlands, was an open-air bugaboo whose
+presence always portended disaster. Sometimes he appeared as a horse or
+dog, merely to play the old trick with a false light, and to vanish,
+laughing.
+
+The Tückebold was a very malicious chap, carrying a candle, who lived in
+Hanover; his blood-relation in Scandinavia was the Lyktgubhe. Over in
+Flanders and Brabant was one Kludde, a fellow whisking here and there as
+a half-starved little mare, or a cat, or a frog, or a bat; but who was
+always accompanied by two dancing blue flames, and who could overtake
+any one as swiftly as a snake. The Ellydan (dan is a Welsh word meaning
+fire, and also a lure or a snare: a luring elf-fire) was a rogue with
+wings, wide ears, a tall cap and two huge torches, who precisely
+resembled the English Will-o'-the-Wisp, the Scandinavian Lyktgubhe and
+the Breton Sand Yan y Tad. Our American negroes make him out
+Jack-muh-Lantern: a vast, hairy, goggle-eyed, big-mouthed ogre, leaping
+like a giant grasshopper, and forcing his victims into a swamp, where
+they died. The gentlemen of this tribe preferred to walk abroad at
+night, like any other torchlight procession. Their little bodies were
+invisible, and the traveller who hurried towards the pleasant lamp
+ahead, never knew that he was being tricked by a grinning fairy, until
+he stumbled on the brink of a precipice, or found himself knee-deep in a
+bog. Then the brazen little guide shouted outright with glee, put out
+his mysterious flame, and somersaulted off, leaving the poor tourist to
+help himself. The only way to escape his arts was to turn your coat
+inside out.
+
+You may guess that the ungodly wights had plenty of fun in them, by this
+anecdote: A great many Scotch Jack-o'-Lanterns, as they are often
+called, were once bothering the horse belonging to a clergyman, who with
+his servant, was returning home late at night. The horse reared and
+whinnied, and the clergyman was alarmed, for a thousand impish fires
+were waltzing before the wheels. Like a good man, he began to pray
+aloud, to no avail. But the servant just roared: "Wull ye be aff noo, in
+the deil's name!" and sure enough, in a wink, there was not a goblin
+within gunshot.
+
+[Illustration: PISKY ALSO CHASED THE FARMERS' COWS.]
+
+There were some freakish fairies in old England, whose names were
+Puckerel, Hob Howland, Bygorn, Bogleboe, Rawhead or Bloodybones; the
+last two were certainly scarers of nurseries.
+
+The Boggart was a little spectre who haunted farms and houses, like
+Brownie or Nis; but he was usually a sorry busybody, tearing the
+bed-curtains, rattling the doors, whistling through the keyholes,
+snatching his bread-and-butter from the baby, playing pranks upon the
+servants, and doing all manner of mischief.
+
+[Illustration: RED COMB WAS A TYRANT.]
+
+The Dunnie, in Northumberland, was fond of annoying farmers. When night
+came, he gave them and himself a rest, and hung his long legs over the
+crags, whistling and banging his idle heels. Red Comb or Bloody Cap was
+a tyrant who lived in every Border castle, dungeon and tower. He was
+short and thickset long-toothed and skinny-fingered, with big red eyes,
+grisly flowing hair, and iron boots; a pikestaff in his left hand, and a
+red cap on his ugly head.
+
+The village of Hedley, near Ebchester, in England, was haunted by a
+churlish imp known far and wide as the Hedley Gow. He took the form of a
+cow, and amused himself at milking-time with kicking over the pails,
+scaring the maids, and calling the cats, of whom he was fond, to lick up
+the cream. Then he slipped the ropes and vanished, with a great laugh.
+In Northern Germany we find the Hedley Gow's next-of-kin, and there,
+too, were little underground beings who accompanied maids and men to the
+milking, and drank up what was spilt; but if nothing happened to be
+spilt in measuring out the quarts, they got angry, overturned the pails,
+and ran away. These jackanapes were a foot and a half high, and dressed
+in black, with red caps.
+
+Many ominous fairies, such as the Banshee, portended misfortune and
+death. The Banshee had a high shrill voice, and long hair. Once in a
+while she seemed to be as tall as an ordinary woman, very thin, with
+head uncovered, and a floating white cloak, wringing her hands and
+wailing. She attached herself only to certain ancient Irish families,
+and cried under their windows when one of their race was sick, and
+doomed to die. But she scorned families who had a dash of Saxon and
+Norman ancestry, and would have nothing to do with them.
+
+Every single fairy that ever was known to the annals of this world was,
+at times, a mischief-maker. He could no more keep out of mischief than a
+trout out of water. What lives the dandiprats led our poor
+great-great-great-great grand-sires! As a very clever living writer put
+it:
+
+      "A man could not ride out without risking an encounter
+      with a Puck or a Will-o'-the Wisp. He could not
+      approach a stream in safety unless he closed his ears
+      to the sirens' songs, and his eyes to the fair form of
+      the mermaid. In the hillside were the dwarfs, in the
+      forest Queen Mab and her court. Brownie ruled over him
+      in his house, and Robin Goodfellow in his walks and
+      wanderings. From the moment a Christian came into the
+      world until his departure therefrom, he was at the
+      mercy of the fairy-folk, and his devices to elude them
+      were many. Unhappy was the mother who neglected to lay
+      a pair of scissors or of tongs, a knife or her
+      husband's breeches, in the cradle of her new-born
+      infant; for if she forgot, then was she sure to
+      receive a changeling in its place. Great was the loss
+      of the child to whose baptism the fairies were not
+      invited, or the bride to whose wedding the Nix, or
+      water-spirit, was not bidden. If the inhabitants of
+      Thale did not throw a black cock annually into the
+      Bode, one of them was claimed as his lawful victim by
+      the Nickelmann dwelling in that stream. The Russian
+      peasant who failed to present the Rusalka or
+      water-sprite he met at Whitsuntide, with a
+      handkerchief, or a piece torn from his or her
+      clothing, was doomed to death."
+
+One had to be ever on the lookout to escape the sharp little immortals,
+whose very kindness to men and women was a species of coquetry, and who
+never spared their friends' feelings at the expense of their own saucy
+delight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+PUCK; AND POETS' FAIRIES.
+
+
+PUCK, as we said, is Shakespeare's fairy. There is some probability that
+he found in Cwm Pwca, or Puck Valley, a part of the romantic glens of
+Clydach, in Breconshire, the original scenes of his fanciful _Midsummer
+Night's Dream_. This glen used to be crammed with goblins. There, and in
+many like-named Welsh places, Puck's pranks were well-remembered by old
+inhabitants. This Welsh Puck was a queer little figure, long and
+grotesque, and looked something like a chicken half out of his shell; at
+least, so a peasant drew him, from memory, with a bit of coal. Pwcca, or
+Pooka, in Wales, was but another name for Ellydan; and his favorite joke
+was also to travel along before a wayfarer, with a lantern held over his
+head, leading miles and miles, until he got to the brink of a
+precipice. Then the little wretch sprang over the chasm, shouted with
+wicked glee, blew out his lantern, and left the startled traveller to
+reach home as best he could. Old Reginald Scott must have had this sort
+of a Puck in mind when he put Kitt-with-the-Candlestick, whose identity
+troubled the critics much, in his catalogue of "bugbears."
+
+The very old word Pouke meant the devil, horns, tail, and all; from that
+word, as it grew more human and serviceable, came the Pixy of
+Devonshire, the Irish Phooka, the Scottish Bogle, and the Boggart in
+Yorkshire; and even one nursery-tale title of Bugaboo. Oddest of all,
+the name Pug, which we give now to an amusing race of small dogs, is an
+every-day reminder of poor lost Puck, and of the queer changes which,
+through a century or two, may befall a word. Puck was considered
+court-jester, a mild, comic, playful creature:
+
+                A little random elf
+    Born in the sport of Nature, like a weed,
+    For simple sweet enjoyment of myself,
+    But for no other purpose, worth or need;
+    And yet withal of a most happy breed.
+
+But he kept to the last his character of practical joker, and his
+alliance with his grim little cousins, the Lyktgubhe and the Kludde.
+Glorious old Michael Drayton made a verse of his naughty tricks, which
+you shall hear:
+
+      This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt,
+    Still walking like a ragged colt,
+    And oft out of a bush doth bolt
+    On purpose to deceive us;
+    And leading us, makes us to stray
+    Long winter nights out of the way:
+    And when we stick in mire and clay,
+    He doth with laughter leave us.
+
+Shakespeare, who calls him a "merry wanderer of the night," and allows
+him to fly "swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow," was the first to
+make Puck into a house spirit. The poets were especially attentive to
+the offices of these house-spirits.
+
+According to them, Mab and Puck do everything in-doors which we think
+characteristic of a Brownie. William Browne, born in Tavistock, in the
+county of Devon, where the Pixies lived, prettily puts it how the
+fairy-queen did--
+
+                    ----command her elves
+    To pinch those maids that had not swept their shelves;
+    And further, if by maiden's oversight,
+    Within doors water was not brought at night,
+    Or if they spread no table, set no bread,
+    They should have nips from toe unto the head!
+    And for the maid who had performed each thing
+    She in the water-pail bade leave a ring.
+
+[Illustration: THE WELSH PUCK.]
+
+Herrick confirms what we have just heard:
+
+      If ye will with Mab find grace,
+    Set each platter in its place;
+    Rake the fire up, and get
+    Water in ere the sun be set;
+    Wash your pails, and cleanse your dairies;
+    Sluts are loathsome to the fairies!
+    Sweep your house: who doth not so,
+    Mab will pinch her by the toe.
+
+John Lyly, in his very beautiful _Mayde's Metamorphosis_ has this
+charming fairy song, which takes us out to the grass, and the soft night
+air, and the softer starshine:
+
+    By the moon we sport and play;
+    With the night begins our day;
+    As we dance, the dew doth fall.
+    Trip it, little urchins all!
+    Lightly as the little bee,
+    Two by two, and three by three,
+    And about go we, and about go we.
+
+[Illustration: A MERRY NIGHT-WANDERER.]
+
+What a picture of the wee tribe at their revels! Here is another, from
+Ben Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_:
+
+      Span-long elves that dance about a pool,
+    With each a little changeling in her arms.
+
+In what is thought to be Lyly's play, just mentioned, Mopso, Joculo, and
+Prisio have something in the way of a pun for each fairy they address:
+
+    _Mop._: I pray you, what might I call you?
+
+    _1st Fairy_: My name is Penny.
+
+    _Mop._: I am sorry I cannot purse you!
+
+    _Pris._: I pray you, sir, what might I call you?
+
+    _2nd Fairy_: My name is Cricket.
+
+(Mr. Keightley says that the Crickets were a family of great note in
+Fairyland: many poets celebrated them.)
+
+    _Pris._: I would I were a chimney for your sake!
+
+    _Joc._: I pray you, you pretty little fellow, what's your
+    name?
+
+    _3rd Fairy_: My name is Little Little Prick.
+
+    _Joc._: Little Little Prick! O you are a dangerous fairy,
+    and fright all the little wenches in the country out of their
+    beds. I care not whose hand I were in, so I were out of
+    yours.
+
+Drayton, again, gives us a list of tinkling elfin-ladies' names, which
+are pleasant to hear as the drip of an icicle:
+
+      Hop and Mop and Drop so clear,
+    Pip and Trip and Skip that were
+    To Mab their sovereign ever dear,
+    Her special maids-of-honor:
+
+    Pib and Tib and Pinck and Pin,
+    Tick and Quick, and Jil and Jin,
+    Tit and Nit, and Wap and Win,
+    The train that wait upon her!
+
+[Illustration: "BY THE MOON WE SPORT AND PLAY."]
+
+Young Randolph has an equally delightful account in the pastoral drama
+of _Amyntas_, of his wee folk orchard-robbing; whose chorused Latin
+Leigh Hunt thus translates, roguishly enough:
+
+      We the fairies blithe and antic,
+    Of dimensions not gigantic,
+    Tho' the moonshine mostly keep us,
+    Oft in orchard frisk and peep us.
+
+    Stolen sweets are always sweeter;
+    Stolen kisses much completer;
+    Stolen looks are nice in chapels;
+    Stolen, stolen, be our apples!
+
+    When to bed the world is bobbing,
+    Then's the time for orchard-robbing:
+    Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling,
+    Were it not for stealing, stealing!
+
+You will notice that Shakespeare places his Gothic goblins in the woods
+about Athens, a place where real fairies never set their rose-leaf feet,
+but where once sported yet lovelier Dryads and Naiads. These dainty
+British Greeks are very small indeed: Titania orders them to make war on
+the rear-mice, and make coats of their leathern wings. Mercutio's Queen
+Mab is scarce bigger than a snowflake. Prospero, in _The Tempest_,
+commands, besides his "delicate Ariel," all
+
+    --elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves.
+
+The make-believe fairies in _The Merry Wives_ know how to pinch
+offenders black and blue. The shepherd, in the _Winter's Tale_, takes
+the baby Perdita for a changeling. So that all the Shakespeare people
+seem wise in goblin-lore.
+
+You see that we have looked for the literature of our pretty friends
+only among the old poets, and only English poets at that; but the
+foreign fairies are no less charming. Chaucer and Spenser loved the
+brood especially. Robert Herrick knew all about
+
+    --the elves also,
+    Whose little eyes glow;
+
+Sidney smiled on them once or twice, and great Milton could spare them a
+line out of his majestic verse. But the high-tide of their praise was
+ebbing already when Dryden and Pope were writing. Lesser poets than any
+of these, Parnell and Tickell, wrote fairy tales, but they lack the
+relish of the honeyed rhymes Drayton, Lyly, and supreme Shakespeare,
+give us. Keats was drawn to them, though he has left us but sweet and
+brief proof of it; and Thomas Hood, of all gentle modern poets, has
+done most for the "small foresters and gay." In prose the fairies are
+"famoused" east and west; for which they may sing their loudest canticle
+to the good Brothers Grimm, in Fairyland. The arts have been their
+handmaids; and some of this world's most lovable spirits have delighted
+to do them merry honor: Mendelssohn in his quicksilver orchestral music,
+and dear Richard Doyle in the quaintest drawings that ever fell,
+laughing, from a pencil-point.
+
+[Illustration: THE ELVES WHOSE LITTLE EYES GLOW.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CHANGELINGS.
+
+
+KIDNAPPING was a favorite pastime with our small friends, and a great
+many reasons concurred to make it a necessary and thriving trade. We are
+told that both the Tylwyth Teg and the Korrigans had a fear that their
+frail race was dying out, and sought to steal hearty young children, and
+leave the wee, bright, sickly "changeling," or ex-changeling, in its
+place. That sounds like a quibble; for we know that fairies were free
+from the shadow of death, and could not possibly dread any lessening of
+their numbers from the old, old cause. Yet we saw that the air-elves
+held pitched battles, and murdered one another like gallant soldiers,
+from the world's beginning; and again comes a straggling little proof to
+make us suspect that they had not quite the immortality they boasted.
+However, we pass it by, sure at least that the philosopher who first
+observed the merry goblins to be at bottom wavering and disconsolate,
+recognized an instance of it in this pathetic eagerness to adopt babies
+not their own. Fairy-folk were believed, in general, to have power over
+none but unbaptized children.
+
+A tradition older and wider than the Tylwyth Teg's runs that a yearly
+tribute was due from Fairyland to the prince of the infernal regions, as
+poor King Ægeus had once to pay Minos of Crete with the seven fair boys
+and girls; and that, for the sake of sparing their own dear ones, the
+little beings, in their fantastic dress, flew east and west on an
+anxious hunt for human children, who might be captured and delivered
+over to bondage instead. And they crept cautiously to many a cradle, and
+having secured the sleeping innocent, "plucked the nodding nurse by the
+nose," as Ben Jonson said, and vanished with a scream of triumphant
+laughter. Welsh fairies have been caught in the very act of the theft,
+and a pretty fight they made, every time, to keep their booty; but the
+strength of a man or a woman, was, of course, too much for them to
+resist long.
+
+Now, whenever a mother, who, you may count upon it, thought her own
+urchin most beautiful of all under the moon, found him growing cross and
+homely, in despite of herself, she suddenly awoke to this view of the
+case: that the dwindled babe was her babe no longer, but a miserable
+young gosling from Fairyland slipped into its place. A miserable young
+foreign gosling it was from that hour, though it had her own
+grandfather's special kind of a nose on its unmistakable face.
+
+The discovery always made a great sensation; people came from the
+surrounding villages to wonder at the lean, gaping, knowing-eyed small
+stranger in the crib, and to propose all sorts of charms which should
+rid the house of his presence, and restore the rightful heir again. They
+were not especially polite to the poor changeling. In Denmark, and in
+Ireland as well, they dandled him on a hot shovel! If he were really a
+changeling, the fairies, rather than see him singed, were sure to
+appear in a violent fluster and whisk him away, and at the same minute
+to drop its former owner plump into the cradle. And if it were not a
+changeling, how did those queer by-gone mammas know when to stop the
+broiling and baking?
+
+Mr. George Waldron, who in 1726 wrote an entertaining _Description of
+the Isle of Man_, recorded it that he once went to see a baby supposed
+to be a changeling; that it seemed to be four or five years old, but
+smaller than an infant of six months, pale, and silky-haired, and (what
+was unusual) with the fairest face under heaven; that it was not able to
+walk nor to move a joint, seldom smiled, ate scarcely anything, and
+never spoke nor cried; but that if you called it a fairy-elf, it fixed
+its gaze on you as if it would look you through. If it were left alone,
+it was overheard laughing and frolicking, and when it was taken up
+after, limp as cloth, its hair was found prettily combed, and there were
+signs that it had been washed and dressed by its unseen playfellows.
+
+The main point to put the family mind at rest on the matter, was to
+make the changeling "own up," force him to do something which no tender
+mortal in socks and bibs ever was able to do, such as dance, prophesy,
+or manage a musical instrument. There was an Irish changeling, the
+youngest of five sons, who, being teased, snatched a bagpipe from a
+visitor, and played upon it in the most accomplished and melting manner,
+sitting up in his wooden chair, his big goggle-eyes fixed on the
+company. And when he knew he was found out, he sprang, bagpipe and all,
+into the river; which leads one to suspect that he was a sort of stray
+Strömkarl.
+
+[Illustration: THERE WAS AN IRISH CHANGELING.]
+
+The Welsh fairies had good taste, and admired wholesome and handsome
+children. They stole such often, and left for substitute the
+plentyn-newid (the change-child) who at first was exactly like the
+absent nursling, but soon grew ugly, shrivelled, biting, wailing,
+cunning and ill-tempered. In the hope of proving whether it were a
+fairy-waif or not, people put the little creature to such hard tests,
+that sometimes it nearly died of acquaintance with a rod, or an oven, or
+a well.
+
+[Illustration: "THE ACORN BEFORE THE OAK HAVE I SEEN."]
+
+If the bereaved parent did some very astonishing thing in plain view of
+the wonder-chick, that would generally entrap it into betraying its
+secrets. A French changeling was once moved unawares to sing out that it
+was nine hundred years old, at least! In Wales, and also in Brittainy
+(which are sister-countries of one race) the following story is current:
+A mother whose infant had been spirited away, and who was much perplexed
+over what she took to be a changeling, was advised to cook a meal for
+ten farm-servants in one egg-shell. When the queer little creature,
+burning with curiosity, asked her from his high-chair what she was
+about, she could hardly answer, so excited was she to hear him speak. At
+that he cried louder: "A meal for ten, dear mother, in one egg-shell?
+The acorn before the oak have I seen, and the wilderness before the
+lawn, but never did I behold anything like that!" and so gave damaging
+evidence of his age and his unlucky wisdom. And the woman replied: "You
+have seen altogether too much, my son, and you shall have a beating!"
+And thereupon she began to thrash him, until he screeched, and a fairy
+appeared hurriedly to rescue him, and in the crib lay the round, rosy,
+real child, who had been missing a long while.
+
+Now the "gentry" of modern Greece had an eye also to clever children;
+but they almost always brought them back, laden with gifts, lovelier in
+person than when they were taken from home. And if they appointed a
+changeling in the meantime (which they were not very apt to do) it never
+showed its elfin nature until it was quite grown up! unlike the uncanny
+goblins who were all too ready from the first to give autobiographies on
+the slightest hint.
+
+The Drows of the Orkney Islands fancied larger game. They used to stalk
+in among church congregations and carry off pious deacons and
+deaconesses! So wrote one Lucas Jacobson Debes, in 1670.
+
+In a pretty Scotch tale, a sly fairy threatened to steal the "lad
+bairn," unless the mother could tell the fairy's right name. The latter
+was a complete stranger, and the woman was sore worried; and went to
+walk in the woods to ease her anxious and aching heart, and to think
+over some means of outwitting the enemy of her boy. And presently she
+heard a faint voice singing under a leaf:
+
+      Little kens the gude dame at hame
+    That Whuppity Stoorie is ma name!
+
+When the smart lady in green came to take the beautiful "lad bairn," the
+mother quietly called her "Whuppity Stoorie!" and off she hurried with a
+cry of fear; like the Austrian dwarf Kruzimügeli, the "dear Ekke
+Nekkepem" of Friesland, and many another who tried to play the same
+trick, and who were always themselves the means of telling mortals the
+very names they would conceal.
+
+[Illustration: SHE HEARD A FAINT VOICE SINGING UNDER A LEAF.]
+
+Fairy-folk young and old were coquettish enough about their names, and
+greatly preferred they should not be spoken outright. This habit got
+them into many a scrape. The anecdote of "Who hurt you? Myself!" was
+told in Spain, Finland, Brittainy, Japan, and a dozen other kingdoms,
+and seems to be as old as the Odyssey. Do you remember where Ulysses
+tells the Cyclop that his name is Outis, which means Nobody? and how,
+after the eye of the wicked Polyphemus has been put out, the comrades
+of the big blinded fellow ask him who did the deed, and he growls back,
+very sensibly: "Nobody!" Consider what follows a typical modern version
+of the same trick.
+
+[Illustration: "AINSEL."]
+
+A young Scotch child, whom we will call Alan, sits by the fire, when a
+pretty creature the size of a doll, waltzes down the chimney to the
+hearth, and begins to frolic. When asked its name it says shrewdly:
+"Ainsel"; which to the boy sounds like what it really is, "Ownself," and
+makes him, when it is his turn to be questioned, as saucy and reticent
+as he supposes his elfin playfellow to be. So Alan tells the sprite that
+his name is "_My_ Ainsel," and gets the better of it. For bye-and-bye
+they wax very frisky and friendly, and right in the middle of their
+sport, when little Alan pokes the fire, and gets a spark by chance on
+Ainsel's foot, and when he roars with pain, and the old fairy-mother
+appears instantly, crying angrily: "Who has hurt thee? Who has hurt
+thee?" the elf blurts, of course, "My Ainsel!" and she kicks him
+unceremoniously up chimney, and bids him stop whimpering, since the burn
+was of his own silly doing! Alan, meanwhile, climbs upstairs to bed,
+rejoicing to escape the vengeance of the fairy-mother, and chuckling in
+his sleeve at the funny turn things have taken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+FAIRYLAND.
+
+    "And never would I tire, Janet,
+    In Fairyland to dwell."
+
+
+SO runs the song. Who would weary of so sweet a place? At least, we
+think of it as a sweet place; but like this own world of ours, it was
+whatever a man's eyes made it: good and gracious to the good, troublous
+to the evil. According to an old belief, a mean or angry, or untruthful
+person, always exposed himself, by the very violence of his wrong-doing,
+to become an inmate of Fairyland; and for such a one, it could not have
+been all sunshine. A foot set upon the fairy-ring was enough to cause a
+mortal to be whisked off, pounded, pinched, bewildered, and left far
+from home. It was a strange experience, and it is recorded that it
+befell many a lad and maid to be loosed from earth, and cloistered for
+uncounted years, to return, like our Catskill hero, Rip Van Winkle,
+after what he supposes to be a little time, and to find that generations
+had passed away. For those absent took no thought of time's passing, and
+on reaching earth again, would begin where their lips had dropped a
+sentence half-spoken, a hundred years before. Tales of such truants are
+common the world over.
+
+Gitto Bach (little Griffith) was a Welsh farmer's boy, who looked after
+sheep on the mountain-top. When he came home at evenfall he often showed
+his brothers and sisters bits of paper stamped like money. Now when it
+was given to him, it was real money; but the fairy-gifts would not bear
+handling, and turned useless and limp as soon as Gitto showed them. One
+day he did not return. After two years his mother found him one morning
+at the door, smiling, and with a bundle under his arm. She asked him,
+with many tears, where he had been so long, while they had mourned for
+him as dead. "It is only yesterday I went away!" said Gitto. "See the
+pretty clothes the mountain-children gave me, for dancing with them to
+the music of their harps." And he opened his bundle, and showed a
+beautiful dress: but his mother saw it was only paper, after all, like
+the fairy money.
+
+[Illustration: GITTO BACH AND THE FAIRIES.]
+
+[Illustration: KAGUYAHIME, THE MOON-MAID.]
+
+Our pretty friends enjoyed beguiling mortals into their shining
+underworld, with song, and caresses, and winning promises. Once the
+mortal entered, he met with warm welcomes from all, and the most
+exquisite meat and drink were set before him. Now, if he had but the
+courage to refuse it, he soon found himself back on earth, whence he was
+stolen. But if he yielded to temptation, and his tongue tasted fairy
+food, he could never behold his native hills again for years and years.
+And when, after that exquisite imprisonment, he should be torn from his
+delights and set back at his father's door, he should find his memory
+almost forgotten, and others sitting with a claim in his empty seat. And
+he should not remember how long he had been missing, but grow silent and
+depressed, and sit for hours, with dreamy eyes, on lonely slopes and
+wildwood bridges, not desiring fellowship of any soul alive; but with a
+heartache always for his little lost playfellows, and for that bright
+country far away, until he died.
+
+Often the creature who has once stood in the courts of Fairyland, is
+placed under vow, when released, and allowed to visit the earth, to come
+back at call, and abide there always. For the spell of that place is so
+strong, no heart can escape it, nor wish to escape it. Thus ends the old
+romance of Thomas the Rhymer: that, at the end of seven years, he was
+freed from Fairyland, made wise beyond all men; but he was sworn to
+return whenever the summons should reach him. And once as he was making
+merry with his chosen comrades, a hart and a hind moved slowly along the
+village street; and he knew the sign, laid down his glass, and smiled
+farewell; and followed them straightway into the strange wood, never to
+be seen more by mortal eyes.
+
+A wonderful and beautiful Japanese story, too, the ancient Taketori
+Monogatari, written in the first half of the tenth century, tells us how
+a grey-haired bamboo-gatherer found in a bamboo-blade a radiant
+elf-baby, and kindly took it home to his wife; and because of their
+great and ready generosity to the waif, the gods made them thrive in
+purse and health; and how, when the little one had been with them three
+months, Kaguyahime, for that was she, grew suddenly to a tall and fair
+girl, and so remained unchanging, for twenty years, while five gallant
+Japanese lords were doing her strange commands, and running risks the
+world over. Then, though the emperor, also, was her suitor, and though
+she was unspeakably fond of her old foster-parents, and grieved to go
+from them, she, being a moon-maid, went back in her chariot one glorious
+night to her shining home, whence she had been banished for some old
+fault, and whither the love and longing and homage of all the land
+pursued her.
+
+Many sweet wild Welsh and Cornish legends deal with shepherds and yeomen
+who set foot on a fairy mound by chance, or who, in some other fashion,
+were transplanted to the realm of the dancing, feasting elves. But they
+have a pathetic ending, since no wanderer ever strayed back with all his
+old wits sound and sharp. He seemed as one who walked in sleep, and had
+no care or recognition for the faces that once he held dear. And if he
+were roused too rudely from his long reverie, he died of the shock.
+
+[Illustration: THE LITTLE HUNCHBACK.]
+
+A merrier tale, and one which is very wise and pretty as well, is
+current in many literatures. The Irish version runs somewhat in this
+fashion, and the Spanish and Breton versions are extraordinarily like
+it. A little hunchback resting at nightfall in an enchanted
+neighborhood, heard the fairies, from their borderlands near by, singing
+over and over the names of the days of the week. "And Sunday, and
+Monday, and Tuesday!" they chorus: "and Sunday and Monday and Tuesday."
+The boy thinks it rather hard that they do not know enough to finish
+their musical chant with the names of the remaining days; so, when they
+pause a little, very softly, and tunefully, he adds: "And Wednesday"!
+The wee folk are delighted, and make their chant longer by one strophe;
+and they crowd out in their finery from the mound, bearing the stranger
+far down into its depths where there are the glorious open halls of
+Fairyland: kissing and praising their friend, and bringing him the
+daintiest fruit lips ever tasted; and to reward him lastingly, their
+soft little hands lift the cruel hump from his back, and he runs dancing
+home, at a year's end, to acquaint the village with his happy fortune.
+Now another deformed lad, his neighbor, is racked with jealousy at the
+sight of his former friend made straight and fair; and he rushes to the
+fairy-mound, and sits, scowling, waiting to hear them begin the magic
+song. Presently rise the silver voices: "And Sunday, and Monday, and
+Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and
+Wednesday": whereat the audience breaks in rudely, right in the middle
+of a cadence: "And Friday." Then the gentle elves were wrathful, and
+swarmed out upon him, snarling and striking at him in scorn; and before
+he escaped them, they had fastened on his crooked back beside his own,
+the very hump that had belonged to the first comer! In the anecdote, as
+it is given in Picardy, the justice-dealing goblins are described as
+very small and comely, clad in violet-colored velvet, and wearing hats
+laden with peacock plumes. In the Japanese rendering, a wen takes the
+place of the hump.
+
+Fairyland is the home of every goblin, bright or fierce, that ever we
+heard of; the home, too, of the ogres and dragons, and enchanted
+princesses, and demons, and Jack-the-giant-killers of all time. The
+Brownies belonged there, and went thither in their worldly finery, when
+service was over; the gnomes and snarling mine-sprites, the sweet
+dancing elves, the fairies who stole children, or romped under the
+river's current, or plagued honest farmers, or tiptoed it with a torch
+down a lonesome road--every one there had his country and his fireside.
+
+[Illustration: TAKNAKANX KAN.]
+
+In that merry company were many who have escaped us, and who sit in a
+blossomy corner by themselves, the oddest of the odd: like the Japanese
+Tengus, who have little wings and feathers, like birds, until they grew
+up; mouths very seldom opened, and most amazing big noses, with which,
+on earth, they were wont to fence, to whitewash, to write poetry, and to
+ring bells! There, too, were the dark-skinned Indian wonder-babies:
+Weeng, whom Mr. Longfellow celebrates as Nepahwin, the Indian god of
+sleep, with his numerous train of little fairy men armed with clubs; who
+at nightfall sought out mortals, and with innumerable light blows upon
+their foreheads, compelled them to slumber. The great boaster, Iagoo,
+whom Hiawatha knew, once declared that he had seen King Weeng himself,
+resting against a tree, with many waving and music-making wings on his
+back. Indian, likewise, was the spirit named Canotidan, who dwelt in
+many a hollow tree; and the lively fellow, Taknakanx Kan, who sported
+"in the nodding flowers; who flew with the birds, frisked with the
+squirrels, and skipped with the grasshopper; who was merry with the gay
+running brooks, and shouted with the waterfall; who moved with the
+sailing cloud, and came forth with the dawn." He never slept, and never
+had time to sleep, being the god of perpetual motion. Near him, perhaps,
+see-sawed a couple of long-eyed Chinese San Sao, or the glossy-haired
+Fées of Southern France pelted one another with dew-drops. There also,
+the African Yumboes had their magnificent tents spread: those strange
+little thieving Banshee-Brownies, wrapped in white cotton pangs, who
+leaned back in their seats after a gorgeous repast, and beheld an army
+of hands appear and carry off the golden dishes! There abided, as the
+venerated elder of the rest, the long-bearded Pygmies whom Homer,
+Aristotle and good Herodotus had not scorned to celebrate, whom Sir John
+Mandeville avowed to be "right fair and gentle, after their quantities,
+both the men and the women.... And he that liveth eight year, men hold
+him right passing old ... and of the men of our stature have they as
+great scorn and wonder as we would have among us of giants!"
+
+Of these and thousands more marvellous is Fairyland full; full of things
+startling and splendid and grewsome and visionary:
+
+                      ----full of noises,
+    Sounds and sweet airs that give delight, and hurt not.
+
+Any picture of it is tame, any worded description dull and heavy, to you
+who discover it daily at first hand, and who know its faces and voices,
+which fade too quickly from the brain. All fine adventures spring
+thence: all loveliest color, odor and companionship are in that
+stirring, sparkling world. Can you not help us back there for an hour?
+Who knows the path? Who can draw a map, and set up a sign-post? Who can
+bar the gate, when we are safe inside, and keep us forever and ever in
+our forsaken "dear sweet land of Once-upon-a-Time"?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE PASSING OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE.
+
+
+THERE was once a very childish child who laid her fairy-book on its face
+across her knee, and sat all the morning watching the cups of the
+honeysuckle, grieved that not one solitary elf was left to swing on its
+sun-touched edges, and laugh back at her, with unforgetful eyes.
+
+We are sorry for her, and sorry with her. The Little People, alas! have
+gone away; would that they might return! No man knows why nor when they
+left us; nor whither they turned their faces. The exodus was made softly
+and slowly, till the whole bright tribe had stolen imperceptibly into
+exile. Mills, steam-engines and prowling disbelievers joined to banish
+them; their poetic and dreamy drama is over, their magic lamp out, and
+their jocund music hushed and forbidden. Or perhaps they of themselves
+went lingeringly and sorrowfully afar, because the world had grown too
+rough for them.
+
+Geoffrey Chaucer, in the fourteenth century, wrote in his sweet,
+tranquil fashion:
+
+      In olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour . . .
+    Al was this lond fulfilled of faerie . . . . .
+    I speke of mony hundrid yeer ago;
+    But now can no man see non elves mo:
+
+which you may understand as an announcement somewhat ahead of time. For
+many, many "elves mo" were on record after the good poet's lyre was
+hushed, and "thick as motes in the sunbeam" centuries after their
+reported flight. There have been sound-headed folk in every age, of whom
+Chaucer was one, who jested over the poor fairies and their arts, and
+spoke of them only for gentle satire's sake. But though Chaucer was sure
+the goblins had perished, his neighbors saw manifold lively specimens of
+the race, without stirring out of the parish. Up to two hundred years
+ago prayers were said in the churches against bad fairies!
+
+[Illustration: "AL WAS THIS LOND FULFILLED OF FAERIE."]
+
+Sir Walter Scott related that the last Brownie was the Brownie of
+Bodsbeck, who lived there long, and vanished, as is the wont of his
+clan, when the mistress of the house laid milk and a piece of money in
+his haunts. He was loath to go, and moaned all night: "Farewell to
+Bonnie Bodsbeck!" till his departure at break of day. A girl from
+Norfolk, England, questioned by Mr. Thomas Keightley, admitted that she
+had often seen the _Frairies_, dressed in white, coming up from their
+little cities underground! Mr. John Brand saw a man who said he had seen
+one that had seen fairies! And Mr. Robert Hunt, author of the _Drolls
+and Traditions of Old Cornwall_, wrote that forty years ago every rock
+and field in that country was peopled with them! and that "a gentleman
+well-known in the literary world of London very recently saw in
+Devonshire a troop of fairies! It was a breezy summer afternoon, and
+these beautiful little creatures were floating on circling zephyrs up
+the side of a sunlit hill, fantastically playing,
+
+    'Where oxlips and the nodding violet grow.'
+
+So here are three trustworthy gentlemen, makers of books on this special
+subject, and none of them very long dead, to offset Master Geoffrey
+Chaucer, and to bring the "lond fulfilled of faerie" closer than he
+dreamed. About the year 1865, a correspondent told Mr. Hunt the
+following queer little story:
+
+[Illustration: FAIRY STORIES.]
+
+"I heard last week of three fairies having been seen in Zennor very
+recently. A man who lived at the foot of Trendreen Hill in the valley of
+Treridge, I think, was cutting furze on the hill. Near the middle of
+the day he saw one of the small people, not more than a foot long,
+stretched at full length and fast asleep, on a bank of heath, surrounded
+by high brakes of furze. The man took off his furze-cuff and slipped the
+little man into it without his waking up, went down to the house, and
+took the little fellow out of the cuff on the hearthstone, when he
+awoke, and seemed quite pleased and at home, beginning to play with the
+children, who were well pleased also with the small body, and called him
+Bobby Griglans. The old people were very careful not to let Bob out of
+the house, nor be seen by the neighbors, as he had promised to show the
+man where crocks of gold were buried on the hill. A few days after he
+was brought, all the neighbors came with their horses, according to
+custom, to bring home the winter's reek of furze, which had to be
+brought down the hill in trusses on the backs of the horses. That Bob
+might be safe and out of sight, he and the children were shut up in the
+barn. Whilst the furze-carriers were in to dinner, the prisoners
+contrived to get out to have a run round the furze-reek, when they saw a
+little man and woman not much larger than Bob, searching into every hole
+and corner among the trusses that were dropped round the unfinished
+reek. The little woman was wringing her hands and crying 'O my dear and
+tender Skillywidden! wherever canst thou be gone to? Shall I ever cast
+eyes on thee again?' 'Go 'e back!' says Bob to the children; 'my father
+and mother are come here too.' He then cried out: 'Here I am, mammy!' By
+the time the words were out of his mouth, the little man and woman, with
+their precious Skillywidden, were nowhere to be seen, and there has
+been no sight nor sign of them since. The children got a sound thrashing
+for letting Skillywidden escape."
+
+[Illustration: THE CAPTURE OF SKILLYWIDDEN.]
+
+Such is the latest evidence we can find of the whereabouts of our
+goblins.
+
+We may, however, consider ourselves their contemporaries, since among
+the peasantry of many countries over-seas, the belief is not yet
+extinct. But it is pretty clear to us, modern and American as we are
+(safer in so thinking than anybody was anywhere before!) that the
+"restless people," as the Scotch called them, are at rest, and clean
+quit of this world; and perhaps satisfied, at last, of their chance of
+salvation, along with fortunate Christians.
+
+Such a great system as this of fairy-lore, propped on such show of
+earnestness, grew up, not of a sudden like a mushroom after a July
+rain, but gradually and securely, like a coral-reef. And the
+dream-building was not nonsense at all, but a way of putting what was
+evident and marvellous into a familiar guise. If certain strange things,
+which are called phenomena, happened--things like the coming of pebbles
+from clouds, music from sand, sparkling light from decay, or disease and
+death from the mere handling of a velvety leaf--then our forefathers,
+instead of gazing straight into the eyes of the fact, as we are taught
+to do, looked askance, and made a fantastic rigmarole concerning the
+pebbles, or the music, and passed it down as religion and law.
+
+The simple-minded citizens of old referred any trifling occurrence,
+pleasant or unpleasant, to the fairies. The demons and deities,
+according to their notion of fitness, governed in vaster matters; and
+the new, potent sprites took shape in the popular brain as the
+controllers of petty affairs. If a shepherd found one of his flock sick,
+it had been elf-shot; if a girl's wits went wool-gathering, it was a
+sign she had been in fairyland; if a cooing baby turned peevish and
+thin, it was a changeling! Wherever you now see a mist, a cobweb, a
+moving shadow on the grass; wherever you hear a cricket-chirp, or the
+plash of a waterfall, or the cry of the bird on the wing, there of yore
+were the fairy-folk in their beauty. They stood in the mind to represent
+the lesser secrets of Nature, to account for some wonder heard and seen.
+It was many a century before nations stopped romancing about the brave
+things on land and sea, and began to speculate, to observe more keenly,
+to hunt out reasons, and to lift the haze of their own fancy from heroic
+facts and deeds.
+
+Think a moment of the Danish moon-man, who breathed pestilence, and the
+moon-woman, whose harp was so charming. Well, the moon-man meant nothing
+else than the marsh, slimy and dangerous, which yielded a malarial odor;
+and the wee woman with her harp represented the musical night-wind,
+which played over the marsh rushes and reeds. Was it not so, too, with
+the larger myths of Greece? For the story of Proserpine, carried away by
+the god of the under world, and after a weary while, given back for
+half-a-year to her fond mother Ceres, tells really of the seed-corn
+which is cast into her dark soil, and long hidden; but reappears in
+glory, and stays overground for months, basking in the sun. And so on
+with many a fable, which we read, unguessing of the thought and purpose
+beneath. Though it was erring, we can hardly thank too much that joyous
+and reverent old paganism which fancied it saw divinity in each move of
+Nature, kept a natural piety towards everything that lived, and made a
+thousand sweet memoranda, to remind us forever of the wonder and charm
+of our earth. All mythology, and the part the fairies play in it, stands
+for what is true.
+
+                    ----"Still
+    Doth the old instinct bring back the old names":
+
+and again and again, when we cite some beautiful fiction of Merman and
+Kobold, of White Dwarf or Pooka, we but repeat, whether aware of it or
+not, how the dews come down at morning, or the storm-wind breaks the
+strong trees, or how a comet, trailing light, bursts headlong across the
+wide sky.
+
+To comprehend fairy-stories, to get under the surface of them, we would
+have to go over them all at great length, and with exhaustless patience.
+And as in digging for the tendrils of a delicate, berry-laden vine, we
+have to search, sometimes, deep and wide into the woodland loam, among
+gnarly roots of shrubs and giant pines, so in tracing the sources of the
+simplest tale which makes us glad or sad, we fall across a network of
+ponderous ancient lore; of custom, prejudice, and lost day-dreams, from
+which this vine, also, is hard to be severed.
+
+The spirit of these neat little goblin-chronicles was right and sincere;
+but the matter of them was often sadly astray. Of course, sometimes,
+useless, misleading details gathered to obscure the first idea, and to
+overrun it with a tangle of error; and not only were fine stories
+spoiled, but many were started which were funny, or silly, or grim
+merely, without serving any use beyond that.
+
+But so powerful is Truth, when there was actually a grain of it at the
+centre, that even those versions which were exaggerated and distorted,
+played into the hands of what we call Folk-lore, and laid their golden
+key at the feet of Science. You will discover that, besides pointing out
+the workings of the natural world, the fairy-tales rested often on the
+workings of our own minds and consciences. The Brownie was a little
+schoolmaster set up to teach love of order, and the need of perfect
+courtesy; the Nix betokened anything sweet and beguiling, which yet was
+hurtful, and to which it was, and is, a gallant heart's duty not to
+yield. And thus, from beginning to end, the elves at whom we laugh, help
+us toward larger knowledge, and a more chivalrous code of behavior. How
+shall we say, then, that there never was a fairy?
+
+[Illustration: GOOD-BYE]
+
+A miner, hearing the drip of subterranean water, took it to be a Duergar
+or a Bucca, swinging his tiny hammer over the shining ore. His notion of
+the Bucca, askew as it was, was one at bottom with our knowledge of the
+dark brooklet. You, the young heirs of mighty Science, can often
+outstrip the slow-gathered wisdom of dead philosophers. But do not
+despise that fine old imagination, which felt its way almost to the
+light. A sixteenth-century boy, who was all excitement once over the
+pranks of Robin Goodfellow, knew many precious things which our very
+great nineteenth-century acuteness has made us lose!
+
+Good-bye, then, to the army of vanishing "gentry," and to their
+steadfast friends, and to you, children dear! who are the guardians of
+their wild unwritten records. Shall you not miss them when next the moon
+is high on the blossomy hillocks, and the thistledown, ready-saddled,
+plunges to be off and away? Merry fellows they were, and shrewd and
+just; and we were very fond of them; and now they are gone. And their
+going, like a mounting harmony, note by note, which ends in one noble
+chord, with a hush after it, leads us to a serious parting word. Keep
+the fairies in kindly memory; do not lose your interest in them. They
+and their history have an enchanting value, which need never be outgrown
+nor set aside; and to the gravest mind they bring much which is
+beautiful, humane and suggestive.
+
+We have found that believers in the Little People were not so wrong,
+after all; and that the eye claiming to have seen a fairy saw, verily, a
+sight quite as astonishing. Let us think as gently of other myths to
+which men have given zeal, awe and admiration, of every faith hereafter
+which seems to us odd and mistaken. For many things which are not true
+in the exact sense, are yet dear to Truth; and follow her as a baby's
+tripping tongue lisps the language of its mother, not very successfully,
+but still with loyalty, and with a meaning which attentive ears can
+always catch.
+
+Surely, our ancestors loved the "span-long elves" who wrought them no
+great harm, and who gave them help and cheer. We will praise them, too.
+Who knows but some little goblin's thorny finger directed many an
+innocent human heart to march, albeit waveringly, towards the ample
+light of God?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page vii, "Puck" changed to "Pück" (All that Pück demanded)
+
+Page vii, "wa" changed to "Wa" (Wag-at-the-Wa')
+
+Page viii, "Kopenick" changed to "Köpenick" (Kobold of Köpenick)
+
+Page viii, "changling" changed to "changeling" (was an Irish changeling)
+
+Page viii, "Taknakaux" changed to "Taknakanx" (Taknakanx Kan)
+
+Page 27, "airy" changed to "fairy" (to the fairy neighbors)
+
+Page 30, illustration caption, "RUGEN" changed to "RÜGEN" (THE ISLE OF
+RÜGEN)
+
+Page 37, illustration caption, "RUGEN" changed to "RÜGEN" (DWARVES OF
+RÜGEN)
+
+Page 38, repeated word "and" removed from text. Original read (by twos
+and and threes)
+
+Page 93, illustration caption, "KOPENICK" changed to "KÖPENICK" (KOBOLD
+OF KÖPENICK)
+
+Page 169, "scources" changed to "sources" (the sources of the simplest)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Brownies and Bogles, by Louise Imogen Guiney
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Brownies and Bogles, by Louise Imogen Guiney
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Brownies and Bogles
+
+Author: Louise Imogen Guiney
+
+Illustrator: Edmund H. Garrett
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2012 [EBook #39782]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNIES AND BOGLES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
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+
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+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 389px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="389" height="600" alt="Cover" />
+</div>
+<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 404px;"><a id="frontis"></a>
+<img src="images/i_002.png" width="404" height="600" alt="" />
+<span class="caption">THE LITTLE &quot;NECK&quot; IN THE SWEDISH RIVER.</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h1>BROWNIES AND BOGLES</h1>
+
+<div class='center'>BY<br />
+<span class='author'>LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY</span><br />
+
+
+<span class='small'>Author of</span><br />
+<span class='small'>Songs at the Start</span><br />
+<span class='small'>Goose-Quill Papers</span><br />
+<span class='small'>The White Sail</span><br />
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<i>Fifty Illustrations by Edmund H Garrett</i><br />
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+BOSTON<br />
+<span class='big'>D LOTHROP COMPANY</span><br />
+<span class='small'>FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS</span><br />
+</div><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='copyright'>
+<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1888,<br />
+by<br />
+D. Lothrop Company.</span><br />
+<br />
+PRESSWORK BY BERWICK &amp; SMITH, BOSTON.<br />
+</div><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER I.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; </td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER II.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">FAIRY RULERS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER III.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE BLACK ELVES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER IV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE LIGHT ELVES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER V.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">DEAR BROWNIE</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">OTHER HOUSE-HELPERS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span>WATER-FOLK</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VIII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">MISCHIEF-MAKERS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER IX.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">PUCK; AND POETS' FAIRIES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER X.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">CHANGELINGS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">FAIRYLAND</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE PASSING OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations">
+<tr><td align="left">The little river-neck of Sweden</td><td align="right"><i><a href="#frontis">Frontis.</a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">"God speed you, gentlemen!"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The Neapolitan fairy</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The elf-monarch who was made court-fool</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The Isle of Rügen Dwarfs that give presents to children</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The Dwarf that borrowed the silk gown</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The Black Dwarfs of Rügen planning mischief</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The Troll's children</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A Coblynau</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">"I can't stay any longer!"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">An elle-maid of Denmark</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Bertha, the White Lady</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Some Greek fairies</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">An elf-traveller</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Brownie's delight was to do domestic service</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Brownie relishes his bowl of cream</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">All that <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Puck'">Pück</ins> demanded</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">"Wag-at-the-<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'wa'">Wa</ins>'"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">An Irish Cluricaune</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Japanese children and Brownies</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span>A little Fir-Darrig</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The persistent Kobold of <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Kopenick'">Köpenick</ins></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Mer-folk</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The old Nix near Ghent</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The work of the Nickel</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Hob in Hobhole</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The Irish Pooka was a horse too</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Will o'-the-Wisp</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Pisky also chased the farmers' cows</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Red Comb was a tyrant</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The Welsh Puck</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A merry night-wanderer</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">"By the moon we sport and play"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The elves whose little eyes glow</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">There was an Irish <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'changling'">changeling</ins></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">"The acorn before the oak have I seen"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">She heard a faint voice singing under a leaf</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">"Ainsel"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Gitto Bach and the fairies</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Kaguyahime, the moon-maid</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The little hunchback</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Taknakaux'">Taknakanx</ins> Kan</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">"Al was this loud fulfilled of faeries"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Fairy stories</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_163">163</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">The capture of Skillywidden</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Good-bye</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2>BROWNIES AND BOGLES.</h2>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2>"BROWNIES AND BOGLES."</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID.</div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>A &nbsp; FAIRY is a humorous person sadly out of
+fashion at present, who has had, nevertheless,
+in the actors' phrase, a long and prosperous
+run on this planet. When we speak of fairies
+nowadays, we think only of small sprites who
+live in a kingdom of their own, with manners, laws,
+and privileges very different from ours. But there
+was a time when "fairy" suggested also the knights
+and ladies of romance, about whom fine spirited
+tales were told when the world was younger.
+Spenser's Faery Queen, for instance, deals with
+dream-people, beautiful and brave, as do the old
+stories of Arthur and Roland; people who either<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+never lived, or who, having lived, were glorified
+and magnified by tradition out of all kinship with
+common men. Our fairies are fairies in the modern
+sense. We will make it a rule, from the beginning,
+that they must be small, and we will put
+out any who are above the regulation height.
+Such as the charming famous Melusina, who
+wails upon her tower at the death of a Lusignan,
+we may as well skip; for she is a tall young
+lady, with a serpent's tail, to boot, and thus,
+alas! half-monster; for if we should accept any
+like her in our plan, there is no reason why we
+should not get confused among mermaids and
+dryads, and perhaps end by scoring down great
+Juno herself as a fairy! Many a dwarf and goblin,
+whom we shall meet anon, is as big as a
+child. Again, there are rumors in nearly every
+country of finding hundreds of them on a square
+inch of oak-leaf, or beneath the thin shadow of a
+blade of grass. The fairies of popular belief are
+little and somewhat shrivelled, and quite as apt to
+be malignant as to be frolicsome and gentle. We
+shall find that they were divided into several<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+classes and families; but there is much analogy
+and vagueness among these divisions. By and by
+you may care to study them for yourselves; at
+present, we shall be very high-handed with the
+science of folk-lore, and pay no attention whatever
+to learned gentlemen, who quarrel so foolishly
+about these things that it is not helpful, nor even
+funny, to listen to them. A widely-spread notion
+is that when our crusading forefathers went to
+the Holy Land, they heard the Paynim soldiers,
+whom they fought, speaking much of the Peri, the
+loveliest beings imaginable, who dwelt in the East.
+Now, the Arabian language, which these swarthy
+warriors used, has no letter P, and therefore they
+called their spirits Feri, as did the Crusaders after
+them; and the word went back with them to Europe,
+and slipped into general use.</div>
+
+<p>"Elf" and "goblin," too, are interesting to
+trace. There was a great Italian feud, in the
+twelfth century, between the German Emperor and
+the Pope, whose separate partisans were known as
+the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. As time went on,
+and the memory of that long strife was still fresh,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+a descendant of the Guelfs would put upon anybody
+he disliked the odious name of Ghibelline;
+and the latter, generation after generation, would
+return the compliment ardently, in his own fashion.
+Both terms, finally, came to be mere catch-words
+for abuse and reproach. And the fairies, falling
+into disfavor with some bold mortals, were angrily
+nicknamed "elf" and "goblin"; in which shape
+you will recognize the last threadbare reminder of
+the once bitter and historic faction of Guelf and
+Ghibelline.</p>
+
+<p>It is likely that the tribe were designated as fairies
+because they were, for the most part, fair to
+see, and full of grace and charm, especially among
+the Celtic branches; and people, at all times, had
+too much desire to keep their good-will, and too
+much shrinking from their rancor and spite, to
+give them any but the most flattering titles. They
+were seldom addressed otherwise than "the little
+folk," "the kind folk," "the gentry," "the fair
+family," "the blessings of their mothers," and "the
+dear wives"; just as, thousands of years back,
+the noblest and cleverest nation the world has ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+seen, called the dreaded Three "Eumenides," the
+gracious ones. It is a sure and fast maxim that
+wheedling human nature puts on its best manners
+when it is afraid. In Goldsmith's racy play, She
+Stoops to Conquer, old Mistress Hardcastle meets
+what she takes to be a robber. She hates robbers,
+of course, and is scared half out of her five wits;
+but she implores mercy with a cowering politeness
+at which nobody can choose but laugh, of her "good
+Mr. Highwayman." Now, fairies, who knew how to
+be bountiful and tender, and who made slaves of
+themselves to serve men and women, as we shall
+see, were easily offended, and wrought great mischief
+and revenge if they were not treated handsomely;
+all of which kept people in the habit of
+courtesy toward them. A whirlwind of dust is a
+very annoying thing, and makes one splutter, and
+feel absurdly resentful; but in Ireland, exactly as
+in modern Greece, the peasantry thought that it
+betokened the presence of fairies going a journey;
+so they lifted their hats gallantly, and said: "God
+speed you, gentlemen!"</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 371px;">
+<img src="images/i_016.png" width="371" height="354" alt="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;GOD SPEED YOU, GENTLEMEN!&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Fairies had their followers and votaries from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+early times. Nothing in the Bible hints that they
+were known among the heathens with whom the
+Israelites warred; nothing in classic mythology
+has any approach to them, except the beautiful
+wood and water-nymphs. Yet poet Homer, Pliny
+the scientist, and Aristotle the philosopher, had
+some notion of them, and of their influence. In old
+China, whole mountains were peopled with them,
+and the coriander-seeds grown in their gardens<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+gave long life to those who ate of them. The
+Persians had a hierarchy of elves, and were the
+first to set aside Fairyland as their dwelling-place.
+Saxons, in their wild forests, believed in tiny
+dwarves or demons called Duergar. Celtic countries,
+Scotland, Brittany, Ireland, Wales, were
+always crowded with them. In the "uttermost
+mountains of India, under a merry part of heaven,"
+or by the hoary Nile, according to other writers,
+were the Pigmeos, one cubit high, full-grown at
+three years, and old at seven, who fought with
+cranes for a livelihood. And the Swiss alchemist,
+Paracelsus (a most pompous and amusing old bigwig),
+wrote that in his day all Germany was filled
+with fairies two feet long, walking about in little
+coats!</p>
+
+<p>Their favorite color, noticeably in Great Britain,
+was green; the majority of them wore it, and
+grudged its adoption by a mortal. Sir Walter
+Scott tells us that it was a fatal hue to several
+families in his country, to the entire gallant race
+of Grahames in particular; for in battle a Grahame
+was almost always shot through the green<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+check of his plaid. French fairies went in white;
+the Nis of Jutland, and many other house-sprites,
+in red and gray, or red and brown; and the plump
+Welsh goblins, whose holiday dress was also white,
+in the gayest and most varied tints of all. In
+North Wales were "the old elves of the blue petticoat";
+in Cardiganshire was the familiar green
+again, though it was never seen save in the month
+of May; and in Pembrokeshire, a uniform of jolly
+scarlet gowns and caps. The fairy gentlemen
+were quite as much given to finery as the ladies,
+and their general air was one of extreme cheerful
+dandyism. Only the mine and ground-fairies
+were attired in sombre colors. Indeed, their idea
+of clothes was delightfully liberal; an elf bespoke
+himself by what he chose to wear; and fashions
+ranged all the way from the sprites of the Orkney
+Islands, who strutted about in armor, to the little
+Heinzelmänchen of Cologne, who scorned to be
+burdened with so much as a hat!</p>
+
+<p>People accounted in strange ways for their
+origin. A legend, firmly held in Iceland, says that
+once upon a time Eve was washing a number of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+her children at a spring, and when the Lord appeared
+suddenly before her, she hustled and hid
+away those who were not already clean and presentable;
+and that they being made forever invisible
+after, became the ancestors of the "little
+folk," who pervade the hills and caves and ruins
+to this day. In Ireland and Scotland fairies were
+spoken of as a wandering remnant of the fallen
+angels. The Christian world over, they were
+deemed either for a while, or perpetually, to be
+locked out from the happiness of the blessed in
+the next world. The Bretons thought their Korrigans
+had been great Gallic princesses, who refused
+the new faith, and clung to their pagan gods,
+and fell under a curse because of their stubbornness.
+The Small People of Cornwall, too, were
+imagined to be the ancient inhabitants of that
+country, long before Christ was born, not good
+enough for Heaven, and yet too good to be condemned
+altogether, whose fate it is to stray about,
+growing smaller and smaller, until by and by they
+vanish from the face of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore the poor fairy-folk, with whom theology<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+deals so rudely, were supposed to be tired
+waiting, and anxious to know how they might fare
+everlastingly; and they waylaid many mortals,
+who, of course, really could tell them nothing, to
+ask whether they might not get into Heaven, by
+chance, at the end. It was their chief cause of
+doubt and melancholy, and ran in their little
+minds from year to year. And since we shall revert
+no more to the sad side of fairy-life, let us
+close with a most sweet story of something which
+happened in Sweden, centuries ago.</p>
+
+<p>Two boys were gambolling by a river, when a
+Neck rose up to the air, smiling, and twanging
+his harp. The elder child watched him, and cried
+mockingly: "Neck! what is the good of your sitting
+there and playing? You will never be saved!"
+And the Neck's sensitive eyes filled with tears,
+and, dropping his harp, he sank forlornly to the
+bottom. But when the brothers had gone home,
+and told their wise and saintly father, he said they
+had been thoughtlessly unkind; and he bade them
+hurry back to the river, and comfort the little water-spirit.
+From afar off they saw him again on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+surface, weeping bitterly. And they called to him:
+"Dear Neck! do not grieve; for our father says
+that your Redeemer liveth also." Then he threw
+back his bright head, and, taking his harp, sang
+and played with exceeding gladness until sunset
+was long past, and the first star sent down its
+benediction from the sky.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>FAIRY RULERS.</div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>THE forming of character among the fairy-folk
+was a very simple and sensible matter.
+You will imagine that the Pagan, Druid and Christian
+elves varied greatly. And they did; still
+their morals had nothing to do with it, nor pride,
+nor patriotism, nor descent, nor education; nor
+would all the philosophy you might crowd into a
+thimble have made one bee-big resident of Japan
+different from a man of his own size in Spain.</div>
+
+<p>They saved themselves no end of trouble by
+setting up the local barometer as their standard.
+The only Bible they knew was the weather, and
+they followed it stoutly. Whatever the climate
+was, whatever it had helped to make the grown-up
+nation who lived under it, that, every time, were
+the "brownies and bogles." Where the land was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+rocky and grim, and subject to wild storms and
+sudden darknesses, the fairies were grim and wild
+too, and full of wicked tricks. Where the landscape
+was level and green, and the crops grew
+peacefully, they were tame, as in central England,
+and inclined to be sentimental.</p>
+
+<p>And they copied the distinguishing traits of the
+race among whom they dwelt. A frugal Breton
+fairy spoke the Breton dialect; the Neapolitan
+had a tooth for fruits and macaroni; the Chinese
+was ceremonious and stern; a true Provençal
+fée was as vain as a peacock, flirting a mirror before
+her, and an Irish elf, bless his little red
+feathered caubeen! was never the man to run
+away from a fight.</p>
+
+<p>If you look on the map, and see a section of
+coast-line like that of Cornwall or Norway, a sunshiny,
+perilous, foamy place, make up your mind
+that the fairies thereabouts were fellows worth
+knowing; that you would have needed all your wit
+and pluck to get the better of them, and that they
+would have made live, hearty playmates, too, while
+in good humor, for any brave boy or girl.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We do not know nearly so much about the genuine
+fairies as we should like. They must have
+been, at one time or another, in every European
+country. Most of the Oriental spirits were taller,
+and of another brood; they figured either as demons,
+or as what we should now call angels. But
+in the Germanic colonies, from very old days,
+fairy-lore was finely developed, and we count up
+tribe on tribe of necks, nixies, stromkarls and mermaids,
+who were water-sprites; of bergmännchen
+(little men of the mountain), and lovely wild-women
+in hilly places; of trolls around the woods and
+rocks; of elves in the air, and gnomes or duergars
+in caverns or mines. Yet from Portugal, and
+Russia, and Hungary, and from our own North
+American Indians, we learn so little that it is
+not worth counting.</p>
+
+<p>If the good dear peasants who were acquainted
+with the fairies had made more rhymes about them,
+and handed them down more attentively; if it had
+occurred to the knowing scholar-monks to keep
+diaries of elfin doings, as it would have done had
+they but known how soon their little friends were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+to be extinct, like the glyptodon and the dodo,
+how wise should we not be!</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 380px;">
+<img src="images/i_025.png" width="380" height="406" alt="" />
+<span class="caption">THE NEAPOLITAN FAIRY.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But again, though there were hosts of supernatural
+beings in the beliefs of every old land, we
+have no business with any but the wee ones.
+And as these were settled most thickly in the
+Teutonic, Celtic and Cymric countries, we will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+turn our curiosity thither, without farther grumbling,
+and be glad to get so much authentic news
+of them as we may.</p>
+
+<p>Fairies, as a whole, seem at bottom rather weak
+and disconsolate. For all of their magic and cunning,
+for all of their high station, and its feasting
+and glory, they could not keep from seeking human
+sympathy. They did, indeed, hurt men, resent intrusions,
+foretell the future, and call down disease
+and storm, but they stood in awe of the weakest
+mortal because of his superior strength and size;
+they came to him to borrow food and medicine, and
+even to ask the loan of his house for their revels.
+They rendered themselves invisible, but he had
+always at his feet the fern-seed, the talisman of
+four-leaved clover (or, as in Scotland, the leaf of
+the ash or rowan-tree), with which he could defeat
+their design, and protect himself against the attacks
+of any witch, imp, or fairy whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>Their government was a happy-go-lucky affair.
+The various tribes of fairies had no common interests
+which would make them sigh for post-offices,
+or cables, or general synods. Each set of them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+got along, independent of the rest. Once in a
+while a mine-man would live alone with his wife,
+pegging away at his daily work, without any idea
+of hurrahing for his King or, more likely, his
+Queen; or even of hunting up his own cousins in
+the next county.</p>
+
+<p>If we had elves in the United States nowadays,
+they would no doubt be American enough to elect
+a President and have him as honest, and steady,
+and sound-hearted as needs be. But dwelling as
+they did in feudal days, they set up thrones and
+sceptres all over Fairydom.</p>
+
+<p>According to the poets, Mab and Oberon are
+the crowned rulers of the little people. In reality,
+they had no supreme head. Among many parties
+and factions, each small agreeing community had
+its own chief, the tallest of his race, who was no
+chief at all, mind you, to the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'airy'">fairy</ins> neighbors a mile
+east. The delicate yellow Chinese fairy-mother
+was Si Wang Mu; and in the Netherlands, the
+elf-queen, who was also queen of the witches, was
+called Wanne Thekla.</p>
+
+<p>We snatch an item here and there of the royal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+histories. We find that the sweet-natured Elberich
+in the Niebelungen is the same as Oberon. In
+Germany was a dwarf-king named Goldemar, who
+lived with a knight, shared his bed, played at dice
+with him, gave him good advice, called him Brother-in-law
+very fondly, and comforted him with the
+music of his harp. But Goldemar, though the
+knight loved him and could touch and feel him,
+was unseen. He was like a wreath of blue smoke,
+or a fragment of moonlight, and you could run a
+sword through him, and never change his kind
+smile. His royal hands were lean, and soft, and
+cold as a frog's. After three years, perhaps when
+Brother-in-law was dead, or when he was married,
+and needed him no longer, the gentle dwarf-king
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Sinnels, Gübich, and Heiling were other dwarf-princes,
+probably rivals of Goldemar, and ready
+to have at him till their breath gave out. Their
+little majesties were quarrelsome as cock-sparrows.
+The elf-monarch Laurîn was once conquered by
+Theodoric; and because he had been treacherous
+in war (which was not "fair" at all, despite the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+proverb), he got a very sad rebuff to his dignity,
+in being made fool or buffoon at the court of
+Bern.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 239px;">
+<img src="images/i_029.png" width="239" height="359" alt="" />
+<span class="caption">THE ELF-MONARCH WHO WAS MADE
+COURT-FOOL.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We are told in
+the Mabinogion
+how the daughter
+of Llud Llaw
+Ereint was "the
+most splendid
+maiden in the
+three islands of
+the mighty," and
+how for her Gwyn
+ap Nudd, the
+Welsh fairy-king,
+battles every
+May-day from
+dawn until sunset. Gwyn once carried her off
+from Gwythyr, her true lord; and both lovers
+were so furious and cruel against each other that
+blessed King Arthur condemned them to wage
+bitter fight on each first-of-May till the world's
+end; and to whomsoever is victorious the greatest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+number of times, the fair lady shall then be
+given. Let us hope the reward will not fall to
+thieving Gwyn.</p>
+
+<p>We have said that we should do pretty much as
+we pleased in ranging the myriad fairy-folk into
+ranks and species. If, as we prowl about, we see
+a baby in the house of the Elfsmiths, who has a
+look of the Elfbrowns, we will immediately kidnap
+him from his fond parents, and add him to the
+family he resembles. Now that might make wailing
+and confusion, and bring down vengeance on
+our heads, if there were any Queen Mab left to
+rap us to order; but as things go, we shall find it
+a very neat way of smoothing difficulties.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 388px;">
+<img src="images/i_031.png" width="388" height="363" alt="" />
+<span class="caption">THE ISLE OF <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'RUGEN'">RÜGEN</ins> DWARVES THAT GIVE PRESENTS TO
+CHILDREN.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Of course there are certain pigwidgeons too accomplished,
+too slippery, too many things in one,
+to be ticketed and tied down like the rest; such
+versatile fellows as the Brown Dwarves of the Isle
+of Rügen, for instance. They lived in what were
+called the Vine-hills, and were not quite eighteen
+inches high. They wore little snuff-brown jackets
+and a brown cap (which made them invisible,
+and allowed them to pass through the smallest keyhole),<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+with one wee silver bell at its peak, not to
+be lost for any money. But they did some roguish
+things; and children who fell into their hands
+had to serve them for fifty years! With caprice
+usual to their kin, they will, on other occasions,
+befriend and protect children, and give them presents;
+or plague untidy servants, like Brownie, or
+lead travellers astray by night into bogs and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+marshes, like the Ellydan and the Fir-Darrig, and
+mischievous double-faced Robin Goodfellow himself.</p>
+
+<p>An ancient tradition says that while the grass-blades
+are sprouting at the root, the earth-elves
+water and nourish them; and the moment the
+growth pierces the soil, affectionate air-elves take
+it in charge. Therefore we borrow a hint from
+the grass; and after first going down among the
+swarthy fairies who burrow underground, we shall
+pass up to companionship with little beings so
+beautiful that wherever they flock there is starlight
+and song.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE BLACK ELVES.</div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>ACCORDING to the very old Scandinavian
+notion, land-fairies were of two sorts; the
+Light or Good Elves who dwelt in air, or out-of-doors
+on the earth, and the Black or Evil Elves
+who dwelt beneath it.</div>
+
+<p>We will follow the Norse folk. If we were required
+to group human beings under two headings,
+we should choose that same Good and Evil, because
+the division occurs to one naturally, because
+it saves time, and because everybody comprehends
+it, and sees that it is based upon law; and so do
+we deal with our wonder-friends, who have the
+strange moral sorcery belonging to each of us their
+masters, to help or to harm.</p>
+
+<p>The evil fairies, then, were the scowling underground
+tribes, who hid themselves from the frank<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+daylight, and the open reaches of the fields. Yet
+just as the good fairies had many a sad failing
+to offset their grace and charm, the grim, dark-skinned
+manikins had sudden impulses towards
+honor and kindness. In fact, as we noted before,
+they were astonishingly like our fellow-creatures,
+of whom scarce any is entirely faultless, or entirely
+warped and ruined.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, the Hill-men, in Switzerland, were
+very generous-minded; they drove home stray
+lambs at night, and put berry-bushes in the way
+of poor children. And the more modern Dwarves
+of Germany, frequenting the clefts of rocks, were
+silent, mild, and well-disposed, and apt to bring
+presents to those who took their fancy. Like
+others of the elf-kingdom, they loved to borrow
+from mortals. Once a little bowing Dwarf came
+to a lady for the loan of her silk gown for a fairy-bride.
+(You can imagine that, at the ceremony,
+the groom must have had a pretty hunt among the
+wilderness of finery to get at her ring-finger!)
+Of course the lady gave it; but worrying over its
+tardy return, she went to the Dwarves' hill and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+asked for it aloud. A messenger with a sorrowful
+countenance brought it to her at once, spotted
+over and over with wax. But he told her that
+had she been less impatient every stain would
+have been a diamond!</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/i_035.png" width="370" height="416" alt="" />
+<span class="caption">THE DWARF THAT BORROWED THE SILK GOWN.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The huge, terrible, ogre-like Hindoo Rakshas,
+the weird Divs and Jinns of Persia, and the ancient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+demon-dwarves of the south called Panis,
+may be considered the foster-parents of our dwindled
+minims, as the glorious Peris on the other
+hand gave their name, and some of their qualities,
+to a little European family of very different ancestry.</p>
+
+<p>The Black Elves will serve as our general name
+for dwarves and mine-fairies. These are closely
+connected in all legends, live in the same neighborhoods,
+and therefore claim a mention together.
+They have four points in common: dark skin;
+short, bulky bodies; fickle and irritable natures;
+and occupations as miners, misers, or metalsmiths.
+And because of their exceeding industry,
+on the old maxim's authority, where all work and
+no play made Jack a dull boy, they are curiously
+heavy-headed and preposterous jacks; and, waiving
+their plain faces, not in any wise engaging.
+Yet perhaps, being largely German, they may be
+philosophers, and so vastly superior to any little
+gabbling, somersaulting ragamuffin over in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>In the Middle Ages, they were described as
+withered and leering, with small, sharp, snapping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+black eyes, bright as gems; with cracked voices,
+and matted hair, and horns peering from it! and
+as if that were not enough adornment, they had
+claws, which must have been filched from the
+ghosts of mediæval pussy-cats, on their fingers
+and toes.</p>
+
+<p>The first Duergars belonging to the Gotho-German
+mythology, were muscular and strong-legged;
+and when they stood erect, their arms reached to
+the ground. They were clever and expert handlers
+of metal, and made of gold, silver and iron,
+the finest armor in the world. They wrought for
+Odin his great spear, and for Thor his hammer,
+and for Frey the wondrous ship <i>Skidbladnir</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Long ago, too, armor-making Elves, black as
+pitch, lived in Svart-Alfheim, in the bowels of the
+earth, and were able, by their glance or touch or
+breath, to cause sickness and death wheresoever
+they wished.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 379px;">
+<img src="images/i_038.png" width="379" height="298" alt="" />
+<span class="caption">THE BLACK DWARVES OF <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'RUGEN'">RÜGEN</ins> PLANNING MISCHIEF.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Still uglier were the Black Dwarves of the mysterious
+Isle of Rügen; nor had they any frolicsome
+or cordial ways which should bring up our
+opinion of them. Their pale eyes ran water, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+every midnight they mewed and screeched horribly
+from their holes. In idle summer-hours they
+sat under the elder-trees, planning by twos <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'and and'">and</ins>
+threes to wreak mischief on mankind. They,
+as well, were once useful, if not beautiful; for in
+the days when heroes wore a panoply of steel, the
+Black Dwarves wrought fair helmets and corselets
+of cobwebby mail which no lance could pierce,
+and swords flexible as silk which could unhorse
+the mightiest foe. The little blackamoors frequented
+mining districts, and dug for ore on their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+own account. They were said to be very rich,
+owning unnumbered chests stored underground.
+The most exciting tales about gnomes of all nations
+were founded on the efforts of daring mortals
+to get possession of their wealth.</p>
+
+<p>To the mining division belong the dwarf-Trolls
+of Denmark and Sweden (for there were giant-Trolls
+as well), and the whimsical Spriggans of
+Cornwall. The Trolls burrowed in mounds and
+hills, and were called also Bjerg-folk or Hill-folk;
+they lived in societies or families, baking and brewing,
+marrying and visiting, in the old humdrum
+way. They made fortunes, and hoarded up heaps
+of money. But they were often obliging and benevolent;
+it gave them pleasure to bestow gifts,
+to lend and borrow, and sometimes, alas! to steal.
+They played prettily on musical instruments, and
+were very jolly. People used to see the stumpy
+little children of the genteel Troll who lived at
+Kund in Jutland, climbing up the knoll which
+was the roof of their own house, and rolling down
+one after the other with shouts of laughter. The
+Trolls were famous gymnasts, and very plump and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+round. Our word "droll" is left to us in merry
+remembrance of them.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 378px;">
+<img src="images/i_040.png" width="378" height="369" alt="" />
+<span class="caption">THE TROLL&#39;S CHILDREN.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>They were tractable creatures, as you may know
+from the tale of the farmer, who, ploughing an
+angry Troll's land, agreed, for the sake of peace,
+to go halves in the crops sown upon it, so that
+one year the Troll should have what grew above
+ground, and the next year what grew under. But
+the sly farmer planted radishes and carrots, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+the Troll took the tops; and the following season
+he planted corn; and his queer partner gathered
+up the roots and marched off in triumph. Indeed,
+it was so easy to outwit the simple Troll
+that a generous farmer would never have played
+the game out, and we should have lost our little
+story. It was mean to take advantage of the sweet
+fellow's trustfulness. There was an English schoolmaster
+once, a man wise, firm, and kind, and of
+vast influence, of whom one of his boys said to
+another: "It's a shame to tell a lie to Arnold; he
+always believes it." That was a ray of real chivalry.</p>
+
+<p>The Spriggans were fond of dwelling near walls
+and loose stones, with which it was unlucky to
+tamper, and where they slipped in and out with
+suspicious eyes, guarding their buried treasure.
+If a house was robbed, or the cattle were carried
+away, or a hurricane swooped down on a Cornish
+village, the neighbors attributed their trouble to
+the Spriggans; whereby you may believe they
+had fine reputations for meddlesomeness. Their
+cousins, the Buccas, Bockles or Knockers, were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+gentlemen who went about thumping and rapping
+wherever there was a vein of ore for the
+weary workmen, cheating, occasionally, to break
+the monotony.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 172px;">
+<img src="images/i_042.png" width="172" height="239" alt="Coblynau wiht pickaxe" />
+<span class="caption">A COBLYNAU.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Welsh Coblynau followed the same profession,
+and pointed out
+the desired places in
+mines and quarries.
+The Coblynau were copper-colored,
+and very
+homely, as were all the
+pigmies who lived away
+from the sun; they were
+busybodies, half-a-yard
+high, who imitated the
+dress of their friends the miners, and pegged away
+at the rocks, like them, with great noise and gusto,
+accomplishing nothing. Their houses were far-removed
+from mortal vision, and unlike certain
+proper children, now obsolete, the Coblynau themselves
+were generally heard, but not seen.</p>
+
+<p>Their German relation was the Wichtlein (little
+wight) an extremely small fellow, whom the Bohemians<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+named Hans-schmiedlein (little John Smith!)
+because he makes a noise like the stroke of an
+anvil.</p>
+
+<p>Dwarves and mine-men went about, unfailingly,
+with a purseful of gold. But if anyone snatched
+it from them, only stones and twine and a pair of
+scissors were to be found in it. The Leprechaun,
+or Cluricaune, whom we shall meet later as the
+fairy-cobbler, was an Irish celebrity who knew
+where pots of guineas were hidden, and who carried
+in his pocket a shilling often-spent and ever-renewed.
+He looked, in this banker-like capacity,
+a clumsy small boy, dressed in various ways, sometimes
+in a long coat and cocked hat, unlike the
+Danish Troll, who kept to homely gray, with the
+universal little red cap. Even the respectable
+Kobold, who was, virtually, a house-spirit, caught
+the fever of fortune-hunting, and often threw up
+his domestic duties to seek the fascinating nuggets
+in the mines.</p>
+
+<p>There is a funny anecdote of a Troll who, as
+was common with his race, cunningly concealed
+his prize under the shape of a coal. Now a peasant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+on his way to church one bright Sunday
+morning saw him trying vainly to move a couple
+of crossed straws which had blown upon his coal;
+for anything in the shape of a cross seemed to
+shrivel up an elf's power in the most startling
+manner. So the little sprite turned, half-crying,
+and begged the peasant to move the straws for
+him. But the man was too shrewd for that, and
+took up the coal, straws and all, and ran, despite
+the poor Troll's screaming, and saw, on reaching
+home, that he had captured a lump of solid gold.</p>
+
+<p>All Black Elves were particular about their
+neighborhoods, and a whole colony would migrate
+at once if they took the least offence, or if the
+villagers about got "too knowing" for them.
+(An American poet once wrote a sonnet "To
+Science," in which he berated her for having
+made him "too knowing," and for having driven</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&mdash;"the Naiad from her flood</span><br />
+The elfin from the green grass";<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and it was in consequence of his very knowingness,
+no doubt, that, beauty-loving and marvel-loving
+as were his sensitive eyes, they never saw so much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+as the vanishing shadow of a fairy.) A little
+dwarf-woman told two young Bavarians that she
+intended to leave her favorite dwelling, because
+of the shocking cursing and swearing of the country-people!
+But they were not all so godly.</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 191px;">
+<img src="images/i_045.png" width="191" height="192" alt="crying male fairy" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;I CAN&#39;T STAY ANY LONGER!&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Ever since the great god Thor threw his hammer
+at the Trolls, they have hated noise as much
+as Mr. Thomas Carlyle, who, however, made
+Thor's own bluster in the world himself. They
+sought sequestered places that they might not be
+disturbed. The Prussian mites near Dardesheim
+were frightened away by the forge and the factory.
+Above all else, church-bells distressed them, and
+spoiled their tempers.
+A huckster once
+passed a Danish Troll,
+sitting disconsolately
+on a stone, and asked
+him what the matter
+might be. "I hate to
+leave this country,"
+blubbered the fat mourner, "but I can't stay where
+there is such an eternal ringing and dinging!"</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE LIGHT ELVES.</div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>OVER the beautiful Light Elves of the <i>Edda</i>,
+in old Scandinavia, ruled the beloved sun-god
+Frey; and they lived in a summer land called
+Alfheim, and it was their office to sport in air or
+on the leaves of trees, and to make the earth
+thrive.</div>
+
+<p>But they changed character as centuries passed;
+and they came to resemble the fairies of Great
+Britain in their extreme waywardness and fickleness.
+For though they were fair and benevolent
+most of the time, they could be, when it so pleased
+them, ugly and hurtful; and what they could be,
+they very often were; for fairies were not expected
+to keep a firm rein on their moods and tempers.</p>
+
+<p>Norwegian peasants described some of their
+Huldrafolk as tiny bare boys, with tall hats; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+in Sweden, as well, they were slender and delicate.
+When a Swedish elf-maid or moon-maid wished
+to approach the inmates of a house, she rode on
+a sunbeam through the keyhole, or between the
+openings in a shutter.</p>
+
+<p>The German wild-women were like them, going
+about alone, and having fine hair flowing to their
+feet. They had some odd traits, one of which was
+sermonizing! and exhorting stray mortals who had
+done them a service, to lead a godly life.</p>
+
+<p>The elle-maid in Denmark and in neighboring
+countries was always winsome and graceful, and
+carried an enchanted harp. She loved moonlight
+best, and was a charming dancer. But her evil
+element was in her very beauty, with which she entrapped
+foolish young gentlemen, and waylaid them,
+and carried them off who knows whither? She
+could be detected by the shape of her back, it
+being hollow, like a spoon; which was meant to
+show that there was something wrong with her,
+and that she was not what she seemed, but fit
+only for the abhorrence of passers-by. The elle-man,
+her mate, was old and ill-favored, a disagreeable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+person; for if any one came near him
+while he was bathing in the sun, he opened his
+mouth and breathed pestilence upon them.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 354px;">
+<img src="images/i_048.png" width="354" height="449" alt="butterfly fairy sitting on crescent moon" />
+<span class="caption">AN ELLE-MAID, OF DENMARK.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 369px;">
+<img src="images/i_049.png" width="369" height="481" alt="fairy in white" />
+<span class="caption">BERTHA, THE WHITE LADY.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A common trait of the air-fairies was to assist
+at a birth and give the infant, at their will, good
+and bad gifts. Dame Bertha, the White Lady of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+Germany, came to the birth of certain princely
+babes, and the Korrigans made it a general practice.
+Whenever they nursed or tended a new-born
+mortal, bestowed presents on him and foretold
+his destiny, one of the little people was almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+always perverse enough to bestow and foretell
+something unfortunate. You all know Grimm's
+beautiful tale of Dornröschen, which in English
+we call The Sleeping Beauty, where the jealous
+thirteenth fairy predicts the poor young lady's
+spindle-wound. Around the famous Roche des
+Fées in the forest of Theil, are those who believe
+yet that the elves pass in and out at the chimneys,
+on errands to little children.</p>
+
+<p>The modern Greek fairies haunted trees, danced
+rounds, bathed in cool water, and carried off
+whomsoever they coveted. A person offending
+them in their own fields was smitten with disease.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese Shan Sao were a foot high, lived
+among the mountains, and were afraid of nothing.
+They, too, were revengeful; for if they were attacked
+or annoyed by mortals, they "caused them
+to sicken with alternate heat and cold." Bonfires
+were burnt to drive them away.</p>
+
+<p>The innocent White Dwarves of the Isle of
+Rügen in the Baltic Sea, made lace-work of silver,
+too fine for the eye to detect, all winter long; but
+came idly out into the woods and fields with returning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+spring, leaping and singing, and wild with
+affectionate joy. They were not allowed to ramble
+about in their own shapes; therefore they
+changed themselves to doves and butterflies, and
+winged their way to good mortals, whom they
+guarded from all harm.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 374px;">
+<img src="images/i_051.png" width="374" height="355" alt="two fairies in lotus blossoms" />
+<span class="caption">SOME GREEK FAIRIES.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Korrigans of Brittainy, mentioned a while
+ago, were peculiar in many ways. They had beautiful
+singing voices and bright eyes, but they never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+danced. They preferred to sit still at twilight,
+like mermaids, combing their long golden hair.
+The tallest of them was nearly two feet high, fair
+as a lily, and transparent as dew itself, yet able
+as the rest to seem dark, and humpy, and terrifying.
+He who passed the night with them, or
+joined in their sports, was sure to die shortly,
+since their very breath or touch was fatal. And
+again, as in the case of Seigneur Nann, about
+whom a touching Breton ballad was made, they
+doomed to death any who refused to marry one of
+them within three days.</p>
+
+<p>Of the American Indian fairies we do not know
+much. In Mr. Schoolcraft's books of Indian
+legends there is a beautiful little Bone-dwarf, who
+may almost be considered a fairy. In the land of
+the Sioux they tell the pretty story of Antelope
+and Karkapaha, and how the wee warrior-folk,
+thronging on the hill, clad in deerskin, and armed
+with feathered arrow and spear, put the daring
+heart of a slain enemy into the breast of the timid
+lover, Karkapaha, and made him worthy both to
+win and keep his lovely maiden, and to deserve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+homage for his bravery, from her tribe and his.
+Some of you will remember one thing against the
+Puk-Wudjies, which is an Algonquin name meaning
+"little vanishing folk," to wit: that they killed
+Hiawatha's friend, "the very strong man Kwasind,"
+as our Longfellow called him. He had excited
+their envy, and they flung on his head, as he
+floated in his canoe, the only thing on earth that
+could kill him, the seed-vessel of the white pine.</p>
+
+<p>The Scotch, Irish and English overground fairies
+were, as a general thing, very much alike.
+They had the power of becoming visible or invisible,
+compressing or enlarging their size, and taking
+any shape they pleased. When an Irish Shefro
+was disturbed or angry, and wanted to get a house
+or a person off her grounds, she put on the
+strangest appearances: she could crow, spit fire,
+slap a tail or a hoof about, grin like a dragon, or
+give a frightful, weird, lion-like roar. Of course
+the object of her polite attentions thought it best
+to oblige her. If she and her companions were
+anxious to enter a house, they lifted the spryest of
+their number to the keyhole, and pushed him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+through. He carried a piece of string, which he
+fastened to the inside knob, and the other end
+to a chair or stool; and over this perilous bridge
+the whole giggling tribe marched in one by one.
+The Irish and Scotch fays were more mischievous
+than the English, but have not fared so well, having
+had no memorable verses made about them.
+The little Scots were sometimes dwarfish wild
+creatures, wrapped in their plaids, or, oftener,
+comely and yellow-haired; the ladies in green
+mantles, inlaid with wild-flowers; and dapper little
+gentlemen in green trousers, fastened with bobs
+of silk. They carried arrows, and went on tiny
+spirited horses, as did the Welsh fairies, "the silver
+bosses of their bridles jingling in the night-breeze."
+An old account of Scotland says that
+they were "clothed in green, with dishevelled hair
+floating over their shoulders, and faces more blooming
+than the vermeil blush of a summer morning."</p>
+
+<p>Their Welsh cousins were many. A native poet
+once sang of them:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">&mdash;&mdash;In every hollow,</span><br />
+A hundred wry-mouthed elves.<br />
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='unindent'>They were queer little beings, and had notions of
+what was decorous, for they combed the goats'
+beards every Friday night, "to make them decent
+for Sunday!" They were very quarrelsome; you
+could hear them snarling and jabbering like jays
+among themselves, so that in some parts of Wales
+a proverb has arisen: "They can no more agree
+than the fairies!" The inhabitants believed that
+the midgets never had courage to go through the
+gorse, or prickly furze, which is a common shrub
+in that country. One sick old woman who was
+bothered by the Tylwyth Teg ("the fair family")
+souring her milk and spilling her tea, used to
+choke up her room with the furze, and make such
+a hedge about the bed, that nothing larger than a
+needle could be so much as pointed at her. In
+Breconshire the Tylwyth Teg gave loaves to the
+peasantry, which, if they were not eaten then and
+there in the dark, would turn in the morning into
+toadstools! When Welsh fairies took it into their
+heads to bestow food and money, very lazy people
+were often supported in great style, without a
+stroke of work. And the Tylwyth Teg loved to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+reward patience and generosity. They played
+the harp continuously, and, on grand occasions,
+the bugle; but if a bagpipe was heard among
+them, that indicated a Scotch visitor from over
+the border.</div>
+
+<p>King James <span class="smcap">i.</span> of England mentions in his
+<i>Dæmonology</i> a "King and Queene of Phairie: sic
+a jolie courte and traine as they had!" Nothing
+could have exceeded the state and elegance of
+their ceremonious little lives. According to a
+sweet old play, they had houses made all of
+mother-of-pearl, an ivory tennis-court, a nutmeg
+parlor, a sapphire dairy-room, a ginger hall; chambers
+of agate, kitchens of crystal, the jacks of
+gold, the spits of Spanish needles! They dressed
+in imported cobweb! with a four-leaved clover,
+lined with a dog-tooth violet, for overcoat; and
+they ate (think of eating such a pretty thing!) delicious
+rainbow-tart, the trout-fly's gilded wing, and</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&mdash;&mdash;the broke heart of a nightingale</span><br />
+O'ercome with music.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>But we never heard that Chinese or Scandinavian
+elves could afford such luxury.</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Their English dwellings were often in the bubble-castles
+of sunny brooks; and the bright-jacketed
+hobgoblins took their pleasure sitting under
+toadstools, or paddling about in egg-shell boats,
+playing jew's-harps large as themselves. Beside
+the freehold of blossomy hillocks and dingles,
+they had dells of their own, and palaces, with
+everything lovely in them; and whatever they
+longed for was to be had for the wishing. They
+had fair gardens in clefts of the Cornish rocks,
+where vari-colored flowers, only seen by moonlight,
+grew; in these gardens they loved to walk, tossing
+a posy to some mortal passing by; but if he ever
+gave it away they were angry with him forever
+after. They liked to fish; and the crews put out
+to sea in funny uniforms of green, with red caps.
+They travelled on a fern, a rush, a bit of weed, or
+even boldly bestrode the bee and the dragon-fly;
+and they went to the chase, as in the Isle of
+Man, on full-sized horses whenever they could get
+them! and when it came to time of war, their armies
+laid-to like Alexander's own, with mushroom-shield
+and bearded grass-blades for mighty spears,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+and honeysuckle trumpets braying furiously!
+There are traditions of battles so vehement and
+long that the cavalry trampled down the dews of
+the mountain-side,
+and sent many a
+peerless fellow, at
+every charge, to the
+fairy hospitals and
+cemeteries.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 210px;">
+<img src="images/i_058.png" width="210" height="272" alt="Fairy riding a bee" />
+<span class="caption">AN ELF-TRAVELLER.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Their chief and all
+but universal amusement,
+sacred to moonlight
+and music, was
+dancing hand-in-hand;
+and what was called a fairy-ring was the
+swirl of grasses in a field taller and deeper green
+than the rest, which was supposed to mark their
+circling path. Inside these rings it was considered
+very dangerous to sleep, especially after sundown.
+If you put your foot within them, with a
+companion's foot upon your own, the elfin tribe
+became visible to you, and you heard their tinkling
+laughter; and if, again, you wished a charm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+to defy all their anger, for they hated to be overlooked
+by mortal eyes, you had merely to turn
+your coat inside out. But a house built where the
+wee folks had danced was made prosperous.</p>
+
+<p>Hear how deftly old John Lyly, nearly four hundred
+years ago, put the dancing in his lines:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Round about, round about, in a fine ring-a,<br />
+Thus we dance, thus we prance, and thus we sing-a!<br />
+Trip and go, to and fro, over this green-a;<br />
+All about, in and out, for our brave queen-a.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>For the elves, as we know, were governed generally
+by a queen, who bore a white wand, and
+stood in the centre while her gay retainers skipped
+about her. Fairy-rings were common in every
+Irish parish. At Alnwick in Northumberland
+County in England, was one celebrated from antiquity;
+and it was believed that evil would befall
+any who ran around it more than nine times.
+The children were constantly running it that
+often; but nothing could tempt the bravest of
+them all to go one step farther. In France, as in
+Wales, the fairies guarded the cromlechs with
+care, and preferred to hold revel near them.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At these merry festivals, in the pauses of action,
+meat and drink were passed around. A Danish
+ballad tells how Svend-Fälling drained a horn
+presented by elf-maids, which made him as strong
+as twelve men, and gave him the appetite of twelve
+men, too; a natural but embarrassing consequence.
+It used to be proclaimed that any one daring
+enough to rush on a fairy feast, and snatch the
+drinking-glass, and get away with it, would be
+lucky henceforward. The famous goblet, the
+Luck of Edenhall, was seized after that fashion,
+by one of the Musgraves; whereat the little people
+disappeared, crying aloud:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+If that glass do break or fall,<br />
+Farewell the Luck of Edenhall!<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Once upon a time the Duke of Wharton dined at
+Edenhall, and came very near ruining his host,
+and all his race; for the precious Luck slipped
+from his hand; but the clever butler at his elbow
+happily caught it in his napkin, and averted the
+catastrophe: so the beautiful cup and the favored
+family enjoy each other in security to this day.</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the Song of Sir Olaf, we are told how he fell
+in, while riding by night, with the whirling elves;
+and how, after their every plea and threat that he
+should stay from his to-be-wedded sweetheart at
+home, and dance, instead, with them, he hears the
+weird French refrain:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+O the dance, the dance! How well the dance goes under the trees!<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>And through their wicked magic, after all his
+steadfast resistance, with the wild music and the
+dizzy measure whirling in his brain, there he
+dies.</div>
+
+<p>All the gay, unsteady, fantastic motion broke
+up at the morning cock-crow, and instantly the
+little bacchantes vanished. And, strangest of all!
+the betraying flash of the dawn showed their
+peach-like color, their blonde, smooth hair, and
+bodily agility changed, like a Dead Sea apple, and
+turned into ugliness and distortion! It was not the
+lovely vision of a minute back which hurried away
+on the early breeze, but a crowd of leering, sullen-eyed
+bugaboos, laughing fiercely to think how
+they had deceived a beholder.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These, then, were the Light Elves, not all lovable,
+or loyal, or gentle, as they were expected to
+be, but cruel to wayfarers like poor Sir Olaf, and
+treacherous and mocking; beautiful so long as
+they were good, and hideous when they had done
+a foul deed. It is hard to say wherein they were
+better than the Underground Elves, who were,
+despite some kindly characteristics, professional
+doers of evil, and had not the choice or chance
+of being so happy and fortunate. But we record
+them as we find them, not without the sobering
+thought that here, as at every point, the fairies
+are a running commentary on the puzzle of our
+own human life.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>DEAR BROWNIE.</div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>BROWNIE, the willing drudge, the kind little
+housemate, was the most popular of all
+fairies; and it is he whom we now love and know
+best.</div>
+
+<p>He was a sweet, unselfish fellow; but very wide
+awake as well, full of mischief, and spirited as a
+young eagle, when he was deprived of his rights.
+He belonged to a tribe of great influence and
+size, and each division of that tribe, inhabiting
+different countries, bore a different name. But
+the word Brownie, to English-speaking people,
+will serve as meaning those fairies who attached
+themselves persistently to any spot or any family,
+and who labored in behalf of their chosen home.</p>
+
+<p>The Brownie proper belonged to the Shetland
+and the Western Isles, to Cornwall, and the Highlands<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+and Borderlands of Scotland. He was an
+indoor gentleman, and varied in that from our
+friends the Black and Light Elves. He took up
+his dwelling in the house or the barn, sometimes
+in a special corner, or under the roof, or even in
+the cellar pantries, where he ate a great deal
+more than was good for him. In the beginning he
+was supposed to have been covered with short
+curly brown hair, like a clipped water-spaniel,
+whence his name. But he changed greatly in
+appearance. Later accounts picture him with a
+homely, sunburnt little face, as if bronzed with
+long wind and weather; dark-coated, red-capped,
+and shod with noiseless slippers, which were as
+good as wings to his restless feet. Along with
+him, in Scotch houses, and in English houses
+supplanting him, often lived the Dobie or Dobbie
+who was not by any means so bright and active
+("O, ye stupid Dobie!" runs a common phrase),
+and therefore not to be confounded with him.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 379px;">
+<img src="images/i_065.png" width="379" height="421" alt="fairy churning" />
+<span class="caption">BROWNIE&#39;S DELIGHT WAS TO DO DOMESTIC SERVICE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Brownie's delight was to do domestic service; he
+churned, baked, brewed, mowed, threshed, swept,
+scrubbed, and dusted; he set things in order,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+saved many a step to his mistress, and took it
+upon himself to manage the maid-servants, and
+reform them, if necessary, by severe and original
+measures. Neatness and precision he dearly
+loved, and never forgot to drop a penny over-night
+in the shoe of the person deserving well of him.
+But lax offenders he pinched black and blue, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+led them an exciting life of it. His favorite revenge,
+among a hundred equally ingenious, was
+dragging the disorderly servant out of bed. A
+great poet announced in Brownie's name:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+'Twixt sleep and wake<br />
+I do them take,<br />
+And on the key-cold floor them throw!<br />
+If out they cry<br />
+Then forth I fly,<br />
+And loudly laugh I: "Ho, ho, ho!"<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Like all gnomes truly virtuous, he could be the
+worst varlet, the most meddlesome, troublesome,
+burdensome urchin to be imagined, when the whim
+was upon him. At such times he gloried in undoing
+all his good deeds; and by way of emphasizing
+his former tidiness and industry, he tore
+curtains, smashed dishes, overturned tables, and
+made havoc among the kitchen-pans. All this
+was done in a sort of holy wrath; for be it to
+Brownie's credit, that if he were treated with
+courtesy, and if the servants did their own duties
+honestly, he was never other than his gentle, well-behaved,
+hard-working little self.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He asked no wages; he had a New England
+scorn of "tipping," when he had been especially
+obliging; and he could not be wheedled into accepting
+even so much as a word of praise. A
+farmer at Washington, in Sussex, England, who
+had often been surprised in the morning at the
+large heaps of corn threshed for him during the
+night, determined at last to sit up and watch what
+went on. Creeping to the barn-door, and peering
+through a chink, he saw two manikins working
+away with their fairy flails, and stopping an instant
+now and then, only to say to each other:
+"See how I sweat! See how I sweat!" the very
+thing which befell Milton's "lubbar fiend" in
+L'Allegro. The farmer, in his pleasure, cried:
+"Well done, my little men!" whereupon the startled
+sprites uttered a cry, and whirled and whisked
+out of sight, never to toil again in his barn.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that not long ago, there was a whole
+tribe of tiny, naked Kobolds (Brownie's German
+name) called Heinzelmänchen, who bound themselves
+for love to a tailor of Cologne, and did,
+moreover, all the washing and scouring and kettle-cleaning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+for his wife. Whatever work there was
+left for them to do was straightway done; but no
+man ever beheld them. The tailor's prying spouse
+played many a ruse to get sight of them, to no
+avail. And they, knowing her curiosity and grieved
+at it, suddenly marched, with music playing, out
+of the town forever. People heard their flutes
+and viols only, for none saw the little exiles themselves,
+who got into a boat, and sailed "westward,
+westward!" like Hiawatha, and the city's luck is
+thought to have gone with them.</p>
+
+<p>But Brownie, who would take neither money,
+nor thanks, nor a glance of mortal eyes, and who
+departed in high dudgeon as soon as a reward
+was offered him, could be bribed very prettily, if
+it were done in a polite and secretive way. He
+was not too scrupulous to pocket whatever might
+be dropped on a stair, or a window-sill, where he
+was sure to pass several times in a day, and walk
+off, whistling, to keep his own counsel, and say
+nothing about it. And for goodies, mysterious
+goodies left in queer places by chance, he had
+excellent tooth. Housewives, from the era of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+the first Brownie, never failed slyly to gladden his
+favorite haunt with the dish which he liked best,
+and which, so long as it was fresh and plentiful,
+he considered a satisfactory squaring-up of accounts.
+One of these desired treats was knuckled
+cakes, made of meal warm from the mill, toasted
+over the embers, and spread with honey. To
+other tidbits, also, he was partial; but, first and
+last, he relished his bowl of cream left on the
+floor overnight. Cream he drank and expected
+the world over; and in Devon, and in the Isle of
+Man, he liked a basin of water for a bath.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 373px;">
+<img src="images/i_070.png" width="373" height="448" alt="brownie drinking cream" />
+<span class="caption">BROWNIE RELISHES HIS BOWL OF CREAM.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Fine clothes were quite to his mind; he was
+very vain when he had them; and it was what Pet
+Marjorie called "majestick pride," and no whim
+of anger or sensitiveness, which sent him hurrying
+off the moment his wardrobe was supplied by
+some grateful housekeeper, to eschew work forever
+after, and set himself up as a gentleman of
+leisure. Many funny stories are told of his behavior
+under an unexpected shower of dry goods.
+Brownie, who in his humble station, was so steadfast
+and sensible, had his poor head completely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+turned by the vision of a new bright-colored
+jacket. The gentle little Piskies or Pixies of
+Devonshire, who are of the Brownie race, and
+very different from the malicious Piskies in Cornwall,
+were likewise great dandies, and sure to
+decamp as soon as ever they obtained a fresh cap<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+or petticoat. Indeed, they dropped violent hints
+on the subject. Think of a sprite-of-all-work, recorded
+as being too proud to accept any regular
+payment even in fruit or grain, standing up brazenly
+before his mistress, his sly eyes fixed on
+her, drawling out this absurd, whimpering rhyme
+(for Piskies scorned to talk prose!):</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Little Pisky, fair and slim,<br />
+Without a rag to cover him!<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>With his lisp, and his funny snicker, and his
+winning impudence generally, don't you think he
+could have wheedled clothes out of a stone? Of
+course the lady humored him, and made him a
+costly, trimmed suit; and the ungrateful small
+beggar made off with it post-haste, chanting to
+another tune:</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Pisky fine, Pisky gay!<br />
+Pisky now will run away.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The moment the Brownie-folk could cut a respectable
+figure in fashionable garments, they
+turned their backs on an honest living, and skurried
+away to astonish the belles in Fairyland.</p>
+
+<p>Very much the same thing befell some German<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+house-dwarves, who used to help a poor smith,
+and make his kettles and pans for him. They
+took their milk evening by evening, and went
+back gladly to their work, to the smith's great
+profit and pleasure. When he had grown rich,
+his thankful wife made them pretty crimson coats
+and caps, and laid both where the wee creatures
+might stumble on them. But when they had put
+the uniforms on, they shrieked "Paid off, paid
+off!" and, quitting a task half-done, returned no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>The Pisky was not alone in his bold request
+for his sordid little heart's desire. A certain
+Pück lived thirty years in a monastery in Mecklenburg,
+Germany, doing faithful drudgery from
+his youth up; and one of the monks wrote, in his
+ingenious Latin, that on going away, all he asked
+was "<i>tunicam de diversis coloribus, et tintinnabulis
+plenam!</i>" You may put the goblin's vanity into
+English for yourselves. Brownie is known as
+Shelley-coat in parts of Scotland, from a German
+term meaning bell, as he wears a bell, like the
+Rügen Dwarves, on his parti-colored coat.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 383px;">
+<img src="images/i_073.png" width="383" height="397" alt="Puck talking to a man" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;<i>Tunicam de diversis coloribus, et tintinnabulis plenam!</i>&quot; <span class="smcap">was
+all that pück demanded</span>.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The famous Cauld Lad of Hilton was considered
+a Brownie. If everything was left well-arranged
+in the rooms, he amused himself by
+night with pitching chairs and vases about; but if
+he found the place in confusion, he kindly went
+to work and put it in exquisite order. But the
+Cauld Lad was, more likely, by his own confession,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+a ghost, and no true fairy. Romances were told
+of him, and he had been heard to sing this canticle,
+which makes you wonder whether he had ever
+heard of the House that Jack Built:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Wae's me, wae's me!</span><br />
+The acorn's not yet fallen from the tree<br />
+That's to grow the wood that's to make the cradle<br />
+That's to rock the bairn that's to grow to the man<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">That's to lay me!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>It was only ghosts who could be "laid," and to
+"lay" him meant to give him freedom and release,
+so that he need no longer go about in that
+bareboned and mournful state.</div>
+
+<p>But the merriest grig of all the Brownies was
+called in Southern Scotland, Wag-at-the-Wa'. He
+teased the kitchen-maids much by sitting under
+their feet at the hearth, or on the iron crook
+which hung from the beam in the chimney, and
+which, of old, was meant to accommodate pots
+and kettles. He loved children, and he loved
+jokes; his laugh was very distinct and pleasant;
+but if he heard of anybody drinking anything
+stronger than home-brewed ale, he would cough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+virtuously, and frown upon the company. Now
+Wag-at-the-Wa' had the toothache all the time,
+and, considering his
+twinges, was it not
+good of him to be
+so cheerful? He
+wore a great red-woollen
+coat and
+blue trousers, and
+sometimes a grey
+cloak over; and he
+shivered even then,
+with one side of his
+poor face bundled
+up, till his head
+seemed big as a cabbage.
+He looked
+impish and wrinkled,
+too, and had short
+bent legs. But his
+beautiful, clever tail atoned for everything, and
+with it, he kept his seat on the swinging crook.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 228px;">
+<img src="images/i_075.png" width="228" height="480" alt="Fairy on a tendril hook" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;WAG-AT-THE-WA&#39;.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Scotch fairies called Powries and Dunters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+haunted lonely Border-mansions, and behaved like
+peaceable subjects, beating flax from year to year.
+The Dutch Kaboutermannekin worked in mills, as
+well as in houses. He was gentle and kind, but
+"touchy," as Brownie-people are. Though he
+dressed gayly in red, he was not pretty, but
+boasted a fine green tint on his face and hands.
+Little Killmoulis was a mill-haunting brother of
+his, who loved to lie before the fireplace in the
+kiln. This precious old employee was blest with
+a most enormous nose, and with no mouth at all!
+But he had a great appetite for pork, however he
+managed to gratify it.</p>
+
+<p>Boliéta, a Swiss Kobold, distinguished himself
+by leading cows safely through the dangerous
+mountain-paths, and keeping them sleek and
+happy. His branch of the family lived as often
+in the trunk of a near tree, as in the house itself.</p>
+
+<p>In Denmark and Sweden was the Kirkegrim,
+the "church lamb," who sometimes ran along the
+aisles and the choir after service-time, and to the
+grave-digger betokened the death of a little child.
+But there was another Kirkegrim, a proper church-Brownie,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+who kept the pews neat, and looked
+after people who misbehaved during the sermon.</p>
+
+<p>As queer as any of these was the Phynodderee,
+or the Hairy One, the Isle of Man house-helper.
+He was a wild little shaggy being, supposed to be
+an exile from fairy society, and condemned to
+wander about alone until doomsday. He was
+kind and obliging, and drove the sheep home, or
+gathered in the hay, if he saw a storm coming.</p>
+
+<p>The Klabautermann was a ship-Brownie, who
+sat under the capstan, and in time of danger,
+warned the crew by running up and down the
+shrouds in great excitement. This eccentric Flying
+Dutchman had a fiery red head, and on it a
+steeple-like hat; his yellow breeches were tucked
+into heavy horseman's boots.</p>
+
+<p>Hüttchen was a German Brownie, who lived at
+court, but who dressed like a little peasant, with
+a flapping felt hat over his eyes. The Alraun,
+a sort of house-imp shorn of all his engaging
+diligence, was very small, his body being made
+of a root; he lived in a bottle. If he was thrown
+away, back he came, persistently as a rubber ball.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+But that instinct was common to the Brownie
+race.</p>
+
+<p>The Roman Penates, <i>Vinculi terrei</i>, which brave
+old Reginald Scott called "domesticall gods,"
+were Brownie's venerable and honorable ancestors.
+We shall see presently what names their
+descendants bore in various countries. But the
+Russian Domovoi we shall not count among them,
+because they were ghostly, like the poor Cauld
+Lad, and seem to have been full-sized.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>OTHER HOUSE-HELPERS.</div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>IN modern Greece the Brownie was known as
+the St&#339;chia. He was called Para in Finland;
+Trasgo or Duende in Spain; Lutin, Gobelin,
+Follet, in France and Normandy; Niss-god-drange
+in Norway and Denmark; Tomte, in
+Sweden; Niss in Jutland, Denmark and Friesland;
+Bwbach or Pwcca in Wales; in Ireland, Fir-Darrig
+and, sometimes, Cluricaune; Kobold, in
+Germany; and in England, Brownie figured as
+Boggart, Puck, Hobgoblin, and Robin Goodfellow.</div>
+
+<p>Often the St&#339;chia, a wayward little black being,
+went about the house under the shape of a lizard
+or small snake. He was harmless; his presence
+was an omen of prosperity; and great care was
+taken that no disrespect was shown him.</p>
+
+<p>The services of the Para, who was a well-meaning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+rascal, were rather singular, and not at all indispensable.
+He had a way of following the
+neighbor's cows to pasture, and milking them himself,
+in a calf's fashion, until he had swallowed
+quart on quart, and was as full as a little hogshead.
+Then he went home, uncorked his thieving
+throat, and obligingly emptied every drop of
+his ill-gotten goods into his master's churn! How
+his feelings must have been hurt if anybody criticized
+the cheese and butter!</p>
+
+<p>The Spanish house-goblin was a statelier person,
+and wore an enormous plumed hat, and threw
+stones in a stolid and haughty manner at people
+he disliked. But occasionally the Duende had
+the form of a little busy friar, like the Monachiello
+at Naples.</p>
+
+<p>The Lutin, or Gobelin, or Follet of French belief,
+was likewise a stone-thrower. He was fond
+of children, and of horses; taking it upon himself
+to feed and caress his landlord's children when
+they were good, and to whip them when they were
+naughty; and he rode the willing horses, and
+combed them, and plaited their manes into knotty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+braids, for which, we may fear, the stable-boy never
+thanked him. He knew, too, how to worry and
+tease; and certain French mothers threatened
+troublesome little folk with the "Gobelin:" "<i>Le
+gobelin vous mangera!</i>" which we may translate
+into: "The goblin will gobble you!" or into the
+whimsical lines of an American poet:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+The gobble uns'll git you,<br />
+Ef<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">You</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Don't</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Watch</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Out!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The Norwegian Nis was like a strong-shouldered
+child, in a coat and peaky cap, who carried
+a pretty blue light at night. He enjoyed hopping
+or skating across the farmyard under the moon's
+ray. Dogs he would not allow in his house. If
+he was first promised a gray sheep for his own, he
+would teach any one to play the violin. Like
+many another of the Brownie race, he was a
+dandy, and loved nothing better than fine clothes.</p>
+
+<p>Tomte of Sweden lived in a tree near the
+house. He was as tall as a year-old boy, with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+knowing old face beneath his cap. In harvest-time
+he tugged away at one straw, or one grain,
+until he laid it in his master's barn; for his
+strength was not much greater than an ant's. If
+the farmer scorned his diligent little servant, and
+made fun of his tiny load, all luck departed from
+him, and the Tomte went away in anger. He
+liked tobacco, played merry pranks, and doubled
+up comically when he laughed. But he had another
+laugh, scoffing and sarcastic, which he sometimes
+gave at the top of his voice.</p>
+
+<p>Like the Devon Piskies, the Niss-Puk required
+water left at his disposal over-night. The Nis of
+Jutland was the Puk of Friesland. He also liked
+his porridge with butter. He lived under the
+roof, or in dark corners of the stable and house.
+He was of the Tomte's size; he wore red stockings
+on his stumpy little legs, and a pointed red
+cap, and a long gray or green coat. For soft,
+easy slippers he had a great longing; and if a
+pair were left out for him, he was soon heard
+shuffling in them over the floor. He had long
+arms, and a big head, and big bright eyes, so that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+the people of Silt have a saying concerning an inquisitive
+or astonished person: "He stares like a
+Puk." Puk, too, played sorry tricks on the servants,
+and was indignant if he was ever deprived
+of his nightly bowl of groute.</p>
+
+<p>The Bwbach of Wales churned the cream, and
+begged for his portion, like a true Brownie; he
+was a hairy blackamoor with the best-natured grin
+in the world. But he had an unpleasant habit of
+whisking mortals into the air, and doing flighty
+mischiefs generally.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/i_084.png" width="250" height="340" alt="Cluricaune working with hammer" />
+<span class="caption">AN IRISH CLURICAUNE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The unique Irish Cluricaune, who had that
+name in Cork, was called Luricaune and Leprechaun
+in other parts of the country. He differed
+from the Shefro in living alone, and in his queer
+appearance and habits. For though he was a
+house-spirit and did house-work, his ambitions ran
+in an opposite direction, and in his every spare
+minute, when he was not smoking or drinking,
+you might have seen him, a miniature old man,
+with a cocked hat, and a leather apron, sitting on
+a low stool, humming a fairy-tune, and perpetually
+cobbling at a pair of shoes no bigger than acorns.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+The shoes were occasionally captured and shown.
+And as we have seen, Mr. Cluricaune was a fortune-hunter,
+and a very wide-awake, versatile goblin
+altogether. In his capacity of Brownie, he
+once wreaked a
+hard revenge on
+a maid who
+served him shabbily.
+A Mr. Harris,
+a Quaker,
+had on his farm
+a Cluricaune
+named Little
+Wildbeam.
+Whenever the
+servants left the
+beer-barrel running
+through negligence, Little Wildbeam wedged
+himself into the cock, and stopped the flow,
+at great inconvenience to his poor little body,
+until some one came to turn the knob. So the
+master bade the cook always put a good dinner
+down cellar for Little Wildbeam. One Friday<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+she had nothing but part of a herring, and some
+cold potatoes, which she left in place of the usual
+feast. That very midnight the fat cook got pulled
+out of bed, and thrown down the cellar-stairs, bumping
+from side to side, so that it made her very sore
+indeed, and meanwhile the smirking Cluricaune
+stood at the head of the steps, and sang at the
+luckless heap below:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Molly Jones, Molly Jones!<br />
+Potato-skin and herring-bones!<br />
+I'll knock your head against the stones,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Molly Jones!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>In Japanese houses, even, Brownies were familiar
+comers and goers. They were important
+and smooth-mannered pigmies, and serenely dealt
+out rewards and punishments as they saw fit.
+When they were engaged in befriending commendable
+boys and girls, their features had, somehow,
+the ingenious likeness of letters signifying "good;"
+and if they made it their business to plague and
+hinder naughty idlers, who, instead of doing their
+errands promptly, stopped at the shops to buy
+goodies, their queer little faces were screwed up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+to mean "bad," as you see in Japanese artists'
+pictures.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 376px;">
+<img src="images/i_086.png" width="376" height="311" alt="Japanese children with brownies flying around" />
+<span class="caption">JAPANESE CHILDREN AND BROWNIES.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The English names for the affable Brownie-folk
+bring to our minds the most wayward, frolicsome
+elves of all fairydom. Boggart was the Yorkshire
+sprite, and the Boggart commonly disliked
+children, and stole their food and playthings;
+wherein he differed from his kindly kindred. Hobgoblin
+(Hop-goblin) was so called because he
+hopped on one leg. Hobgoblin is the same as
+Rob or Bob-Goblin, a goblin whose full name<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+seemed to be Robert. Robin Hood, the famous
+outlaw, dear to all of us, was thought to have
+been christened after Robin Hood the fairy, because
+he, too, was tricksy and sportive, wore a
+hood, and lived in the deep forest.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 247px;">
+<img src="images/i_087.png" width="247" height="257" alt="Fir-Darrig sitting by fire" />
+<span class="caption">A LITTLE FIR-DARRIG.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In Ireland lived the mocking, whimsical little
+Fir-Darrig, Robin
+Goodfellow's
+own twin. He
+dressed in tight-fitting
+red; Fir-Darrig
+itself
+meant "the red
+man." He had
+big humorous
+ears, and the
+softest and most flexible voice in the world, which
+could mimic any sound at will. He sat by the
+fire, and smoked a pipe, big as himself, belonging
+to the man of the house. He loved cleanliness,
+brought good-luck to his abode, and, like a
+cat, generally preferred places to people.</p>
+
+<p>Puck and Robin Goodfellow were the names<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+best known and cherished. There is no doubt
+that Shakespeare, from whom we have now our
+prevailing idea of Puck, got the idea of him, in
+his turn, from the popular superstitions of his day.
+But Puck's very identity was all but forgotten, and
+since Shakespeare was, therefore, his poetical
+creator, we will forego mention of him here, and
+entitle Robin Goodfellow, the same "shrewd and
+meddling elf," under another nickname, the true
+Brownie of England.</p>
+
+<p>He was both House-Helper and Mischief-Maker,
+"the most active and extraordinary fellow of a
+fairy," says Ritson, "that we anywhere meet with."
+He was said to have had a supplementary brother
+called Robin Badfellow; but there was no need
+of that, because he was Robin Badfellow in himself,
+and united in his whimsical little character
+so many opposite qualities, that he may be considered
+the representative elf the world over; for
+the old Saxon Hudkin, the Niss of Scandinavia,
+and Knecht Ruprecht, the Robin of Germany,
+are nothing but our masquerading goblin-friend on
+continental soil. And in the red-capped smiling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+Mikumwess among the Passamaquoddy Indians,
+there he is again!</p>
+
+<p>By this name of Robin he was known earlier
+than the thirteenth century, and "famosed in everie
+olde wives' chronicle for his mad merrie prankes,"
+two hundred years later. His biography was put
+forth in a black-letter tract in 1628, and in a yet
+better-known ballad which recited his jests, and
+was in free circulation while Queen Bess was reigning.
+The forgotten annalist says very heartily,
+alluding to his string of aliases:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+But call him by what name you list;<br />
+I have studied on my pillow,<br />
+And think the name he best deserves<br />
+Is Robin, the Good Fellow!<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>We class him rightly as a Brownie, because he
+skimmed milk, knew all about domestic life, and
+was the delight or terror of servants, as the case
+might be. He was fond of making a noise and
+clatter on the stairs, of playing harps, ringing bells,
+and misleading passing travellers; and despite
+his knavery, he came to be much beloved by his
+house-mates. Very like him was the German Hempelman,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+who laughed a great deal. But the laugh
+of Master Robin sometimes foreboded trouble and
+death to people, which Hempelman's never did.</p>
+
+<p>The jolly German Kobold had a laugh which
+filled his throat, and could be heard a mile away.
+Bu he was a gnome malignant enough if he was
+neglected or insulted. He very seldom made a
+mine-sprite of himself, but stayed at home, Brownie-like,
+and "ran" the house pretty much as he
+saw fit. To the Dwarves he was, however, closely
+related, and dressed after their fashion, except
+that sometimes he wore a coat of as many colors
+as the rainbow, with tinkling bells fastened to it.
+He objected to any chopping or spinning done on
+a Thursday. Change of servants, while he held
+his throne in the kitchen, affected him not in the
+least; for the maid going away recommended her
+successor to treat him civilly, at her peril. A very
+remarkable Kobold was Hinzelmann, who called
+himself a Christian, and came to the old castle of
+Hüdemühlen in 1584; whose history, too long to
+add here, is given charmingly in Mr. Keightley's
+Fairy Mythology.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A certain bearded little Kobold lived with some
+fishermen in a hut, and tried a trick which was
+quite classic, and reminds one of the Greek story
+of Procrustes, which all of you have met with, or
+will meet with, some day. Says Mr. Benjamin
+Thorpe: "His chief amusement, when the fishermen
+were lying asleep at night, was to lay them
+even. For this purpose he would first draw them
+up until their heads all lay in a straight line, but
+then their legs would be out of the line! and he
+had to go to their feet and pull them up until the
+tips of their toes were all in a row. This game he
+would continue till broad daylight."</p>
+
+<p>Now all Brownies, Nissen, Kobolds and the
+rest, were very much of a piece, and when you
+know the virtues and faults of one of them, you
+know the habits of the race. So that you can understand,
+despite the slight but steady help given
+in household matters, that a person so variable
+and exacting and high-tempered as this curious
+little sprite might happen sometimes to be a great
+bore, and might inspire his master or mistress
+with the sighing wish to be rid of him. It was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+tradition in Normandy that to shake off the Lutin
+or Gobelin, it was merely necessary to scatter
+flax-seed where he was wont to pass; for he was
+too neat to let it lie there, and yet tired so soon
+of picking it up, that he left it in disgust, and
+went away for good. And there was a sprite
+named Flerus who lived in a farm-house near Ostend,
+and worked so hard, sweeping and drawing
+water, and turning himself into a plough-horse
+that he might replace the old horse who was sick,
+for no reward, either, save a little fresh sugared
+milk&mdash;that soon his master was the wealthiest
+man in the neighborhood. But a giddy young
+servant-maid once offended him, at the day's end,
+by giving him garlic in his milk; and as soon as
+poor Flerus tasted it, he departed, very wrathful
+and hurt, from the premises, forever.</p>
+
+<p>There were few such successful instances on
+record. Though Brownie was ready, in every
+land under the sun, to leave home when he took
+the fancy, or when he was puffed up with gifts of
+lace and velvet, so that no mortal residence was
+gorgeous enough for him, yet he would take no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+hint, nor obey any command, when either pointed
+to a banishment.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 371px;">
+<img src="images/i_093.png" width="371" height="390" alt="Man sees kobold sitting by pool" />
+<span class="caption">THE PERSISTENT KOBOLD OF <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'KOPENICK'">KÖPENICK</ins>.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Near Köpenick once, a man thought of buying
+a new house, and turning his back on a vexatious
+Kobold. The morning before he meant to change
+quarters, he saw his Kobold sitting by a pool, and
+asked him what he was doing. "I am doing my
+washing!" said the sharp rogue, "because we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+move to-morrow." And the man saw very well
+that as he could not avoid him, he had better take
+the little nuisance along. The same thing happened
+in the capital Polish anecdote of Iskrzycki
+(make your respects to his excruciating name!)
+and over Northern Europe the sarcastic joke "Yes,
+we're flitting!" prevails in folk-song and story.</p>
+
+<p>There is many and many an example of families
+selling the old house, and going off in great glee
+with the furniture, thinking the elf-rascal cheated
+and left behind; and lo! there he was, perched
+on a rope, or peering from a hole in the cart itself,
+on his congratulated master.</p>
+
+<p>The funniest hap of all befell an ungrateful
+farmer who fired his barn to burn the poor Kobold
+in it. As he was driving off, he turned to
+look at the blaze, and what should he see on the
+seat behind him but the same excited Kobold,
+chattering, monkey-like, and shrieking sympathizingly:
+"It was about time for us to get out of that,
+wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>The dark-skinned little house-sprites came to
+stay; and as for being snubbed, they were quite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+above it. They were the sort of callers to whom
+you could never show the door, with any dignity;
+for if you had done so, the grinning goblin would
+have examined knob and panels with a squinted
+eye, and gone back whistling to your easy-chair.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>WATER-FOLK.</div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>OF old, there were Oreads and Naiads to people
+the rivers and the sea, but they were
+not fairies; and in after-years the beautiful, bright
+water-life of Greece, with its shells and dolphins,
+its palaces, its subaqueous music, and its happy-hearted
+maids and men, faded wholly out of memory.
+No one dominant race came to replace them.
+Merpeople, Tritons and Sirens we meet now and
+then, as did Hendrik Hudson's crew, and the
+Moruachs of Ireland, the Morverch (sea-daughters)
+of Brittainy; but they, too, were grown, and half-human.
+They were beautiful and swift, and usually
+sat combing their long hair, with a mirror in one
+hand, and their glossy tails tapering from the waist.
+The Danish Mermaid was gold-haired, cunning
+and treacherous; the Havmand or Merman was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+handsome, too, with black hair and beard, but kind
+and beneficent.</div>
+
+<p>The Swedish pair offered presents to those on
+shore, or passing in boats, in hopes to sink them
+beneath the waves.</p>
+
+<p>England and Ireland had no water-sprites which
+answered to the Nix and the Kelpie, only the Merrow,
+who was a Mermaid. She was a fair woman,
+with white, webbed fingers. She carried upon her
+head a little diving-cap, and when she came up to
+the rocks or the beach, she laid it by; but if it
+were stolen from her, she lost the power of returning
+to the sea. So that if her cap were taken by a
+young man, she very often could do nothing better
+than to marry him, and spend her time hunting
+for it up and down over his house. And once she
+had found it, she forgot all else but her desire to
+go home to "the kind sea-caves," and despite the
+calling of her neighbors and husband and children,
+she flitted to the shore, and plunged into the
+first oncoming billow, and walked the earth no
+longer.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 389px;">
+<img src="images/i_098.png" width="389" height="311" alt="merfolk in water" />
+<span class="caption">MER-FOLK.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Tales of these spirit-brides who suddenly deserted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+the green earth for their dear native waters,
+are common in Arabian and European folk-lore.
+And this characteristic was noted also in the Sea-trows
+of the Shetland Islands, who divested themselves
+of a shining fish-skin, and could not find the
+way to their ocean-beds if it were kept out of their
+reach. It was the Danish sailor's belief that seals
+laid by their skins every ninth night, and took
+maiden's forms wherewith to sport and sleep on the
+reefs. And for their capture as they were, warm,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+living and human, one had only to snatch and hide
+away their talisman-skin.</p>
+
+<p>The strange German Water-man wore a green
+hat, and when he opened his mouth, his teeth as
+well were green; he appeared to girls who passed
+his lake, and measured out ribbon, and flung it to
+them.</p>
+
+<p>But we must search for smaller sprites than
+these.</p>
+
+<p>The little water-fairies who devoted themselves
+to drawing under whomsoever encroached on their
+pools and brooks, were called Nixies in Germany,
+Korrigans (for this was part of their office) in Brittainy;
+Ondins about Magdebourg, and Roussalkis,
+the long-haired, smiling ones, among the Slavic
+people.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 363px;">
+<img src="images/i_100.png" width="363" height="275" alt="Old Nix dancing" />
+<span class="caption">THE LITTLE OLD NIX NEAR GHENT.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The engaging Nixies were very minute and mischievous,
+and abounded in the Shetland Isles and
+Cornwall, as did, moreover, the Kelpies, who were
+like tiny horses, known even in China; sporting on
+the margin, and foreboding death by drowning, to
+any who beheld them; or tempting passers-by to
+mount, and plunging, with their victims, headlong<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+into the deep. The Nix-lady was recognized when
+she came on shore by the edges of her dress or
+apron being perpetually wet. The dark-eyed Nix-man
+with his seaweed hair and his wide hat, was
+known by his slit ears and feet, which he was very
+careful to conceal. Once in a while he was observed
+to be half-fish. The naked Nixen were
+draped with moss and kelp; but when they were
+clothed, they seemed merely little men and women,
+save that the borders of their garments, dripping
+water, betrayed them. They did their marketing
+ashore, wheresoever they were, and, according to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+all accounts, with a sharp eye to economy.
+Like the land-elves, they loved to dance and
+sing. Nix did not favor divers, fishermen, and
+other intruders
+on his territory,
+and he did
+his best
+to harm them.
+He was altogether
+a fierce, grudging,
+covetous little creature.
+His comelier wife was much better-natured,
+and befriended human beings to the utmost of
+her power.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 390px;">
+<img src="images/i_101.png" width="390" height="308" alt="crowd of people" />
+<span class="caption">THE WORK OF THE NICKEL.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Near Ghent was a little old Nix who lived in the
+Scheldt; he cried and sighed much, and did mischief
+to no one. It grieved him when children ran
+away from him, yet if they asked what troubled his
+conscience, he only sighed heavily, and disappeared.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The modern Greeks believed in a black sprite
+haunting wells and springs, who was fond of beckoning
+to strangers. If they came to him, he bestowed
+gifts upon them; if not, he never seemed
+angry, but turned patiently to wait for the next
+passer-by.</p>
+
+<p>There was a curious sea-creature in Norway,
+who swam about as a thin little old man with no
+head. About the magical Isle of Rügen lived the
+Nickel. His favorite game was to astonish the fishers,
+by hauling their boats up among the trees.</p>
+
+<p>At Arles and other towns near the Spanish border
+in France, were the Dracs, who inhabited clear
+pools and streams, and floated along in the shape
+of gold rings and cups, so that women and children
+bathing should grasp them, and be lured
+under.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian water-manittos, the Nibanaba, were
+winning in appearance, and wicked in disposition.
+They, joining the Pukwudjinies, helped to kill
+Kwasind.</p>
+
+<p>In Wales were the Gwragedd Annwn, elves who
+loved the stillness of lonely mountain-lakes, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+who seldom ventured into the upper world. They
+had their own submerged towns and battlements;
+and from their little sunken city the fairy-bells sent
+out, ever and anon, muffled silver voices. The
+Gwragedd Annwn were not fishy-finned, nor were
+they ever dwellers in the sea; for in Wales were
+no mermaid-traditions, nor any tales of those who
+beguiled mortals&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The Neck and the Strömkarl of Swedish rivers
+were two little chaps with hardly a hair's breadth
+of difference. Either appeared under various
+shapes; now as a green-hatted old man with a long
+beard, out of which he wrung water as he sat on the
+cliffs; now loitering of a summer night on the surface,
+like a chip of wood or a leaf, he seemed a fair
+child, harping, with yellow ringlets falling from beneath
+a high red cap to his shoulders. Both fairies
+had a genius for music; and the Strömkarl,
+especially, had one most marvellous tune to which
+he put eleven variations. Now, to ten of them any
+one might dance decorously, and with safety; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+at the eleventh, which was the enchanted one, all
+the world went mad; and tables, belfries, benches,
+houses, windmills, trees, horses, cripples, babies,
+ghosts, and whole towns full of sedate citizens
+began capering on the banks about the invisible
+player, and kept it up in furious fashion until the
+last note died away.</p>
+
+<p>You know that the wren was hunted in certain
+countries on a certain day. Well, here is one
+legend about her. There was a malicious fairy
+once in the Isle of Man, very winsome to look at,
+who worked a sorry Kelpie-trick, on the young men
+of the town, and inveigled them into the sea, where
+they perished. At last the inhabitants rose in
+vengeance, and suspecting her of causing their loss
+and sorrow, gave her chase so hard and fast by
+land, that to save herself, she changed her shape
+into that of an innocent brown wren. And because
+she had been so treacherous, a spell was cast upon
+her, inasmuch as she was obliged every New Year's
+Day to fly about as that same bird, until she should
+be killed by a human hand. And from sunrise to
+sunset, therefore, on the first bleak day of January,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+all the men and boys of the island fired at the
+poor wrens, and stoned them, and entrapped them,
+in the hope of reaching the one guilty fairy among
+them. And as they could never be sure that they
+had captured the right one, they kept on year by
+year, chasing and persecuting the whole flock. But
+every dead wren's feather they preserved carefully,
+and believed that it hindered them from drowning
+and shipwreck for that twelvemonth; and they
+took the feathers with them on voyages great and
+small, in order that the bad fairy's magic may
+never be able to prevail, as it had prevailed of yore
+with their unhappy brothers.</p>
+
+<p>The presence of the sea-fairies had a terror in
+it, and against their arts only the strongest and
+most watchful could hope to be victorious. Their
+sport was to desolate peaceful homes, and bring
+destruction on gallant ships. They, dwelling in
+streams and in the ocean, the world over, were
+like the waters they loved: gracious and noble in
+aspect, and meaning danger and death to the
+unwary. We fear that, like the earth-fairies, they
+were heartless quite.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 368px;">
+<img src="images/i_106.png" width="368" height="321" alt="Nixie in a cavern" />
+<span class="caption">HOB IN HOBHOLE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But it may be that the gentle Nixies had only a
+blind longing for human society, and would not
+willingly have wrought harm to the creatures of
+another element. We are more willing to urge
+excuses for their wrong-doing than for the like
+fault in our frowzly under-ground folk; for ugliness
+seems, somehow, not so shocking when allied
+with evil as does beauty, which was destined for
+all men's delight and uplifting. As the air-elves
+had their Fairyland whither mortal children wandered,
+and whence they returned after an unmeasured<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+lapse of time, still children, to the ivy-grown
+ruins of their homes, so the water-elves had a
+reward for those they snatched from earth; and
+legends assure us the wave-rocked prisoners a hundred
+fathoms down, never grew old, but kept the
+flush of their last morning rosy ever on their
+brows.</p>
+
+<p>Among a little community full of guile, there is
+great comfort in spotting one honest, kind water-boy,
+who, not content with being harmless, as were
+the Flemish and Grecian Nixies, put himself to
+work to do good, and charm away some of the worries
+and ills that burdened the upper world. His
+name was Hob, and he lived in Hobhole, which
+was a cave scooped out by the beating tides in old
+Northumbria.</p>
+
+<p>The lean pockets of the neighboring doctors
+were partly attributed to this benignant little
+person; for he set up an opposition, and his
+specialty was the cure of whooping-cough. Many
+a Scotch mother took her lad or lass to the spray-covered
+mouth of the wise goblin's cave, and sang
+in a low voice:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Hobhole Hob!</span><br />
+Ma bairn's gotten t' kink-cough:<br />
+Tak't off! tak't off!<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And so he did, sitting there with his toes in
+the sea. For Hobhole Hob's small sake, we can
+afford to part friends with the whole naughty race
+of water-folk.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>MISCHIEF-MAKERS.</div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>THE fairy-fellows who made a regular business
+of mischief-making seemed to have
+two favorite ways of setting to work. They either
+saddled themselves with little boys and spilled
+them, sooner or later, into the water, or else they
+danced along holding a twinkling light, and led
+any one so foolish as to follow them a pretty march
+into chasms and quagmires. Their jokes were
+grim and hurtful, and not merely funny, like
+Brownie's; for Brownie usually gave his victims
+(except in Molly Jones's case) nothing much
+worse than a pinch. So people came to have
+great awe and horror of the heartless goblins who
+waylaid travellers, and left them broken-limbed or
+dead.</div>
+
+<p>Very often quarrelsome, disobedient or vicious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+folk fell into the snare of a Kelpie, or a Will-o'-the-Wisp;
+for the little whipper-snappers had a fine
+eye for poetical justice, and dealt out punishments
+with the nicest discrimination. We never hear
+that they troubled good, steady mortals; but only
+that sometimes they beguiled them, for sheer love,
+into Fairyland.</p>
+
+<p>We know that all "ouphes and elves" could
+change their shapes at will; therefore when we
+spy fairy-horses, fairy-lambs, and such quadrupeds,
+we guess at once that they are only roguish small
+gentlemen masquerading. Never for the innocent
+fun of it, either; but alas! to bring silly persons
+to grief.</p>
+
+<p>In Hampshire, in England, was a spirit known
+as Coltpixy, which, itself shaped like a miniature
+neighing horse, beguiled other horses into bogs
+and morasses. The Irish Pooka or Phooka was
+a horse too, and a famous rascal. He lived on
+land, and was something like the Welsh Gwyll: a
+tiny, black, wicked-faced wild colt, with chains
+dangling about him. Again, he frisked around in
+the shape of a goat or a bat. Spenser has him:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Ne let the Pouke, ne other evill spright, . . .<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ne let hobgoblins, names whose sense we see not,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Fray us with things that be not."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Fray," as you are likely to guess, means to
+frighten or to scare.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 366px;">
+<img src="images/i_111.png" width="366" height="348" alt="Flying fairy horse" />
+<span class="caption">THE IRISH POOKA WAS A HORSE TOO.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Kelpies, who were Scotch, haunted fords and
+ferries, especially in storms; allured bystanders
+into the water, or swelled the river so that it broke
+the roads, and overwhelmed travellers.</p>
+
+<p>Very like them were the Brag, the little Shoopil-tree<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+of the Shetland Islands, and the Nick, who
+was the Icelandic Nykkur-horse; gamesome deceivers
+all, who enticed children and others to
+bestride them, and who were treacherous as a
+quicksand, every time. And there were many
+more of the Kelpie kingdom, of whom we can
+hunt up no clews.</p>
+
+<p>A man who saw a Kelpie gave himself up for
+lost; for he was sure, by hook or crook, to meet
+his death by drowning. Kelpie, familiar so far
+away as China, never stayed in the next-door countries,
+Ireland or England, long enough to be recognized.
+They knew nothing of him by sight, nor
+of the Nix his cousin, nor of anything resembling
+them. In Ireland lived the merrow; but she was
+only an amiable mermaid.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 376px;"><a id="Page_113"></a>
+<img src="images/i_113.png" width="376" height="518" alt="fairy standing in waterlilies" />
+<span class="caption">WILL-O&#39;-THE-WISP.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Japanese had a water-dragon called Kappa,
+"whose office it was to swallow bad boys who went
+to swim in disobedience to their parents' commands,
+and at improper times and places." In
+the River Tees was a green-haired lady named
+Peg Powler, and in some streams in Lancashire
+one christened Jenny Greenteeth; two hungry
+goblins whose only delight was to drown and devour
+unlucky travellers. But we know already
+that the water-sprites were more than likely so to
+behave.</p>
+
+<p>In Provence there is a tale told of seven little
+boys who went out at night against their grandmother's
+wishes. A little dark pony came prancing
+up to them, and the youngest clambered on his
+sleek back, and after him, the whole seven, one
+after the other, which was quite a wonderful weight
+for the wee creature; but his back meanwhile kept
+growing longer and larger to accommodate them.
+As they galloped along, the children called such
+of their playmates as were out of doors, to join
+them, the obliging nag stretching and stretching
+until thirty pairs of young legs dangled at his
+sides! when he made straight for the sea, and
+plunged in, and drowned them all.</p>
+
+<p>The Piskies, or Pigseys, of Cornwall, were
+naughty and unsociable. Their great trick was
+to entice people into marshes, by making themselves
+look like a light held in a man's hand, or
+a light in a friendly cottage window. Pisky also<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a><br /><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+rode the farmers' colts hard, and chased the farmers'
+cows. For all his diabolics, you had to excuse
+him in part, when you heard his hearty fearless
+laugh; it was so merry and sweet. "To laugh like
+a Pisky," passed into a proverb. The Barguest
+of Yorkshire, like the Osschaert of the Netherlands,
+was an open-air bugaboo whose presence
+always portended disaster. Sometimes he appeared
+as a horse or dog, merely to play the old
+trick with a false light, and to vanish, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>The Tückebold was a very malicious chap, carrying
+a candle, who lived in Hanover; his blood-relation
+in Scandinavia was the Lyktgubhe. Over
+in Flanders and Brabant was one Kludde, a fellow
+whisking here and there as a half-starved little
+mare, or a cat, or a frog, or a bat; but who was
+always accompanied by two dancing blue flames,
+and who could overtake any one as swiftly as a
+snake. The Ellydan (dan is a Welsh word meaning
+fire, and also a lure or a snare: a luring elf-fire)
+was a rogue with wings, wide ears, a tall cap
+and two huge torches, who precisely resembled
+the English Will-o'-the-Wisp, the Scandinavian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+Lyktgubhe and the Breton Sand Yan y Tad. Our
+American negroes make him out Jack-muh-Lantern:
+a vast, hairy, goggle-eyed, big-mouthed ogre,
+leaping like a giant grasshopper, and forcing his
+victims into a swamp, where they died. The gentlemen
+of this tribe preferred to walk abroad at
+night, like any other torchlight procession. Their
+little bodies were invisible, and the traveller who
+hurried towards the pleasant lamp ahead, never
+knew that he was being tricked by a grinning fairy,
+until he stumbled on the brink of a precipice, or
+found himself knee-deep in a bog. Then the
+brazen little guide shouted outright with glee, put
+out his mysterious flame, and somersaulted off,
+leaving the poor tourist to help himself. The only
+way to escape his arts was to turn your coat
+inside out.</p>
+
+<p>You may guess that the ungodly wights had
+plenty of fun in them, by this anecdote: A great
+many Scotch Jack-o'-Lanterns, as they are often
+called, were once bothering the horse belonging
+to a clergyman, who with his servant, was returning
+home late at night. The horse reared and whinnied,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+and the clergyman was alarmed, for a thousand
+impish fires were waltzing before the wheels.
+Like a good man, he began to pray aloud, to no
+avail. But the servant just roared: "Wull ye be
+aff noo, in the deil's name!" and sure enough, in
+a wink, there was not a goblin within gunshot.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 373px;">
+<img src="images/i_118.png" width="373" height="218" alt="Fairies chasing cows" />
+<span class="caption">PISKY ALSO CHASED THE FARMERS&#39; COWS.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>There were some freakish fairies in old England,
+whose names were Puckerel, Hob Howland, Bygorn,
+Bogleboe, Rawhead or Bloodybones; the
+last two were certainly scarers of nurseries.</p>
+
+<p>The Boggart was a little spectre who haunted
+farms and houses, like Brownie or Nis; but he
+was usually a sorry busybody, tearing the bed-curtains,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+rattling the doors, whistling through the
+keyholes, snatching his bread-and-butter from the
+baby, playing pranks upon the servants, and doing
+all manner of mischief.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 236px;">
+<img src="images/i_119.png" width="236" height="333" alt="Fairy dressed up holding a pike" />
+<span class="caption">RED COMB WAS A TYRANT.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Dunnie, in Northumberland, was fond of
+annoying farmers.
+When night
+came, he gave
+them and himself
+a rest, and
+hung his long
+legs over the
+crags, whistling
+and banging his
+idle heels. Red
+Comb or Bloody
+Cap was a tyrant
+who lived
+in every Border castle, dungeon and tower. He
+was short and thickset long-toothed and skinny-fingered,
+with big red eyes, grisly flowing hair,
+and iron boots; a pikestaff in his left hand, and
+a red cap on his ugly head.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The village of Hedley, near Ebchester, in England,
+was haunted by a churlish imp known far
+and wide as the Hedley Gow. He took the form
+of a cow, and amused himself at milking-time with
+kicking over the pails, scaring the maids, and calling
+the cats, of whom he was fond, to lick up the
+cream. Then he slipped the ropes and vanished,
+with a great laugh. In Northern Germany we find
+the Hedley Gow's next-of-kin, and there, too, were
+little underground beings who accompanied maids
+and men to the milking, and drank up what was
+spilt; but if nothing happened to be spilt in
+measuring out the quarts, they got angry, overturned
+the pails, and ran away. These jackanapes
+were a foot and a half high, and dressed in
+black, with red caps.</p>
+
+<p>Many ominous fairies, such as the Banshee, portended
+misfortune and death. The Banshee had
+a high shrill voice, and long hair. Once in a
+while she seemed to be as tall as an ordinary
+woman, very thin, with head uncovered, and a
+floating white cloak, wringing her hands and wailing.
+She attached herself only to certain ancient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+Irish families, and cried under their windows when
+one of their race was sick, and doomed to die.
+But she scorned families who had a dash of Saxon
+and Norman ancestry, and would have nothing to
+do with them.</p>
+
+<p>Every single fairy that ever was known to the
+annals of this world was, at times, a mischief-maker.
+He could no more keep out of mischief
+than a trout out of water. What lives the dandiprats
+led our poor great-great-great-great grand-sires!
+As a very clever living writer put it:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"A man could not ride out without risking an encounter
+with a Puck or a Will-o'-the Wisp. He could not approach
+a stream in safety unless he closed his ears to the sirens'
+songs, and his eyes to the fair form of the mermaid. In the
+hillside were the dwarfs, in the forest Queen Mab and her
+court. Brownie ruled over him in his house, and Robin
+Goodfellow in his walks and wanderings. From the moment
+a Christian came into the world until his departure therefrom,
+he was at the mercy of the fairy-folk, and his devices
+to elude them were many. Unhappy was the mother who
+neglected to lay a pair of scissors or of tongs, a knife or her
+husband's breeches, in the cradle of her new-born infant;
+for if she forgot, then was she sure to receive a changeling
+in its place. Great was the loss of the child to whose baptism
+the fairies were not invited, or the bride to whose wedding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+the Nix, or water-spirit, was not bidden. If the inhabitants
+of Thale did not throw a black cock annually into the
+Bode, one of them was claimed as his lawful victim by the
+Nickelmann dwelling in that stream. The Russian peasant
+who failed to present the Rusalka or water-sprite he met at
+Whitsuntide, with a handkerchief, or a piece torn from his
+or her clothing, was doomed to death."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>One had to be ever on the lookout to escape
+the sharp little immortals, whose very kindness to
+men and women was a species of coquetry, and
+who never spared their friends' feelings at the expense
+of their own saucy delight.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>PUCK; AND POETS' FAIRIES.</div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>PUCK, as we said, is Shakespeare's fairy.
+There is some probability that he found in
+Cwm Pwca, or Puck Valley, a part of the romantic
+glens of Clydach, in Breconshire, the original
+scenes of his fanciful <i>Midsummer Night's Dream</i>.
+This glen used to be crammed with goblins. There,
+and in many like-named Welsh places, Puck's
+pranks were well-remembered by old inhabitants.
+This Welsh Puck was a queer little figure, long and
+grotesque, and looked something like a chicken
+half out of his shell; at least, so a peasant drew
+him, from memory, with a bit of coal. Pwcca, or
+Pooka, in Wales, was but another name for Ellydan;
+and his favorite joke was also to travel along
+before a wayfarer, with a lantern held over his
+head, leading miles and miles, until he got to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+the brink of a precipice. Then the little wretch
+sprang over the chasm, shouted with wicked glee,
+blew out his lantern, and left the startled traveller
+to reach home as best he could. Old Reginald
+Scott must have had this sort of a Puck in mind
+when he put Kitt-with-the-Candlestick, whose identity
+troubled the critics much, in his catalogue of
+"bugbears."</div>
+
+<p>The very old word Pouke meant the devil,
+horns, tail, and all; from that word, as it grew
+more human and serviceable, came the Pixy of
+Devonshire, the Irish Phooka, the Scottish Bogle,
+and the Boggart in Yorkshire; and even one nursery-tale
+title of Bugaboo. Oddest of all, the
+name Pug, which we give now to an amusing race
+of small dogs, is an every-day reminder of poor
+lost Puck, and of the queer changes which, through
+a century or two, may befall a word. Puck was considered
+court-jester, a mild, comic, playful creature:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">A little random elf</span><br />
+Born in the sport of Nature, like a weed,<br />
+For simple sweet enjoyment of myself,<br />
+But for no other purpose, worth or need;<br />
+And yet withal of a most happy breed.<br />
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='unindent'>But he kept to the last his character of practical
+joker, and his alliance with his grim little cousins,
+the Lyktgubhe and the Kludde. Glorious old
+Michael Drayton made a verse of his naughty
+tricks, which you shall hear:</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt,</span><br />
+Still walking like a ragged colt,<br />
+And oft out of a bush doth bolt<br />
+On purpose to deceive us;<br />
+And leading us, makes us to stray<br />
+Long winter nights out of the way:<br />
+And when we stick in mire and clay,<br />
+He doth with laughter leave us.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Shakespeare, who calls him a "merry wanderer
+of the night," and allows him to fly "swifter than
+arrow from the Tartar's bow," was the first to
+make Puck into a house spirit. The poets were
+especially attentive to the offices of these house-spirits.</p>
+
+<p>According to them, Mab and Puck do everything
+in-doors which we think characteristic of a
+Brownie. William Browne, born in Tavistock, in
+the county of Devon, where the Pixies lived, prettily
+puts it how the fairy-queen did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">&mdash;&mdash;command her elves</span><br />
+To pinch those maids that had not swept their shelves;<br />
+And further, if by maiden's oversight,<br />
+Within doors water was not brought at night,<br />
+Or if they spread no table, set no bread,<br />
+They should have nips from toe unto the head!<br />
+And for the maid who had performed each thing<br />
+She in the water-pail bade leave a ring.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 384px;">
+<img src="images/i_126.png" width="384" height="409" alt="Flying fairy holding a crook" />
+<span class="caption">THE WELSH PUCK.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Herrick confirms what we have just heard:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">If ye will with Mab find grace,</span><br />
+Set each platter in its place;<br />
+Rake the fire up, and get<br />
+Water in ere the sun be set;<br />
+Wash your pails, and cleanse your dairies;<br />
+Sluts are loathsome to the fairies!<br />
+Sweep your house: who doth not so,<br />
+Mab will pinch her by the toe.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>John Lyly, in his very beautiful <i>Mayde's Metamorphosis</i>
+has this charming fairy song, which
+takes us out to the grass, and the soft night air,
+and the softer starshine:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+By the moon we sport and play;<br />
+With the night begins our day;<br />
+As we dance, the dew doth fall.<br />
+Trip it, little urchins all!<br />
+Lightly as the little bee,<br />
+Two by two, and three by three,<br />
+And about go we, and about go we.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 243px;">
+<img src="images/i_127.png" width="243" height="256" alt="Butterfly fairy flying at night" />
+<span class="caption">A MERRY NIGHT-WANDERER.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>What a picture of the wee tribe at their revels!
+Here is another, from Ben Jonson's <i>Sad Shepherd</i>:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Span-long elves that dance about a pool,</span><br />
+With each a little changeling in her arms.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>In what is thought to be Lyly's play, just mentioned,
+Mopso, Joculo, and Prisio have something
+in the way of a pun for each fairy they address:</p>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<i>Mop.</i>: I pray you, what might I call you?<br />
+<br />
+<i>1st Fairy</i>: My name is Penny.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mop.</i>: I am sorry I cannot purse you!<br />
+<br />
+<i>Pris.</i>: I pray you, sir, what might I call you?<br />
+<br />
+<i>2nd Fairy</i>: My name is Cricket.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>(Mr. Keightley says that the Crickets were a
+family of great note in Fairyland: many poets
+celebrated them.)</p>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<i>Pris.</i>: I would I were a chimney for your sake!<br />
+<br />
+<i>Joc.</i>: I pray you, you pretty little fellow, what's your<br />
+name?<br />
+<br />
+<i>3rd Fairy</i>: My name is Little Little Prick.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Joc.</i>: Little Little Prick! O you are a dangerous fairy,
+and fright all the little wenches in the country out of their
+beds. I care not whose hand I were in, so I were out of
+yours.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Drayton, again, gives us a list of tinkling elfin-ladies'
+names, which are pleasant to hear as the
+drip of an icicle:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hop and Mop and Drop so clear,</span><br />
+Pip and Trip and Skip that were<br />
+To Mab their sovereign ever dear,<br />
+Her special maids-of-honor:<br />
+<br />
+Pib and Tib and Pinck and Pin,<br />
+Tick and Quick, and Jil and Jin,<br />
+Tit and Nit, and Wap and Win,<br />
+The train that wait upon her!<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 385px;">
+<img src="images/i_129.png" width="385" height="281" alt="Fairies dancing by moonlight" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;BY THE MOON WE SPORT AND PLAY.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Young Randolph has an equally delightful account
+in the pastoral drama of <i>Amyntas</i>, of his wee
+folk orchard-robbing; whose chorused Latin Leigh
+Hunt thus translates, roguishly enough:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We the fairies blithe and antic,</span><br />
+Of dimensions not gigantic,<br />
+Tho' the moonshine mostly keep us,<br />
+Oft in orchard frisk and peep us.<br />
+<br />
+Stolen sweets are always sweeter;<br />
+Stolen kisses much completer;<br />
+Stolen looks are nice in chapels;<br />
+Stolen, stolen, be our apples!<br />
+<br />
+When to bed the world is bobbing,<br />
+Then's the time for orchard-robbing:<br />
+Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling,<br />
+Were it not for stealing, stealing!<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>You will notice that Shakespeare places his
+Gothic goblins in the woods about Athens, a place
+where real fairies never set their rose-leaf feet,
+but where once sported yet lovelier Dryads and
+Naiads. These dainty British Greeks are very
+small indeed: Titania orders them to make war
+on the rear-mice, and make coats of their leathern
+wings. Mercutio's Queen Mab is scarce bigger
+than a snowflake. Prospero, in <i>The Tempest</i>, commands,
+besides his "delicate Ariel," all</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+&mdash;elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves.<br />
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The make-believe fairies in <i>The Merry Wives</i>
+know how to pinch offenders black and blue. The
+shepherd, in the <i>Winter's Tale</i>, takes the baby
+Perdita for a changeling. So that all the Shakespeare
+people seem wise in goblin-lore.</p>
+
+<p>You see that we have looked for the literature
+of our pretty friends only among the old poets, and
+only English poets at that; but the foreign fairies
+are no less charming. Chaucer and Spenser loved
+the brood especially. Robert Herrick knew all
+about</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+&mdash;the elves also,<br />
+Whose little eyes glow;<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Sidney smiled on them once or twice, and great
+Milton could spare them a line out of his majestic
+verse. But the high-tide of their praise was ebbing
+already when Dryden and Pope were writing.
+Lesser poets than any of these, Parnell and Tickell,
+wrote fairy tales, but they lack the relish of the
+honeyed rhymes Drayton, Lyly, and supreme
+Shakespeare, give us. Keats was drawn to them,
+though he has left us but sweet and brief proof of
+it; and Thomas Hood, of all gentle modern poets,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+has done most for the "small foresters and gay."
+In prose the fairies are "famoused" east and west;
+for which they may sing their loudest canticle to
+the good Brothers Grimm, in Fairyland. The
+arts have been their handmaids; and some of this
+world's most lovable spirits have delighted to do
+them merry honor: Mendelssohn in his quicksilver
+orchestral music, and dear Richard Doyle in
+the quaintest drawings that ever fell, laughing,
+from a pencil-point.</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 383px;">
+<img src="images/i_132.png" width="383" height="261" alt="fairies in the dark with eyes glowing" />
+<span class="caption">THE ELVES WHOSE LITTLE EYES GLOW.</span>
+</div><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>CHANGELINGS.</div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>KIDNAPPING was a favorite pastime with
+our small friends, and a great many reasons
+concurred to make it a necessary and thriving
+trade. We are told that both the Tylwyth
+Teg and the Korrigans had a fear that their frail
+race was dying out, and sought to steal hearty
+young children, and leave the wee, bright, sickly
+"changeling," or ex-changeling, in its place.
+That sounds like a quibble; for we know that fairies
+were free from the shadow of death, and
+could not possibly dread any lessening of their
+numbers from the old, old cause. Yet we
+saw that the air-elves held pitched battles, and
+murdered one another like gallant soldiers, from
+the world's beginning; and again comes a straggling
+little proof to make us suspect that they had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+not quite the immortality they boasted. However,
+we pass it by, sure at least that the philosopher
+who first observed the merry goblins to be at bottom
+wavering and disconsolate, recognized an instance
+of it in this pathetic eagerness to adopt
+babies not their own. Fairy-folk were believed,
+in general, to have power over none but unbaptized
+children.</div>
+
+<p>A tradition older and wider than the Tylwyth
+Teg's runs that a yearly tribute was due from
+Fairyland to the prince of the infernal regions, as
+poor King Ægeus had once to pay Minos of Crete
+with the seven fair boys and girls; and that, for
+the sake of sparing their own dear ones, the little
+beings, in their fantastic dress, flew east and west
+on an anxious hunt for human children, who might
+be captured and delivered over to bondage
+instead. And they crept cautiously to many a
+cradle, and having secured the sleeping innocent,
+"plucked the nodding nurse by the nose," as
+Ben Jonson said, and vanished with a scream of
+triumphant laughter. Welsh fairies have been
+caught in the very act of the theft, and a pretty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+fight they made, every time, to keep their booty;
+but the strength of a man or a woman, was, of
+course, too much for them to resist long.</p>
+
+<p>Now, whenever a mother, who, you may count
+upon it, thought her own urchin most beautiful of
+all under the moon, found him growing cross and
+homely, in despite of herself, she suddenly awoke
+to this view of the case: that the dwindled babe
+was her babe no longer, but a miserable young
+gosling from Fairyland slipped into its place. A
+miserable young foreign gosling it was from that
+hour, though it had her own grandfather's special
+kind of a nose on its unmistakable face.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery always made a great sensation;
+people came from the surrounding villages to
+wonder at the lean, gaping, knowing-eyed small
+stranger in the crib, and to propose all sorts of
+charms which should rid the house of his presence,
+and restore the rightful heir again. They were
+not especially polite to the poor changeling. In
+Denmark, and in Ireland as well, they dandled
+him on a hot shovel! If he were really a changeling,
+the fairies, rather than see him singed, were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+sure to appear in a violent fluster and whisk him
+away, and at the same minute to drop its former
+owner plump into the cradle. And if it were
+not a changeling, how did those queer by-gone
+mammas know when to stop the broiling and
+baking?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. George Waldron, who in 1726 wrote an entertaining
+<i>Description of the Isle of Man</i>, recorded
+it that he once went to see a baby supposed to be
+a changeling; that it seemed to be four or five
+years old, but smaller than an infant of six months,
+pale, and silky-haired, and (what was unusual)
+with the fairest face under heaven; that it was
+not able to walk nor to move a joint, seldom smiled,
+ate scarcely anything, and never spoke nor cried;
+but that if you called it a fairy-elf, it fixed its gaze
+on you as if it would look you through. If it were
+left alone, it was overheard laughing and frolicking,
+and when it was taken up after, limp as cloth,
+its hair was found prettily combed, and there were
+signs that it had been washed and dressed by its
+unseen playfellows.</p>
+
+<p>The main point to put the family mind at rest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+on the matter, was to make the changeling "own
+up," force him to do something which no tender
+mortal in socks and bibs ever was able to do, such
+as dance, prophesy, or manage a musical instrument.
+There was an Irish changeling, the youngest
+of five sons,
+who, being teased,
+snatched a bagpipe
+from a visitor, and
+played upon it in the
+most accomplished
+and melting manner,
+sitting up in his
+wooden chair, his
+big goggle-eyes fixed
+on the company.
+And when he knew
+he was found out, he sprang, bagpipe and all, into
+the river; which leads one to suspect that he was
+a sort of stray Strömkarl.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 209px;">
+<img src="images/i_137.png" width="209" height="292" alt="changeling on a chair with bagpipes" />
+<span class="caption">THERE WAS AN IRISH CHANGELING.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Welsh fairies had good taste, and admired
+wholesome and handsome children. They stole
+such often, and left for substitute the plentyn-newid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+(the change-child) who at first was exactly
+like the absent nursling, but soon grew ugly, shrivelled,
+biting, wailing, cunning and ill-tempered.
+In the hope of proving whether it were a fairy-waif
+or not, people put the little creature to such
+hard tests, that sometimes it nearly died of acquaintance
+with a rod, or an oven, or a well.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 383px;"><a id="Page_139"></a>
+<img src="images/i_139.png" width="383" height="393" alt="Cat angry at changeling" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;THE ACORN BEFORE THE OAK HAVE I SEEN.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If the bereaved parent did some very astonishing
+thing in plain view of the wonder-chick, that
+would generally entrap it into betraying its secrets.
+A French changeling was once moved unawares
+to sing out that it was nine hundred years old, at
+least! In Wales, and also in Brittainy (which are
+sister-countries of one race) the following story is
+current: A mother whose infant had been spirited
+away, and who was much perplexed over what she
+took to be a changeling, was advised to cook a
+meal for ten farm-servants in one egg-shell. When
+the queer little creature, burning with curiosity,
+asked her from his high-chair what she was about,
+she could hardly answer, so excited was she to
+hear him speak. At that he cried louder: "A
+meal for ten, dear mother, in one egg-shell? The
+acorn before the oak have I seen, and the wilderness
+before the lawn, but never did I behold anything
+like that!" and so gave damaging evidence
+of his age and his unlucky wisdom. And the
+woman replied: "You have seen altogether too
+much, my son, and you shall have a beating!"
+And thereupon she began to thrash him, until he
+screeched, and a fairy appeared hurriedly to rescue
+him, and in the crib lay the round, rosy, real child,
+who had been missing a long while.</p>
+
+<p>Now the "gentry" of modern Greece had an
+eye also to clever children; but they almost
+always brought them back, laden with gifts, lovelier
+in person than when they were taken from home.
+And if they appointed a changeling in the meantime
+(which they were not very apt to do) it never
+showed its elfin nature until it was quite grown up!
+unlike the uncanny goblins who were all too
+ready from the first to give autobiographies on the
+slightest hint.</p>
+
+<p>The Drows of the Orkney Islands fancied larger
+game. They used to stalk in among church congregations
+and carry off pious deacons and deaconesses!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a><br /><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+So wrote one Lucas Jacobson Debes, in
+1670.</p>
+
+<p>In a pretty Scotch tale, a sly fairy threatened to
+steal the "lad bairn," unless the mother could tell
+the fairy's right name. The latter was a complete
+stranger, and the woman was sore worried; and
+went to walk in the woods to ease her anxious and
+aching heart, and to think over some means of
+outwitting the enemy of her boy. And presently
+she heard a faint voice singing under a leaf:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Little kens the gude dame at hame</span><br />
+That Whuppity Stoorie is ma name!<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>When the smart lady in green came to take the
+beautiful "lad bairn," the mother quietly called
+her "Whuppity Stoorie!" and off she hurried with
+a cry of fear; like the Austrian dwarf Kruzimügeli,
+the "dear Ekke Nekkepem" of Friesland,
+and many another who tried to play the same
+trick, and who were always themselves the means
+of telling mortals the very names they would conceal.</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 252px;">
+<img src="images/i_143.png" width="252" height="341" alt="Fairy in a flower" />
+<span class="caption">SHE HEARD A FAINT VOICE SINGING UNDER A LEAF.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Fairy-folk young and old were coquettish enough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+about their names, and greatly preferred they
+should not be spoken outright. This habit got
+them into many a scrape. The anecdote of "Who
+hurt you? Myself!" was told in Spain, Finland,
+Brittainy, Japan, and a dozen other kingdoms, and
+seems to be as old as the Odyssey. Do you remember
+where Ulysses tells the Cyclop that his
+name is Outis, which means Nobody? and how,
+after the eye of the wicked Polyphemus has been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+put out, the comrades of the big blinded fellow ask
+him who did the deed, and he growls back, very
+sensibly: "Nobody!" Consider what follows a
+typical modern version of the same trick.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 373px;">
+<img src="images/i_144.png" width="373" height="309" alt="girl finds dancing fairy" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;AINSEL.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A young Scotch child, whom we will call Alan,
+sits by the fire, when a pretty creature the size of
+a doll, waltzes down the chimney to the hearth,
+and begins to frolic. When asked its name it says
+shrewdly: "Ainsel"; which to the boy sounds
+like what it really is, "Ownself," and makes him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+when it is his turn to be questioned, as saucy and
+reticent as he supposes his elfin playfellow to be.
+So Alan tells the sprite that his name is "<i>My</i>
+Ainsel," and gets the better of it. For bye-and-bye
+they wax very frisky and friendly, and right
+in the middle of their sport, when little Alan
+pokes the fire, and gets a spark by chance on
+Ainsel's foot, and when he roars with pain, and
+the old fairy-mother appears instantly, crying angrily:
+"Who has hurt thee? Who has hurt thee?"
+the elf blurts, of course, "My Ainsel!" and she
+kicks him unceremoniously up chimney, and bids
+him stop whimpering, since the burn was of his
+own silly doing! Alan, meanwhile, climbs upstairs
+to bed, rejoicing to escape the vengeance of
+the fairy-mother, and chuckling in his sleeve at
+the funny turn things have taken.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>FAIRYLAND.</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"And never would I tire, Janet,<br />
+In Fairyland to dwell."<br />
+<br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>SO runs the song. Who would weary of so
+sweet a place? At least, we think of it as
+a sweet place; but like this own world of ours, it
+was whatever a man's eyes made it: good and
+gracious to the good, troublous to the evil. According
+to an old belief, a mean or angry, or untruthful
+person, always exposed himself, by the
+very violence of his wrong-doing, to become an
+inmate of Fairyland; and for such a one, it could
+not have been all sunshine. A foot set upon the
+fairy-ring was enough to cause a mortal to be
+whisked off, pounded, pinched, bewildered, and
+left far from home. It was a strange experience,
+and it is recorded that it befell many a lad and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+maid to be loosed from earth, and cloistered for
+uncounted years, to return, like our Catskill hero,
+Rip Van Winkle, after what he supposes to be a
+little time, and to find that generations had passed
+away. For those absent took no thought of time's
+passing, and on reaching earth again, would begin
+where their lips had dropped a sentence half-spoken,
+a hundred years before. Tales of such
+truants are common the world over.</div>
+
+<p>Gitto Bach (little Griffith) was a Welsh farmer's
+boy, who looked after sheep on the mountain-top.
+When he came home at evenfall he often showed
+his brothers and sisters bits of paper stamped like
+money. Now when it was given to him, it was
+real money; but the fairy-gifts would not bear
+handling, and turned useless and limp as soon as
+Gitto showed them. One day he did not return.
+After two years his mother found him one morning
+at the door, smiling, and with a bundle under his
+arm. She asked him, with many tears, where he
+had been so long, while they had mourned for him
+as dead. "It is only yesterday I went away!"
+said Gitto. "See the pretty clothes the mountain-children<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+gave me, for dancing with them to the
+music of their harps." And he opened his bundle,
+and showed a beautiful dress: but his mother saw
+it was only paper, after all, like the fairy money.</p>
+
+<div class="i2"></div><div class="figcenter" style="width: 376px;">
+<img src="images/i_148.png" width="376" height="365" alt="Shepherd visited by fairies" />
+<span class="caption">GITTO BACH AND THE FAIRIES.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 374px;">
+<img src="images/i_149.png" width="374" height="198" alt="fairy sitting in flower" />
+<span class="caption">KAGUYAHIME, THE MOON-MAID.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Our pretty friends enjoyed beguiling mortals into
+their shining underworld, with song, and caresses,
+and winning promises. Once the mortal entered,
+he met with warm welcomes from all, and the most
+exquisite meat and drink were set before him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+Now, if he had but the courage to refuse it, he
+soon found himself back on earth, whence he was
+stolen. But if he yielded to temptation, and his
+tongue tasted fairy food, he could never behold
+his native hills again for years and years. And
+when, after that exquisite imprisonment, he should
+be torn from his delights and set back at his father's
+door, he should find his memory almost forgotten,
+and others sitting with a claim in his empty seat.
+And he should not remember how long he had
+been missing, but grow silent and depressed, and
+sit for hours, with dreamy eyes, on lonely slopes
+and wildwood bridges, not desiring fellowship of
+any soul alive; but with a heartache always for his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+little lost playfellows, and for that bright country
+far away, until he died.</p>
+
+<p>Often the creature who has once stood in the
+courts of Fairyland, is placed under vow, when
+released, and allowed to visit the earth, to come
+back at call, and abide there always. For the
+spell of that place is so strong, no heart can escape
+it, nor wish to escape it. Thus ends the old
+romance of Thomas the Rhymer: that, at the end
+of seven years, he was freed from Fairyland, made
+wise beyond all men; but he was sworn to return
+whenever the summons should reach him. And
+once as he was making merry with his chosen comrades,
+a hart and a hind moved slowly along the
+village street; and he knew the sign, laid down
+his glass, and smiled farewell; and followed them
+straightway into the strange wood, never to be
+seen more by mortal eyes.</p>
+
+<p>A wonderful and beautiful Japanese story, too,
+the ancient Taketori Monogatari, written in the
+first half of the tenth century, tells us how a grey-haired
+bamboo-gatherer found in a bamboo-blade
+a radiant elf-baby, and kindly took it home to his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+wife; and because of their great and ready generosity
+to the waif, the gods made them thrive in
+purse and health; and how, when the little one
+had been with them three months, Kaguyahime,
+for that was she, grew suddenly to a tall and fair
+girl, and so remained unchanging, for twenty
+years, while five gallant Japanese lords were doing
+her strange commands, and running risks the world
+over. Then, though the emperor, also, was her
+suitor, and though she was unspeakably fond of
+her old foster-parents, and grieved to go from
+them, she, being a moon-maid, went back in her
+chariot one glorious night to her shining home,
+whence she had been banished for some old fault,
+and whither the love and longing and homage of
+all the land pursued her.</p>
+
+<p>Many sweet wild Welsh and Cornish legends
+deal with shepherds and yeomen who set foot on
+a fairy mound by chance, or who, in some other
+fashion, were transplanted to the realm of the
+dancing, feasting elves. But they have a pathetic
+ending, since no wanderer ever strayed back with
+all his old wits sound and sharp. He seemed as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+one who walked in sleep, and had no care or recognition
+for the faces that once he held dear.
+And if he were roused too rudely from his long
+reverie, he died of the shock.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 384px;">
+<img src="images/i_152.png" width="384" height="213" alt="fairies visiting boy" />
+<span class="caption">THE LITTLE HUNCHBACK.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A merrier tale, and one which is very wise and
+pretty as well, is current in many literatures. The
+Irish version runs somewhat in this fashion, and
+the Spanish and Breton versions are extraordinarily
+like it. A little hunchback resting at nightfall
+in an enchanted neighborhood, heard the
+fairies, from their borderlands near by, singing
+over and over the names of the days of the week.
+"And Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday!" they
+chorus: "and Sunday and Monday and Tuesday."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+The boy thinks it rather hard that they do not
+know enough to finish their musical chant with the
+names of the remaining days; so, when they pause
+a little, very softly, and tunefully, he adds: "And
+Wednesday"! The wee folk are delighted, and
+make their chant longer by one strophe; and they
+crowd out in their finery from the mound, bearing
+the stranger far down into its depths where there
+are the glorious open halls of Fairyland: kissing
+and praising their friend, and bringing him the
+daintiest fruit lips ever tasted; and to reward him
+lastingly, their soft little hands lift the cruel hump
+from his back, and he runs dancing home, at a
+year's end, to acquaint the village with his happy
+fortune. Now another deformed lad, his neighbor,
+is racked with jealousy at the sight of his
+former friend made straight and fair; and he
+rushes to the fairy-mound, and sits, scowling, waiting
+to hear them begin the magic song. Presently
+rise the silver voices: "And Sunday, and Monday,
+and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Sunday and
+Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday": whereat
+the audience breaks in rudely, right in the middle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+of a cadence: "And Friday." Then the gentle
+elves were wrathful, and swarmed out upon him,
+snarling and striking at him in scorn; and before
+he escaped them, they had fastened on his crooked
+back beside his own, the very hump that had belonged
+to the first comer! In the anecdote, as it
+is given in Picardy, the justice-dealing goblins
+are described as very small and comely, clad in
+violet-colored velvet, and wearing hats laden with
+peacock plumes. In the Japanese rendering, a
+wen takes the place of the hump.</p>
+
+<p>Fairyland is the home of every goblin, bright
+or fierce, that ever we heard of; the home, too, of
+the ogres and dragons, and enchanted princesses,
+and demons, and Jack-the-giant-killers of all time.
+The Brownies belonged there, and went thither in
+their worldly finery, when service was over; the
+gnomes and snarling mine-sprites, the sweet dancing
+elves, the fairies who stole children, or romped
+under the river's current, or plagued honest farmers,
+or tiptoed it with a torch down a lonesome
+road&mdash;every one there had his country and his
+fireside.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 379px;">
+<img src="images/i_156.png" width="379" height="348" alt="Fairy tending bird" />
+<span class="caption">TAKNAKANX KAN.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In that merry company were many who have
+escaped us, and who sit in a blossomy corner by
+themselves, the oddest of the odd: like the Japanese
+Tengus, who have little wings and feathers,
+like birds, until they grew up; mouths very seldom
+opened, and most amazing big noses, with
+which, on earth, they were wont to fence, to whitewash,
+to write poetry, and to ring bells! There,
+too, were the dark-skinned Indian wonder-babies:
+Weeng, whom Mr. Longfellow celebrates as Nepahwin,
+the Indian god of sleep, with his numerous
+train of little fairy men armed with clubs;
+who at nightfall sought out mortals, and with innumerable
+light blows upon their foreheads, compelled
+them to slumber. The great boaster, Iagoo,
+whom Hiawatha knew, once declared that he had
+seen King Weeng himself, resting against a tree,
+with many waving and music-making wings on his
+back. Indian, likewise, was the spirit named Canotidan,
+who dwelt in many a hollow tree; and
+the lively fellow, Taknakanx Kan, who sported "in
+the nodding flowers; who flew with the birds, frisked
+with the squirrels, and skipped with the grasshopper;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+who was merry with the gay running brooks,
+and shouted with the waterfall; who moved with
+the sailing cloud, and came forth with the dawn."
+He never slept, and never had time to sleep, being
+the god of perpetual motion. Near him, perhaps,
+see-sawed a couple of long-eyed Chinese San Sao,
+or the glossy-haired Fées of Southern France
+pelted one another with dew-drops. There also,
+the African Yumboes had their magnificent tents
+spread: those strange little thieving Banshee-Brownies,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+wrapped in white cotton pangs, who
+leaned back in their seats after a gorgeous repast,
+and beheld an army of hands appear and carry off
+the golden dishes! There abided, as the venerated
+elder of the rest, the long-bearded Pygmies
+whom Homer, Aristotle and good Herodotus had
+not scorned to celebrate, whom Sir John Mandeville
+avowed to be "right fair and gentle, after their
+quantities, both the men and the women....
+And he that liveth eight year, men hold him right
+passing old ... and of the men of our stature
+have they as great scorn and wonder as we would
+have among us of giants!"</p>
+
+<p>Of these and thousands more marvellous is
+Fairyland full; full of things startling and splendid
+and grewsome and visionary:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">&mdash;&mdash;full of noises,</span><br />
+Sounds and sweet airs that give delight, and hurt not.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Any picture of it is tame, any worded description
+dull and heavy, to you who discover it daily at first
+hand, and who know its faces and voices, which
+fade too quickly from the brain. All fine adventures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+spring thence: all loveliest color, odor and
+companionship are in that stirring, sparkling world.
+Can you not help us back there for an hour? Who
+knows the path? Who can draw a map, and set up
+a sign-post? Who can bar the gate, when we are
+safe inside, and keep us forever and ever in our forsaken
+"dear sweet land of Once-upon-a-Time"?</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE PASSING OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE.</div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>THERE was once a very childish child who laid
+her fairy-book on its face across her knee,
+and sat all the morning watching the cups of the
+honeysuckle, grieved that not one solitary elf was
+left to swing on its sun-touched edges, and laugh
+back at her, with unforgetful eyes.</div>
+
+<p>We are sorry for her, and sorry with her. The
+Little People, alas! have gone away; would that
+they might return! No man knows why nor when
+they left us; nor whither they turned their faces.
+The exodus was made softly and slowly, till the
+whole bright tribe had stolen imperceptibly into
+exile. Mills, steam-engines and prowling disbelievers
+joined to banish them; their poetic and
+dreamy drama is over, their magic lamp out, and
+their jocund music hushed and forbidden. Or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+perhaps they of themselves went lingeringly and
+sorrowfully afar, because the world had grown too
+rough for them.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey Chaucer, in the fourteenth century,
+wrote in his sweet, tranquil fashion:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour . . .</span><br />
+Al was this lond fulfilled of faerie . . . . .<br />
+I speke of mony hundrid yeer ago;<br />
+But now can no man see non elves mo:<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>which you may understand as an announcement
+somewhat ahead of time. For many, many "elves
+mo" were on record after the good poet's lyre was
+hushed, and "thick as motes in the sunbeam" centuries
+after their reported flight. There have been
+sound-headed folk in every age, of whom Chaucer
+was one, who jested over the poor fairies and their
+arts, and spoke of them only for gentle satire's sake.
+But though Chaucer was sure the goblins had perished,
+his neighbors saw manifold lively specimens
+of the race, without stirring out of the parish. Up
+to two hundred years ago prayers were said in the
+churches against bad fairies!</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 379px;">
+<img src="images/i_161.png" width="379" height="285" alt="fairy sitting on a mushroom above other faires and bugs" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;AL WAS THIS LOND FULFILLED OF FAERIE.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Sir Walter Scott related that the last Brownie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+was the Brownie of Bodsbeck, who lived there long,
+and vanished, as is the wont of his clan, when
+the mistress of the house laid milk and a piece of
+money in his haunts. He was loath to go, and
+moaned all night: "Farewell to Bonnie Bodsbeck!"
+till his departure at break of day. A girl
+from Norfolk, England, questioned by Mr. Thomas
+Keightley, admitted that she had often seen the
+<i>Frairies</i>, dressed in white, coming up from their
+little cities underground! Mr. John Brand saw a
+man who said he had seen one that had seen fairies!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+And Mr. Robert Hunt, author of the <i>Drolls
+and Traditions of Old Cornwall</i>, wrote that forty
+years ago every rock and field in that country was
+peopled with them! and that "a gentleman well-known
+in the literary world of London very recently
+saw in Devonshire a troop of fairies! It
+was a breezy summer afternoon, and these beautiful
+little creatures were floating on circling
+zephyrs up the side of a sunlit hill, fantastically
+playing,</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+'Where oxlips and the nodding violet grow.'<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>So here are three trustworthy gentlemen, makers
+of books on this special subject, and none of them
+very long dead, to offset Master Geoffrey Chaucer,
+and to bring the "lond fulfilled of faerie" closer
+than he dreamed. About the year 1865, a correspondent
+told Mr. Hunt the following queer little
+story:</p>
+
+
+
+<p>"I heard last week of three fairies having been
+seen in Zennor very recently. A man who lived
+at the foot of Trendreen Hill in the valley of Treridge,
+I think, was cutting furze on the hill. Near<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+the middle of the day he saw one of the small people,
+not more than a foot long, stretched at full
+length and fast asleep, on a bank of heath, surrounded
+by high brakes of furze. The man took
+off his furze-cuff and slipped the little man into it
+without his waking up, went down to the house, and
+took the little fellow out of the cuff on the hearthstone,
+when he awoke, and seemed quite pleased
+and at home, beginning to play with the children,
+who were well pleased also with the small
+body, and called him Bobby Griglans. The old
+people were very careful not to let Bob out of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+house, nor be seen by the neighbors, as he had
+promised to show the man where crocks of gold
+were buried on the hill. A few days after he was
+brought, all the neighbors came with their horses,
+according to custom, to bring home the winter's
+reek of furze, which had to be brought down the
+hill in trusses on the backs of the horses. That Bob
+might be safe and out of sight, he and the children
+were shut up in the barn. Whilst the furze-carriers
+were in to dinner, the prisoners contrived to get
+out to have a run round the furze-reek, when they
+saw a little man and woman not much larger than
+Bob, searching into every hole and corner among
+the trusses that were dropped round the unfinished
+reek. The little woman was wringing her
+hands and crying 'O my dear and tender Skillywidden!
+wherever canst thou be gone to? Shall
+I ever cast eyes on thee again?' 'Go 'e back!'
+says Bob to the children; 'my father and mother
+are come here too.' He then cried out: 'Here I
+am, mammy!' By the time the words were out of
+his mouth, the little man and woman, with their
+precious Skillywidden, were nowhere to be seen,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+and there has been no sight nor sign of them
+since. The children got a sound thrashing for
+letting Skillywidden
+escape."</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 383px;">
+<img src="images/i_163.png" width="383" height="276" alt="girl reading fairy stories" />
+<span class="caption">FAIRY STORIES.</span>
+</div>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 240px;">
+<img src="images/i_165.png" width="240" height="235" alt="capturing a fairy" />
+<span class="caption">THE CAPTURE OF SKILLYWIDDEN.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Such is the latest
+evidence we
+can find of the
+whereabouts of
+our goblins.</p>
+
+<p>We may, however,
+consider
+ourselves their
+contemporaries, since among the peasantry of many
+countries over-seas, the belief is not yet extinct.
+But it is pretty clear to us, modern and American
+as we are (safer in so thinking than anybody was
+anywhere before!) that the "restless people," as
+the Scotch called them, are at rest, and clean quit
+of this world; and perhaps satisfied, at last, of their
+chance of salvation, along with fortunate Christians.</p>
+
+<p>Such a great system as this of fairy-lore, propped
+on such show of earnestness, grew up, not of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+sudden like a mushroom after a July rain, but
+gradually and securely, like a coral-reef. And the
+dream-building was not nonsense at all, but a way
+of putting what was evident and marvellous into a
+familiar guise. If certain strange things, which
+are called phenomena, happened&mdash;things like the
+coming of pebbles from clouds, music from sand,
+sparkling light from decay, or disease and death
+from the mere handling of a velvety leaf&mdash;then our
+forefathers, instead of gazing straight into the eyes
+of the fact, as we are taught to do, looked askance,
+and made a fantastic rigmarole concerning the
+pebbles, or the music, and passed it down as religion
+and law.</p>
+
+<p>The simple-minded citizens of old referred any
+trifling occurrence, pleasant or unpleasant, to the
+fairies. The demons and deities, according to
+their notion of fitness, governed in vaster matters;
+and the new, potent sprites took shape in the
+popular brain as the controllers of petty affairs.
+If a shepherd found one of his flock sick, it had
+been elf-shot; if a girl's wits went wool-gathering,
+it was a sign she had been in fairyland; if a cooing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+baby turned peevish and thin, it was a changeling!
+Wherever you now see a mist, a cobweb, a
+moving shadow on the grass; wherever you hear
+a cricket-chirp, or the plash of a waterfall, or the
+cry of the bird on the wing, there of yore were the
+fairy-folk in their beauty. They stood in the mind
+to represent the lesser secrets of Nature, to account
+for some wonder heard and seen. It was
+many a century before nations stopped romancing
+about the brave things on land and sea, and began
+to speculate, to observe more keenly, to hunt out
+reasons, and to lift the haze of their own fancy
+from heroic facts and deeds.</p>
+
+<p>Think a moment of the Danish moon-man, who
+breathed pestilence, and the moon-woman, whose
+harp was so charming. Well, the moon-man meant
+nothing else than the marsh, slimy and dangerous,
+which yielded a malarial odor; and the wee
+woman with her harp represented the musical
+night-wind, which played over the marsh rushes
+and reeds. Was it not so, too, with the larger
+myths of Greece? For the story of Proserpine,
+carried away by the god of the under world, and after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+a weary while, given back for half-a-year to her fond
+mother Ceres, tells really of the seed-corn which
+is cast into her dark soil, and long hidden; but reappears
+in glory, and stays overground for months,
+basking in the sun. And so on with many a fable,
+which we read, unguessing of the thought and
+purpose beneath. Though it was erring, we can
+hardly thank too much that joyous and reverent
+old paganism which fancied it saw divinity in each
+move of Nature, kept a natural piety towards everything
+that lived, and made a thousand sweet memoranda,
+to remind us forever of the wonder and
+charm of our earth. All mythology, and the
+part the fairies play in it, stands for what is true.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">&mdash;&mdash;"Still</span><br />
+Doth the old instinct bring back the old names":<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and again and again, when we cite some beautiful
+fiction of Merman and Kobold, of White Dwarf or
+Pooka, we but repeat, whether aware of it or not,
+how the dews come down at morning, or the
+storm-wind breaks the strong trees, or how a comet,
+trailing light, bursts headlong across the wide sky.</div>
+
+<p>To comprehend fairy-stories, to get under the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+surface of them, we would have to go over them
+all at great length, and with exhaustless patience.
+And as in digging for the tendrils of a delicate,
+berry-laden vine, we have to search, sometimes,
+deep and wide into the woodland loam, among
+gnarly roots of shrubs and giant pines, so in tracing
+the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'scources'">sources</ins> of the simplest tale which makes
+us glad or sad, we fall across a network of ponderous
+ancient lore; of custom, prejudice, and lost
+day-dreams, from which this vine, also, is hard to
+be severed.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit of these neat little goblin-chronicles
+was right and sincere; but the matter of them
+was often sadly astray. Of course, sometimes,
+useless, misleading details gathered to obscure
+the first idea, and to overrun it with a tangle
+of error; and not only were fine stories spoiled,
+but many were started which were funny, or silly,
+or grim merely, without serving any use beyond
+that.</p>
+
+<p>But so powerful is Truth, when there was actually
+a grain of it at the centre, that even those
+versions which were exaggerated and distorted,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+played into the hands of what we call Folk-lore,
+and laid their golden key at the feet of Science.
+You will discover that, besides pointing out the
+workings of the natural world, the fairy-tales rested
+often on the workings of our own minds and consciences.
+The Brownie was a little schoolmaster
+set up to teach love of order, and the need of
+perfect courtesy; the Nix betokened anything
+sweet and beguiling, which yet was hurtful, and
+to which it was, and is, a gallant heart's duty not
+to yield. And thus, from beginning to end, the
+elves at whom we laugh, help us toward larger
+knowledge, and a more chivalrous code of behavior.
+How shall we say, then, that there never was
+a fairy?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 348px;"><a id="Page_171"></a>
+<img src="images/i_171.png" width="348" height="415" alt="fairy in a bouquet" />
+</div>
+
+<p>A miner, hearing the drip of subterranean water,
+took it to be a Duergar or a Bucca, swinging his
+tiny hammer over the shining ore. His notion of
+the Bucca, askew as it was, was one at bottom
+with our knowledge of the dark brooklet. You,
+the young heirs of mighty Science, can often outstrip
+the slow-gathered wisdom of dead philosophers.
+But do not despise that fine old imagination,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+which felt its way almost to the light. A
+sixteenth-century boy, who was all excitement
+once over the pranks of Robin Goodfellow, knew
+many precious things which our very great nineteenth-century
+acuteness has made us lose!</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, then, to the army of vanishing "gentry,"
+and to their steadfast friends, and to you, children
+dear! who are the guardians of their wild
+unwritten records. Shall you not miss them when
+next the moon is high on the blossomy hillocks,
+and the thistledown, ready-saddled, plunges to be
+off and away? Merry fellows they were, and
+shrewd and just; and we were very fond of them;
+and now they are gone. And their going, like a
+mounting harmony, note by note, which ends in
+one noble chord, with a hush after it, leads us to
+a serious parting word. Keep the fairies in kindly
+memory; do not lose your interest in them. They
+and their history have an enchanting value, which
+need never be outgrown nor set aside; and to the
+gravest mind they bring much which is beautiful,
+humane and suggestive.</p>
+
+<p>We have found that believers in the Little People<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+were not so wrong, after all; and that the eye
+claiming to have seen a fairy saw, verily, a sight
+quite as astonishing. Let us think as gently of
+other myths to which men have given zeal, awe and
+admiration, of every faith hereafter which seems
+to us odd and mistaken. For many things which
+are not true in the exact sense, are yet dear to
+Truth; and follow her as a baby's tripping tongue
+lisps the language of its mother, not very successfully,
+but still with loyalty, and with a meaning
+which attentive ears can always catch.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, our ancestors loved the "span-long elves"
+who wrought them no great harm, and who gave
+them help and cheer. We will praise them, too.
+Who knows but some little goblin's thorny finger
+directed many an innocent human heart to march,
+albeit waveringly, towards the ample light of God?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired. The remaining corrections made are listed below
+and are indicated as well by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p>
+
+<p>Page vii, "Puck" changed to "Pück" (All that Pück demanded)</p>
+
+<p>Page vii, "wa" changed to "Wa" (Wag-at-the-Wa')</p>
+
+<p>Page viii, "Kopenick" changed to "Köpenick" (Kobold of Köpenick)</p>
+
+<p>Page viii, "changling" changed to "changeling" (was an Irish changeling)</p>
+
+<p>Page viii, "Taknakaux" changed to "Taknakanx" (Taknakanx Kan)</p>
+
+<p>Page 27, "airy" changed to "fairy" (to the fairy neighbors)</p>
+
+<p>Page 30, illustration caption, "RUGEN" changed to "RÜGEN" (THE ISLE OF RÜGEN)</p>
+
+<p>Page 37, illustration caption, "RUGEN" changed to "RÜGEN" (DWARVES OF RÜGEN)</p>
+
+<p>Page 38, repeated word "and" removed from text. Original read (by twos and and threes)</p>
+
+<p>Page 93, illustration caption, "KOPENICK" changed to "KÖPENICK" (KOBOLD OF KÖPENICK)</p>
+
+<p>Page 169, "scources" changed to "sources" (the sources of the simplest)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Brownies and Bogles, by Louise Imogen Guiney
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Brownies and Bogles, by Louise Imogen Guiney
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Brownies and Bogles
+
+Author: Louise Imogen Guiney
+
+Illustrator: Edmund H. Garrett
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2012 [EBook #39782]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNIES AND BOGLES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE LITTLE "NECK" IN THE SWEDISH RIVER.]
+
+
+
+
+BROWNIES AND BOGLES
+
+BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
+
+    Author of
+    Songs at the Start
+    Goose-Quill Papers
+    The White Sail
+
+    _Fifty Illustrations by Edmund H Garrett_
+
+    BOSTON
+    D LOTHROP COMPANY
+    FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS
+
+
+
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1888,
+    BY
+    D. LOTHROP COMPANY.
+
+    PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, BOSTON.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+  WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID      11
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+  FAIRY RULERS                             22
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+  THE BLACK ELVES                          33
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+  THE LIGHT ELVES                          46
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+  DEAR BROWNIE                             63
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+  OTHER HOUSE-HELPERS                      79
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+  WATER-FOLK                               96
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+  MISCHIEF-MAKERS                         109
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+  PUCK; AND POETS' FAIRIES                123
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+  CHANGELINGS                             133
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+  FAIRYLAND                               146
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+  THE PASSING OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE        159
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+  The little river-neck of Sweden                    _Frontis._
+  "God speed you, gentlemen!"                               16
+  The Neapolitan fairy                                      25
+  The elf-monarch who was made court-fool                   29
+  The Isle of Ruegen Dwarfs that give presents to children   31
+  The Dwarf that borrowed the silk gown                     35
+  The Black Dwarfs of Ruegen planning mischief               38
+  The Troll's children                                      40
+  A Coblynau                                                42
+  "I can't stay any longer!"                                45
+  An elle-maid of Denmark                                   48
+  Bertha, the White Lady                                    49
+  Some Greek fairies                                        51
+  An elf-traveller                                          58
+  Brownie's delight was to do domestic service              65
+  Brownie relishes his bowl of cream                        70
+  All that Pueck demanded                                    73
+  "Wag-at-the-Wa'"                                          75
+  An Irish Cluricaune                                       84
+  Japanese children and Brownies                            86
+  A little Fir-Darrig                                       87
+  The persistent Kobold of Koepenick                         93
+  Mer-folk                                                  98
+  The old Nix near Ghent                                   100
+  The work of the Nickel                                   101
+  Hob in Hobhole                                           106
+  The Irish Pooka was a horse too                          111
+  Will o'-the-Wisp                                         113
+  Pisky also chased the farmers' cows                      118
+  Red Comb was a tyrant                                    119
+  The Welsh Puck                                           126
+  A merry night-wanderer                                   127
+  "By the moon we sport and play"                          129
+  The elves whose little eyes glow                         132
+  There was an Irish changeling                            137
+  "The acorn before the oak have I seen"                   139
+  She heard a faint voice singing under a leaf             143
+  "Ainsel"                                                 144
+  Gitto Bach and the fairies                               148
+  Kaguyahime, the moon-maid                                149
+  The little hunchback                                     152
+  Taknakanx Kan                                            156
+  "Al was this loud fulfilled of faeries"                  161
+  Fairy stories                                            163
+  The capture of Skillywidden                              165
+  Good-bye                                                 171
+
+
+
+
+BROWNIES AND BOGLES.
+
+
+
+
+"BROWNIES AND BOGLES."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID.
+
+
+A FAIRY is a humorous person sadly out of fashion at present, who has
+had, nevertheless, in the actors' phrase, a long and prosperous run on
+this planet. When we speak of fairies nowadays, we think only of small
+sprites who live in a kingdom of their own, with manners, laws, and
+privileges very different from ours. But there was a time when "fairy"
+suggested also the knights and ladies of romance, about whom fine
+spirited tales were told when the world was younger. Spenser's Faery
+Queen, for instance, deals with dream-people, beautiful and brave, as do
+the old stories of Arthur and Roland; people who either never lived, or
+who, having lived, were glorified and magnified by tradition out of all
+kinship with common men. Our fairies are fairies in the modern sense. We
+will make it a rule, from the beginning, that they must be small, and we
+will put out any who are above the regulation height. Such as the
+charming famous Melusina, who wails upon her tower at the death of a
+Lusignan, we may as well skip; for she is a tall young lady, with a
+serpent's tail, to boot, and thus, alas! half-monster; for if we should
+accept any like her in our plan, there is no reason why we should not
+get confused among mermaids and dryads, and perhaps end by scoring down
+great Juno herself as a fairy! Many a dwarf and goblin, whom we shall
+meet anon, is as big as a child. Again, there are rumors in nearly every
+country of finding hundreds of them on a square inch of oak-leaf, or
+beneath the thin shadow of a blade of grass. The fairies of popular
+belief are little and somewhat shrivelled, and quite as apt to be
+malignant as to be frolicsome and gentle. We shall find that they were
+divided into several classes and families; but there is much analogy
+and vagueness among these divisions. By and by you may care to study
+them for yourselves; at present, we shall be very high-handed with the
+science of folk-lore, and pay no attention whatever to learned
+gentlemen, who quarrel so foolishly about these things that it is not
+helpful, nor even funny, to listen to them. A widely-spread notion is
+that when our crusading forefathers went to the Holy Land, they heard
+the Paynim soldiers, whom they fought, speaking much of the Peri, the
+loveliest beings imaginable, who dwelt in the East. Now, the Arabian
+language, which these swarthy warriors used, has no letter P, and
+therefore they called their spirits Feri, as did the Crusaders after
+them; and the word went back with them to Europe, and slipped into
+general use.
+
+"Elf" and "goblin," too, are interesting to trace. There was a great
+Italian feud, in the twelfth century, between the German Emperor and the
+Pope, whose separate partisans were known as the Guelfs and the
+Ghibellines. As time went on, and the memory of that long strife was
+still fresh, a descendant of the Guelfs would put upon anybody he
+disliked the odious name of Ghibelline; and the latter, generation after
+generation, would return the compliment ardently, in his own fashion.
+Both terms, finally, came to be mere catch-words for abuse and reproach.
+And the fairies, falling into disfavor with some bold mortals, were
+angrily nicknamed "elf" and "goblin"; in which shape you will recognize
+the last threadbare reminder of the once bitter and historic faction of
+Guelf and Ghibelline.
+
+It is likely that the tribe were designated as fairies because they
+were, for the most part, fair to see, and full of grace and charm,
+especially among the Celtic branches; and people, at all times, had too
+much desire to keep their good-will, and too much shrinking from their
+rancor and spite, to give them any but the most flattering titles. They
+were seldom addressed otherwise than "the little folk," "the kind folk,"
+"the gentry," "the fair family," "the blessings of their mothers," and
+"the dear wives"; just as, thousands of years back, the noblest and
+cleverest nation the world has ever seen, called the dreaded Three
+"Eumenides," the gracious ones. It is a sure and fast maxim that
+wheedling human nature puts on its best manners when it is afraid. In
+Goldsmith's racy play, She Stoops to Conquer, old Mistress Hardcastle
+meets what she takes to be a robber. She hates robbers, of course, and
+is scared half out of her five wits; but she implores mercy with a
+cowering politeness at which nobody can choose but laugh, of her "good
+Mr. Highwayman." Now, fairies, who knew how to be bountiful and tender,
+and who made slaves of themselves to serve men and women, as we shall
+see, were easily offended, and wrought great mischief and revenge if
+they were not treated handsomely; all of which kept people in the habit
+of courtesy toward them. A whirlwind of dust is a very annoying thing,
+and makes one splutter, and feel absurdly resentful; but in Ireland,
+exactly as in modern Greece, the peasantry thought that it betokened the
+presence of fairies going a journey; so they lifted their hats
+gallantly, and said: "God speed you, gentlemen!"
+
+[Illustration: "GOD SPEED YOU, GENTLEMEN!"]
+
+Fairies had their followers and votaries from early times. Nothing in
+the Bible hints that they were known among the heathens with whom the
+Israelites warred; nothing in classic mythology has any approach to
+them, except the beautiful wood and water-nymphs. Yet poet Homer, Pliny
+the scientist, and Aristotle the philosopher, had some notion of them,
+and of their influence. In old China, whole mountains were peopled with
+them, and the coriander-seeds grown in their gardens gave long life to
+those who ate of them. The Persians had a hierarchy of elves, and were
+the first to set aside Fairyland as their dwelling-place. Saxons, in
+their wild forests, believed in tiny dwarves or demons called Duergar.
+Celtic countries, Scotland, Brittany, Ireland, Wales, were always
+crowded with them. In the "uttermost mountains of India, under a merry
+part of heaven," or by the hoary Nile, according to other writers, were
+the Pigmeos, one cubit high, full-grown at three years, and old at
+seven, who fought with cranes for a livelihood. And the Swiss alchemist,
+Paracelsus (a most pompous and amusing old bigwig), wrote that in his
+day all Germany was filled with fairies two feet long, walking about in
+little coats!
+
+Their favorite color, noticeably in Great Britain, was green; the
+majority of them wore it, and grudged its adoption by a mortal. Sir
+Walter Scott tells us that it was a fatal hue to several families in his
+country, to the entire gallant race of Grahames in particular; for in
+battle a Grahame was almost always shot through the green check of his
+plaid. French fairies went in white; the Nis of Jutland, and many other
+house-sprites, in red and gray, or red and brown; and the plump Welsh
+goblins, whose holiday dress was also white, in the gayest and most
+varied tints of all. In North Wales were "the old elves of the blue
+petticoat"; in Cardiganshire was the familiar green again, though it was
+never seen save in the month of May; and in Pembrokeshire, a uniform of
+jolly scarlet gowns and caps. The fairy gentlemen were quite as much
+given to finery as the ladies, and their general air was one of extreme
+cheerful dandyism. Only the mine and ground-fairies were attired in
+sombre colors. Indeed, their idea of clothes was delightfully liberal;
+an elf bespoke himself by what he chose to wear; and fashions ranged all
+the way from the sprites of the Orkney Islands, who strutted about in
+armor, to the little Heinzelmaenchen of Cologne, who scorned to be
+burdened with so much as a hat!
+
+People accounted in strange ways for their origin. A legend, firmly held
+in Iceland, says that once upon a time Eve was washing a number of her
+children at a spring, and when the Lord appeared suddenly before her,
+she hustled and hid away those who were not already clean and
+presentable; and that they being made forever invisible after, became
+the ancestors of the "little folk," who pervade the hills and caves and
+ruins to this day. In Ireland and Scotland fairies were spoken of as a
+wandering remnant of the fallen angels. The Christian world over, they
+were deemed either for a while, or perpetually, to be locked out from
+the happiness of the blessed in the next world. The Bretons thought
+their Korrigans had been great Gallic princesses, who refused the new
+faith, and clung to their pagan gods, and fell under a curse because of
+their stubbornness. The Small People of Cornwall, too, were imagined to
+be the ancient inhabitants of that country, long before Christ was born,
+not good enough for Heaven, and yet too good to be condemned altogether,
+whose fate it is to stray about, growing smaller and smaller, until by
+and by they vanish from the face of the earth.
+
+Therefore the poor fairy-folk, with whom theology deals so rudely, were
+supposed to be tired waiting, and anxious to know how they might fare
+everlastingly; and they waylaid many mortals, who, of course, really
+could tell them nothing, to ask whether they might not get into Heaven,
+by chance, at the end. It was their chief cause of doubt and melancholy,
+and ran in their little minds from year to year. And since we shall
+revert no more to the sad side of fairy-life, let us close with a most
+sweet story of something which happened in Sweden, centuries ago.
+
+Two boys were gambolling by a river, when a Neck rose up to the air,
+smiling, and twanging his harp. The elder child watched him, and cried
+mockingly: "Neck! what is the good of your sitting there and playing?
+You will never be saved!" And the Neck's sensitive eyes filled with
+tears, and, dropping his harp, he sank forlornly to the bottom. But when
+the brothers had gone home, and told their wise and saintly father, he
+said they had been thoughtlessly unkind; and he bade them hurry back to
+the river, and comfort the little water-spirit. From afar off they saw
+him again on the surface, weeping bitterly. And they called to him:
+"Dear Neck! do not grieve; for our father says that your Redeemer liveth
+also." Then he threw back his bright head, and, taking his harp, sang
+and played with exceeding gladness until sunset was long past, and the
+first star sent down its benediction from the sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FAIRY RULERS.
+
+
+THE forming of character among the fairy-folk was a very simple and
+sensible matter. You will imagine that the Pagan, Druid and Christian
+elves varied greatly. And they did; still their morals had nothing to do
+with it, nor pride, nor patriotism, nor descent, nor education; nor
+would all the philosophy you might crowd into a thimble have made one
+bee-big resident of Japan different from a man of his own size in Spain.
+
+They saved themselves no end of trouble by setting up the local
+barometer as their standard. The only Bible they knew was the weather,
+and they followed it stoutly. Whatever the climate was, whatever it had
+helped to make the grown-up nation who lived under it, that, every time,
+were the "brownies and bogles." Where the land was rocky and grim, and
+subject to wild storms and sudden darknesses, the fairies were grim and
+wild too, and full of wicked tricks. Where the landscape was level and
+green, and the crops grew peacefully, they were tame, as in central
+England, and inclined to be sentimental.
+
+And they copied the distinguishing traits of the race among whom they
+dwelt. A frugal Breton fairy spoke the Breton dialect; the Neapolitan
+had a tooth for fruits and macaroni; the Chinese was ceremonious and
+stern; a true Provencal fee was as vain as a peacock, flirting a mirror
+before her, and an Irish elf, bless his little red feathered caubeen!
+was never the man to run away from a fight.
+
+If you look on the map, and see a section of coast-line like that of
+Cornwall or Norway, a sunshiny, perilous, foamy place, make up your mind
+that the fairies thereabouts were fellows worth knowing; that you would
+have needed all your wit and pluck to get the better of them, and that
+they would have made live, hearty playmates, too, while in good humor,
+for any brave boy or girl.
+
+We do not know nearly so much about the genuine fairies as we should
+like. They must have been, at one time or another, in every European
+country. Most of the Oriental spirits were taller, and of another brood;
+they figured either as demons, or as what we should now call angels. But
+in the Germanic colonies, from very old days, fairy-lore was finely
+developed, and we count up tribe on tribe of necks, nixies, stromkarls
+and mermaids, who were water-sprites; of bergmaennchen (little men of the
+mountain), and lovely wild-women in hilly places; of trolls around the
+woods and rocks; of elves in the air, and gnomes or duergars in caverns
+or mines. Yet from Portugal, and Russia, and Hungary, and from our own
+North American Indians, we learn so little that it is not worth
+counting.
+
+If the good dear peasants who were acquainted with the fairies had made
+more rhymes about them, and handed them down more attentively; if it had
+occurred to the knowing scholar-monks to keep diaries of elfin doings,
+as it would have done had they but known how soon their little friends
+were to be extinct, like the glyptodon and the dodo, how wise should we
+not be!
+
+[Illustration: THE NEAPOLITAN FAIRY.]
+
+But again, though there were hosts of supernatural beings in the beliefs
+of every old land, we have no business with any but the wee ones. And as
+these were settled most thickly in the Teutonic, Celtic and Cymric
+countries, we will turn our curiosity thither, without farther
+grumbling, and be glad to get so much authentic news of them as we may.
+
+Fairies, as a whole, seem at bottom rather weak and disconsolate. For
+all of their magic and cunning, for all of their high station, and its
+feasting and glory, they could not keep from seeking human sympathy.
+They did, indeed, hurt men, resent intrusions, foretell the future, and
+call down disease and storm, but they stood in awe of the weakest mortal
+because of his superior strength and size; they came to him to borrow
+food and medicine, and even to ask the loan of his house for their
+revels. They rendered themselves invisible, but he had always at his
+feet the fern-seed, the talisman of four-leaved clover (or, as in
+Scotland, the leaf of the ash or rowan-tree), with which he could defeat
+their design, and protect himself against the attacks of any witch, imp,
+or fairy whatsoever.
+
+Their government was a happy-go-lucky affair. The various tribes of
+fairies had no common interests which would make them sigh for
+post-offices, or cables, or general synods. Each set of them got along,
+independent of the rest. Once in a while a mine-man would live alone
+with his wife, pegging away at his daily work, without any idea of
+hurrahing for his King or, more likely, his Queen; or even of hunting up
+his own cousins in the next county.
+
+If we had elves in the United States nowadays, they would no doubt be
+American enough to elect a President and have him as honest, and steady,
+and sound-hearted as needs be. But dwelling as they did in feudal days,
+they set up thrones and sceptres all over Fairydom.
+
+According to the poets, Mab and Oberon are the crowned rulers of the
+little people. In reality, they had no supreme head. Among many parties
+and factions, each small agreeing community had its own chief, the
+tallest of his race, who was no chief at all, mind you, to the fairy
+neighbors a mile east. The delicate yellow Chinese fairy-mother was Si
+Wang Mu; and in the Netherlands, the elf-queen, who was also queen of
+the witches, was called Wanne Thekla.
+
+We snatch an item here and there of the royal histories. We find that
+the sweet-natured Elberich in the Niebelungen is the same as Oberon. In
+Germany was a dwarf-king named Goldemar, who lived with a knight, shared
+his bed, played at dice with him, gave him good advice, called him
+Brother-in-law very fondly, and comforted him with the music of his
+harp. But Goldemar, though the knight loved him and could touch and feel
+him, was unseen. He was like a wreath of blue smoke, or a fragment of
+moonlight, and you could run a sword through him, and never change his
+kind smile. His royal hands were lean, and soft, and cold as a frog's.
+After three years, perhaps when Brother-in-law was dead, or when he was
+married, and needed him no longer, the gentle dwarf-king disappeared.
+
+Sinnels, Guebich, and Heiling were other dwarf-princes, probably rivals
+of Goldemar, and ready to have at him till their breath gave out. Their
+little majesties were quarrelsome as cock-sparrows. The elf-monarch
+Laurin was once conquered by Theodoric; and because he had been
+treacherous in war (which was not "fair" at all, despite the proverb),
+he got a very sad rebuff to his dignity, in being made fool or buffoon
+at the court of Bern.
+
+[Illustration: THE ELF-MONARCH WHO WAS MADE COURT-FOOL.]
+
+We are told in the Mabinogion how the daughter of Llud Llaw Ereint was
+"the most splendid maiden in the three islands of the mighty," and how
+for her Gwyn ap Nudd, the Welsh fairy-king, battles every May-day from
+dawn until sunset. Gwyn once carried her off from Gwythyr, her true
+lord; and both lovers were so furious and cruel against each other that
+blessed King Arthur condemned them to wage bitter fight on each
+first-of-May till the world's end; and to whomsoever is victorious the
+greatest number of times, the fair lady shall then be given. Let us
+hope the reward will not fall to thieving Gwyn.
+
+We have said that we should do pretty much as we pleased in ranging the
+myriad fairy-folk into ranks and species. If, as we prowl about, we see
+a baby in the house of the Elfsmiths, who has a look of the Elfbrowns,
+we will immediately kidnap him from his fond parents, and add him to the
+family he resembles. Now that might make wailing and confusion, and
+bring down vengeance on our heads, if there were any Queen Mab left to
+rap us to order; but as things go, we shall find it a very neat way of
+smoothing difficulties.
+
+[Illustration: THE ISLE OF RUeGEN DWARVES THAT GIVE PRESENTS TO
+CHILDREN.]
+
+Of course there are certain pigwidgeons too accomplished, too slippery,
+too many things in one, to be ticketed and tied down like the rest; such
+versatile fellows as the Brown Dwarves of the Isle of Ruegen, for
+instance. They lived in what were called the Vine-hills, and were not
+quite eighteen inches high. They wore little snuff-brown jackets and a
+brown cap (which made them invisible, and allowed them to pass through
+the smallest keyhole), with one wee silver bell at its peak, not to be
+lost for any money. But they did some roguish things; and children who
+fell into their hands had to serve them for fifty years! With caprice
+usual to their kin, they will, on other occasions, befriend and protect
+children, and give them presents; or plague untidy servants, like
+Brownie, or lead travellers astray by night into bogs and marshes, like
+the Ellydan and the Fir-Darrig, and mischievous double-faced Robin
+Goodfellow himself.
+
+An ancient tradition says that while the grass-blades are sprouting at
+the root, the earth-elves water and nourish them; and the moment the
+growth pierces the soil, affectionate air-elves take it in charge.
+Therefore we borrow a hint from the grass; and after first going down
+among the swarthy fairies who burrow underground, we shall pass up to
+companionship with little beings so beautiful that wherever they flock
+there is starlight and song.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE BLACK ELVES.
+
+
+ACCORDING to the very old Scandinavian notion, land-fairies were of two
+sorts; the Light or Good Elves who dwelt in air, or out-of-doors on the
+earth, and the Black or Evil Elves who dwelt beneath it.
+
+We will follow the Norse folk. If we were required to group human beings
+under two headings, we should choose that same Good and Evil, because
+the division occurs to one naturally, because it saves time, and because
+everybody comprehends it, and sees that it is based upon law; and so do
+we deal with our wonder-friends, who have the strange moral sorcery
+belonging to each of us their masters, to help or to harm.
+
+The evil fairies, then, were the scowling underground tribes, who hid
+themselves from the frank daylight, and the open reaches of the fields.
+Yet just as the good fairies had many a sad failing to offset their
+grace and charm, the grim, dark-skinned manikins had sudden impulses
+towards honor and kindness. In fact, as we noted before, they were
+astonishingly like our fellow-creatures, of whom scarce any is entirely
+faultless, or entirely warped and ruined.
+
+For instance, the Hill-men, in Switzerland, were very generous-minded;
+they drove home stray lambs at night, and put berry-bushes in the way of
+poor children. And the more modern Dwarves of Germany, frequenting the
+clefts of rocks, were silent, mild, and well-disposed, and apt to bring
+presents to those who took their fancy. Like others of the elf-kingdom,
+they loved to borrow from mortals. Once a little bowing Dwarf came to a
+lady for the loan of her silk gown for a fairy-bride. (You can imagine
+that, at the ceremony, the groom must have had a pretty hunt among the
+wilderness of finery to get at her ring-finger!) Of course the lady gave
+it; but worrying over its tardy return, she went to the Dwarves' hill
+and asked for it aloud. A messenger with a sorrowful countenance
+brought it to her at once, spotted over and over with wax. But he told
+her that had she been less impatient every stain would have been a
+diamond!
+
+[Illustration: THE DWARF THAT BORROWED THE SILK GOWN.]
+
+The huge, terrible, ogre-like Hindoo Rakshas, the weird Divs and Jinns
+of Persia, and the ancient demon-dwarves of the south called Panis, may
+be considered the foster-parents of our dwindled minims, as the glorious
+Peris on the other hand gave their name, and some of their qualities, to
+a little European family of very different ancestry.
+
+The Black Elves will serve as our general name for dwarves and
+mine-fairies. These are closely connected in all legends, live in the
+same neighborhoods, and therefore claim a mention together. They have
+four points in common: dark skin; short, bulky bodies; fickle and
+irritable natures; and occupations as miners, misers, or metalsmiths.
+And because of their exceeding industry, on the old maxim's authority,
+where all work and no play made Jack a dull boy, they are curiously
+heavy-headed and preposterous jacks; and, waiving their plain faces, not
+in any wise engaging. Yet perhaps, being largely German, they may be
+philosophers, and so vastly superior to any little gabbling,
+somersaulting ragamuffin over in Ireland.
+
+In the Middle Ages, they were described as withered and leering, with
+small, sharp, snapping black eyes, bright as gems; with cracked voices,
+and matted hair, and horns peering from it! and as if that were not
+enough adornment, they had claws, which must have been filched from the
+ghosts of mediaeval pussy-cats, on their fingers and toes.
+
+The first Duergars belonging to the Gotho-German mythology, were
+muscular and strong-legged; and when they stood erect, their arms
+reached to the ground. They were clever and expert handlers of metal,
+and made of gold, silver and iron, the finest armor in the world. They
+wrought for Odin his great spear, and for Thor his hammer, and for Frey
+the wondrous ship _Skidbladnir_.
+
+Long ago, too, armor-making Elves, black as pitch, lived in
+Svart-Alfheim, in the bowels of the earth, and were able, by their
+glance or touch or breath, to cause sickness and death wheresoever they
+wished.
+
+[Illustration: THE BLACK DWARVES OF RUeGEN PLANNING MISCHIEF.]
+
+Still uglier were the Black Dwarves of the mysterious Isle of Ruegen; nor
+had they any frolicsome or cordial ways which should bring up our
+opinion of them. Their pale eyes ran water, and every midnight they
+mewed and screeched horribly from their holes. In idle summer-hours they
+sat under the elder-trees, planning by twos and threes to wreak mischief
+on mankind. They, as well, were once useful, if not beautiful; for in
+the days when heroes wore a panoply of steel, the Black Dwarves wrought
+fair helmets and corselets of cobwebby mail which no lance could pierce,
+and swords flexible as silk which could unhorse the mightiest foe. The
+little blackamoors frequented mining districts, and dug for ore on
+their own account. They were said to be very rich, owning unnumbered
+chests stored underground. The most exciting tales about gnomes of all
+nations were founded on the efforts of daring mortals to get possession
+of their wealth.
+
+To the mining division belong the dwarf-Trolls of Denmark and Sweden
+(for there were giant-Trolls as well), and the whimsical Spriggans of
+Cornwall. The Trolls burrowed in mounds and hills, and were called also
+Bjerg-folk or Hill-folk; they lived in societies or families, baking and
+brewing, marrying and visiting, in the old humdrum way. They made
+fortunes, and hoarded up heaps of money. But they were often obliging
+and benevolent; it gave them pleasure to bestow gifts, to lend and
+borrow, and sometimes, alas! to steal. They played prettily on musical
+instruments, and were very jolly. People used to see the stumpy little
+children of the genteel Troll who lived at Kund in Jutland, climbing up
+the knoll which was the roof of their own house, and rolling down one
+after the other with shouts of laughter. The Trolls were famous
+gymnasts, and very plump and round. Our word "droll" is left to us in
+merry remembrance of them.
+
+[Illustration: THE TROLL'S CHILDREN.]
+
+They were tractable creatures, as you may know from the tale of the
+farmer, who, ploughing an angry Troll's land, agreed, for the sake of
+peace, to go halves in the crops sown upon it, so that one year the
+Troll should have what grew above ground, and the next year what grew
+under. But the sly farmer planted radishes and carrots, and the Troll
+took the tops; and the following season he planted corn; and his queer
+partner gathered up the roots and marched off in triumph. Indeed, it was
+so easy to outwit the simple Troll that a generous farmer would never
+have played the game out, and we should have lost our little story. It
+was mean to take advantage of the sweet fellow's trustfulness. There was
+an English schoolmaster once, a man wise, firm, and kind, and of vast
+influence, of whom one of his boys said to another: "It's a shame to
+tell a lie to Arnold; he always believes it." That was a ray of real
+chivalry.
+
+The Spriggans were fond of dwelling near walls and loose stones, with
+which it was unlucky to tamper, and where they slipped in and out with
+suspicious eyes, guarding their buried treasure. If a house was robbed,
+or the cattle were carried away, or a hurricane swooped down on a
+Cornish village, the neighbors attributed their trouble to the
+Spriggans; whereby you may believe they had fine reputations for
+meddlesomeness. Their cousins, the Buccas, Bockles or Knockers, were
+gentlemen who went about thumping and rapping wherever there was a vein
+of ore for the weary workmen, cheating, occasionally, to break the
+monotony.
+
+[Illustration: A COBLYNAU.]
+
+The Welsh Coblynau followed the same profession, and pointed out the
+desired places in mines and quarries. The Coblynau were copper-colored,
+and very homely, as were all the pigmies who lived away from the sun;
+they were busybodies, half-a-yard high, who imitated the dress of their
+friends the miners, and pegged away at the rocks, like them, with great
+noise and gusto, accomplishing nothing. Their houses were far-removed
+from mortal vision, and unlike certain proper children, now obsolete,
+the Coblynau themselves were generally heard, but not seen.
+
+Their German relation was the Wichtlein (little wight) an extremely
+small fellow, whom the Bohemians named Hans-schmiedlein (little John
+Smith!) because he makes a noise like the stroke of an anvil.
+
+Dwarves and mine-men went about, unfailingly, with a purseful of gold.
+But if anyone snatched it from them, only stones and twine and a pair of
+scissors were to be found in it. The Leprechaun, or Cluricaune, whom we
+shall meet later as the fairy-cobbler, was an Irish celebrity who knew
+where pots of guineas were hidden, and who carried in his pocket a
+shilling often-spent and ever-renewed. He looked, in this banker-like
+capacity, a clumsy small boy, dressed in various ways, sometimes in a
+long coat and cocked hat, unlike the Danish Troll, who kept to homely
+gray, with the universal little red cap. Even the respectable Kobold,
+who was, virtually, a house-spirit, caught the fever of fortune-hunting,
+and often threw up his domestic duties to seek the fascinating nuggets
+in the mines.
+
+There is a funny anecdote of a Troll who, as was common with his race,
+cunningly concealed his prize under the shape of a coal. Now a peasant
+on his way to church one bright Sunday morning saw him trying vainly to
+move a couple of crossed straws which had blown upon his coal; for
+anything in the shape of a cross seemed to shrivel up an elf's power in
+the most startling manner. So the little sprite turned, half-crying, and
+begged the peasant to move the straws for him. But the man was too
+shrewd for that, and took up the coal, straws and all, and ran, despite
+the poor Troll's screaming, and saw, on reaching home, that he had
+captured a lump of solid gold.
+
+All Black Elves were particular about their neighborhoods, and a whole
+colony would migrate at once if they took the least offence, or if the
+villagers about got "too knowing" for them. (An American poet once wrote
+a sonnet "To Science," in which he berated her for having made him "too
+knowing," and for having driven
+
+        --"the Naiad from her flood
+    The elfin from the green grass";
+
+and it was in consequence of his very knowingness, no doubt, that,
+beauty-loving and marvel-loving as were his sensitive eyes, they never
+saw so much as the vanishing shadow of a fairy.) A little dwarf-woman
+told two young Bavarians that she intended to leave her favorite
+dwelling, because of the shocking cursing and swearing of the
+country-people! But they were not all so godly.
+
+[Illustration: "I CAN'T STAY ANY LONGER!"]
+
+Ever since the great god Thor threw his hammer at the Trolls, they have
+hated noise as much as Mr. Thomas Carlyle, who, however, made Thor's own
+bluster in the world himself. They sought sequestered places that they
+might not be disturbed. The Prussian mites near Dardesheim were
+frightened away by the forge and the factory. Above all else,
+church-bells distressed them, and spoiled their tempers. A huckster once
+passed a Danish Troll, sitting disconsolately on a stone, and asked him
+what the matter might be. "I hate to leave this country," blubbered the
+fat mourner, "but I can't stay where there is such an eternal ringing
+and dinging!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE LIGHT ELVES.
+
+
+Over the beautiful Light Elves of the _Edda_, in old Scandinavia, ruled
+the beloved sun-god Frey; and they lived in a summer land called
+Alfheim, and it was their office to sport in air or on the leaves of
+trees, and to make the earth thrive.
+
+But they changed character as centuries passed; and they came to
+resemble the fairies of Great Britain in their extreme waywardness and
+fickleness. For though they were fair and benevolent most of the time,
+they could be, when it so pleased them, ugly and hurtful; and what they
+could be, they very often were; for fairies were not expected to keep a
+firm rein on their moods and tempers.
+
+Norwegian peasants described some of their Huldrafolk as tiny bare boys,
+with tall hats; and in Sweden, as well, they were slender and delicate.
+When a Swedish elf-maid or moon-maid wished to approach the inmates of a
+house, she rode on a sunbeam through the keyhole, or between the
+openings in a shutter.
+
+The German wild-women were like them, going about alone, and having fine
+hair flowing to their feet. They had some odd traits, one of which was
+sermonizing! and exhorting stray mortals who had done them a service, to
+lead a godly life.
+
+The elle-maid in Denmark and in neighboring countries was always winsome
+and graceful, and carried an enchanted harp. She loved moonlight best,
+and was a charming dancer. But her evil element was in her very beauty,
+with which she entrapped foolish young gentlemen, and waylaid them, and
+carried them off who knows whither? She could be detected by the shape
+of her back, it being hollow, like a spoon; which was meant to show that
+there was something wrong with her, and that she was not what she
+seemed, but fit only for the abhorrence of passers-by. The elle-man, her
+mate, was old and ill-favored, a disagreeable person; for if any one
+came near him while he was bathing in the sun, he opened his mouth and
+breathed pestilence upon them.
+
+[Illustration: AN ELLE-MAID, OF DENMARK.]
+
+[Illustration: BERTHA, THE WHITE LADY.]
+
+A common trait of the air-fairies was to assist at a birth and give the
+infant, at their will, good and bad gifts. Dame Bertha, the White Lady
+of Germany, came to the birth of certain princely babes, and the
+Korrigans made it a general practice. Whenever they nursed or tended a
+new-born mortal, bestowed presents on him and foretold his destiny, one
+of the little people was almost always perverse enough to bestow and
+foretell something unfortunate. You all know Grimm's beautiful tale of
+Dornroeschen, which in English we call The Sleeping Beauty, where the
+jealous thirteenth fairy predicts the poor young lady's spindle-wound.
+Around the famous Roche des Fees in the forest of Theil, are those who
+believe yet that the elves pass in and out at the chimneys, on errands
+to little children.
+
+The modern Greek fairies haunted trees, danced rounds, bathed in cool
+water, and carried off whomsoever they coveted. A person offending them
+in their own fields was smitten with disease.
+
+The Chinese Shan Sao were a foot high, lived among the mountains, and
+were afraid of nothing. They, too, were revengeful; for if they were
+attacked or annoyed by mortals, they "caused them to sicken with
+alternate heat and cold." Bonfires were burnt to drive them away.
+
+The innocent White Dwarves of the Isle of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea, made
+lace-work of silver, too fine for the eye to detect, all winter long;
+but came idly out into the woods and fields with returning spring,
+leaping and singing, and wild with affectionate joy. They were not
+allowed to ramble about in their own shapes; therefore they changed
+themselves to doves and butterflies, and winged their way to good
+mortals, whom they guarded from all harm.
+
+[Illustration: SOME GREEK FAIRIES.]
+
+The Korrigans of Brittainy, mentioned a while ago, were peculiar in many
+ways. They had beautiful singing voices and bright eyes, but they never
+danced. They preferred to sit still at twilight, like mermaids, combing
+their long golden hair. The tallest of them was nearly two feet high,
+fair as a lily, and transparent as dew itself, yet able as the rest to
+seem dark, and humpy, and terrifying. He who passed the night with them,
+or joined in their sports, was sure to die shortly, since their very
+breath or touch was fatal. And again, as in the case of Seigneur Nann,
+about whom a touching Breton ballad was made, they doomed to death any
+who refused to marry one of them within three days.
+
+Of the American Indian fairies we do not know much. In Mr. Schoolcraft's
+books of Indian legends there is a beautiful little Bone-dwarf, who may
+almost be considered a fairy. In the land of the Sioux they tell the
+pretty story of Antelope and Karkapaha, and how the wee warrior-folk,
+thronging on the hill, clad in deerskin, and armed with feathered arrow
+and spear, put the daring heart of a slain enemy into the breast of the
+timid lover, Karkapaha, and made him worthy both to win and keep his
+lovely maiden, and to deserve homage for his bravery, from her tribe
+and his. Some of you will remember one thing against the Puk-Wudjies,
+which is an Algonquin name meaning "little vanishing folk," to wit: that
+they killed Hiawatha's friend, "the very strong man Kwasind," as our
+Longfellow called him. He had excited their envy, and they flung on his
+head, as he floated in his canoe, the only thing on earth that could
+kill him, the seed-vessel of the white pine.
+
+The Scotch, Irish and English overground fairies were, as a general
+thing, very much alike. They had the power of becoming visible or
+invisible, compressing or enlarging their size, and taking any shape
+they pleased. When an Irish Shefro was disturbed or angry, and wanted to
+get a house or a person off her grounds, she put on the strangest
+appearances: she could crow, spit fire, slap a tail or a hoof about,
+grin like a dragon, or give a frightful, weird, lion-like roar. Of
+course the object of her polite attentions thought it best to oblige
+her. If she and her companions were anxious to enter a house, they
+lifted the spryest of their number to the keyhole, and pushed him
+through. He carried a piece of string, which he fastened to the inside
+knob, and the other end to a chair or stool; and over this perilous
+bridge the whole giggling tribe marched in one by one. The Irish and
+Scotch fays were more mischievous than the English, but have not fared
+so well, having had no memorable verses made about them. The little
+Scots were sometimes dwarfish wild creatures, wrapped in their plaids,
+or, oftener, comely and yellow-haired; the ladies in green mantles,
+inlaid with wild-flowers; and dapper little gentlemen in green trousers,
+fastened with bobs of silk. They carried arrows, and went on tiny
+spirited horses, as did the Welsh fairies, "the silver bosses of their
+bridles jingling in the night-breeze." An old account of Scotland says
+that they were "clothed in green, with dishevelled hair floating over
+their shoulders, and faces more blooming than the vermeil blush of a
+summer morning."
+
+Their Welsh cousins were many. A native poet once sang of them:
+
+          ----In every hollow,
+    A hundred wry-mouthed elves.
+
+They were queer little beings, and had notions of what was decorous, for
+they combed the goats' beards every Friday night, "to make them decent
+for Sunday!" They were very quarrelsome; you could hear them snarling
+and jabbering like jays among themselves, so that in some parts of Wales
+a proverb has arisen: "They can no more agree than the fairies!" The
+inhabitants believed that the midgets never had courage to go through
+the gorse, or prickly furze, which is a common shrub in that country.
+One sick old woman who was bothered by the Tylwyth Teg ("the fair
+family") souring her milk and spilling her tea, used to choke up her
+room with the furze, and make such a hedge about the bed, that nothing
+larger than a needle could be so much as pointed at her. In Breconshire
+the Tylwyth Teg gave loaves to the peasantry, which, if they were not
+eaten then and there in the dark, would turn in the morning into
+toadstools! When Welsh fairies took it into their heads to bestow food
+and money, very lazy people were often supported in great style, without
+a stroke of work. And the Tylwyth Teg loved to reward patience and
+generosity. They played the harp continuously, and, on grand occasions,
+the bugle; but if a bagpipe was heard among them, that indicated a
+Scotch visitor from over the border.
+
+King James I. of England mentions in his _Daemonology_ a "King and Queene
+of Phairie: sic a jolie courte and traine as they had!" Nothing could
+have exceeded the state and elegance of their ceremonious little lives.
+According to a sweet old play, they had houses made all of
+mother-of-pearl, an ivory tennis-court, a nutmeg parlor, a sapphire
+dairy-room, a ginger hall; chambers of agate, kitchens of crystal, the
+jacks of gold, the spits of Spanish needles! They dressed in imported
+cobweb! with a four-leaved clover, lined with a dog-tooth violet, for
+overcoat; and they ate (think of eating such a pretty thing!) delicious
+rainbow-tart, the trout-fly's gilded wing, and
+
+      ----the broke heart of a nightingale
+    O'ercome with music.
+
+But we never heard that Chinese or Scandinavian elves could afford such
+luxury.
+
+Their English dwellings were often in the bubble-castles of sunny
+brooks; and the bright-jacketed hobgoblins took their pleasure sitting
+under toadstools, or paddling about in egg-shell boats, playing
+jew's-harps large as themselves. Beside the freehold of blossomy
+hillocks and dingles, they had dells of their own, and palaces, with
+everything lovely in them; and whatever they longed for was to be had
+for the wishing. They had fair gardens in clefts of the Cornish rocks,
+where vari-colored flowers, only seen by moonlight, grew; in these
+gardens they loved to walk, tossing a posy to some mortal passing by;
+but if he ever gave it away they were angry with him forever after. They
+liked to fish; and the crews put out to sea in funny uniforms of green,
+with red caps. They travelled on a fern, a rush, a bit of weed, or even
+boldly bestrode the bee and the dragon-fly; and they went to the chase,
+as in the Isle of Man, on full-sized horses whenever they could get
+them! and when it came to time of war, their armies laid-to like
+Alexander's own, with mushroom-shield and bearded grass-blades for
+mighty spears, and honeysuckle trumpets braying furiously! There are
+traditions of battles so vehement and long that the cavalry trampled
+down the dews of the mountain-side, and sent many a peerless fellow, at
+every charge, to the fairy hospitals and cemeteries.
+
+[Illustration: AN ELF-TRAVELLER.]
+
+Their chief and all but universal amusement, sacred to moonlight and
+music, was dancing hand-in-hand; and what was called a fairy-ring was
+the swirl of grasses in a field taller and deeper green than the rest,
+which was supposed to mark their circling path. Inside these rings it
+was considered very dangerous to sleep, especially after sundown. If
+you put your foot within them, with a companion's foot upon your own,
+the elfin tribe became visible to you, and you heard their tinkling
+laughter; and if, again, you wished a charm to defy all their anger,
+for they hated to be overlooked by mortal eyes, you had merely to turn
+your coat inside out. But a house built where the wee folks had danced
+was made prosperous.
+
+Hear how deftly old John Lyly, nearly four hundred years ago, put the
+dancing in his lines:
+
+    Round about, round about, in a fine ring-a,
+    Thus we dance, thus we prance, and thus we sing-a!
+    Trip and go, to and fro, over this green-a;
+    All about, in and out, for our brave queen-a.
+
+For the elves, as we know, were governed generally by a queen, who bore
+a white wand, and stood in the centre while her gay retainers skipped
+about her. Fairy-rings were common in every Irish parish. At Alnwick in
+Northumberland County in England, was one celebrated from antiquity; and
+it was believed that evil would befall any who ran around it more than
+nine times. The children were constantly running it that often; but
+nothing could tempt the bravest of them all to go one step farther. In
+France, as in Wales, the fairies guarded the cromlechs with care, and
+preferred to hold revel near them.
+
+At these merry festivals, in the pauses of action, meat and drink were
+passed around. A Danish ballad tells how Svend-Faelling drained a horn
+presented by elf-maids, which made him as strong as twelve men, and gave
+him the appetite of twelve men, too; a natural but embarrassing
+consequence. It used to be proclaimed that any one daring enough to rush
+on a fairy feast, and snatch the drinking-glass, and get away with it,
+would be lucky henceforward. The famous goblet, the Luck of Edenhall,
+was seized after that fashion, by one of the Musgraves; whereat the
+little people disappeared, crying aloud:
+
+    If that glass do break or fall,
+    Farewell the Luck of Edenhall!
+
+Once upon a time the Duke of Wharton dined at Edenhall, and came very
+near ruining his host, and all his race; for the precious Luck slipped
+from his hand; but the clever butler at his elbow happily caught it in
+his napkin, and averted the catastrophe: so the beautiful cup and the
+favored family enjoy each other in security to this day.
+
+In the Song of Sir Olaf, we are told how he fell in, while riding by
+night, with the whirling elves; and how, after their every plea and
+threat that he should stay from his to-be-wedded sweetheart at home, and
+dance, instead, with them, he hears the weird French refrain:
+
+    O the dance, the dance! How well the dance goes under the trees!
+
+And through their wicked magic, after all his steadfast resistance, with
+the wild music and the dizzy measure whirling in his brain, there he
+dies.
+
+All the gay, unsteady, fantastic motion broke up at the morning
+cock-crow, and instantly the little bacchantes vanished. And, strangest
+of all! the betraying flash of the dawn showed their peach-like color,
+their blonde, smooth hair, and bodily agility changed, like a Dead Sea
+apple, and turned into ugliness and distortion! It was not the lovely
+vision of a minute back which hurried away on the early breeze, but a
+crowd of leering, sullen-eyed bugaboos, laughing fiercely to think how
+they had deceived a beholder.
+
+These, then, were the Light Elves, not all lovable, or loyal, or gentle,
+as they were expected to be, but cruel to wayfarers like poor Sir Olaf,
+and treacherous and mocking; beautiful so long as they were good, and
+hideous when they had done a foul deed. It is hard to say wherein they
+were better than the Underground Elves, who were, despite some kindly
+characteristics, professional doers of evil, and had not the choice or
+chance of being so happy and fortunate. But we record them as we find
+them, not without the sobering thought that here, as at every point, the
+fairies are a running commentary on the puzzle of our own human life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+DEAR BROWNIE.
+
+
+BROWNIE, the willing drudge, the kind little housemate, was the most
+popular of all fairies; and it is he whom we now love and know best.
+
+He was a sweet, unselfish fellow; but very wide awake as well, full of
+mischief, and spirited as a young eagle, when he was deprived of his
+rights. He belonged to a tribe of great influence and size, and each
+division of that tribe, inhabiting different countries, bore a different
+name. But the word Brownie, to English-speaking people, will serve as
+meaning those fairies who attached themselves persistently to any spot
+or any family, and who labored in behalf of their chosen home.
+
+The Brownie proper belonged to the Shetland and the Western Isles, to
+Cornwall, and the Highlands and Borderlands of Scotland. He was an
+indoor gentleman, and varied in that from our friends the Black and
+Light Elves. He took up his dwelling in the house or the barn, sometimes
+in a special corner, or under the roof, or even in the cellar pantries,
+where he ate a great deal more than was good for him. In the beginning
+he was supposed to have been covered with short curly brown hair, like a
+clipped water-spaniel, whence his name. But he changed greatly in
+appearance. Later accounts picture him with a homely, sunburnt little
+face, as if bronzed with long wind and weather; dark-coated, red-capped,
+and shod with noiseless slippers, which were as good as wings to his
+restless feet. Along with him, in Scotch houses, and in English houses
+supplanting him, often lived the Dobie or Dobbie who was not by any
+means so bright and active ("O, ye stupid Dobie!" runs a common phrase),
+and therefore not to be confounded with him.
+
+[Illustration: BROWNIE'S DELIGHT WAS TO DO DOMESTIC SERVICE.]
+
+Brownie's delight was to do domestic service; he churned, baked, brewed,
+mowed, threshed, swept, scrubbed, and dusted; he set things in order,
+saved many a step to his mistress, and took it upon himself to manage
+the maid-servants, and reform them, if necessary, by severe and original
+measures. Neatness and precision he dearly loved, and never forgot to
+drop a penny over-night in the shoe of the person deserving well of him.
+But lax offenders he pinched black and blue, and led them an exciting
+life of it. His favorite revenge, among a hundred equally ingenious, was
+dragging the disorderly servant out of bed. A great poet announced in
+Brownie's name:
+
+    'Twixt sleep and wake
+    I do them take,
+    And on the key-cold floor them throw!
+    If out they cry
+    Then forth I fly,
+    And loudly laugh I: "Ho, ho, ho!"
+
+Like all gnomes truly virtuous, he could be the worst varlet, the most
+meddlesome, troublesome, burdensome urchin to be imagined, when the whim
+was upon him. At such times he gloried in undoing all his good deeds;
+and by way of emphasizing his former tidiness and industry, he tore
+curtains, smashed dishes, overturned tables, and made havoc among the
+kitchen-pans. All this was done in a sort of holy wrath; for be it to
+Brownie's credit, that if he were treated with courtesy, and if the
+servants did their own duties honestly, he was never other than his
+gentle, well-behaved, hard-working little self.
+
+He asked no wages; he had a New England scorn of "tipping," when he had
+been especially obliging; and he could not be wheedled into accepting
+even so much as a word of praise. A farmer at Washington, in Sussex,
+England, who had often been surprised in the morning at the large heaps
+of corn threshed for him during the night, determined at last to sit up
+and watch what went on. Creeping to the barn-door, and peering through a
+chink, he saw two manikins working away with their fairy flails, and
+stopping an instant now and then, only to say to each other: "See how I
+sweat! See how I sweat!" the very thing which befell Milton's "lubbar
+fiend" in L'Allegro. The farmer, in his pleasure, cried: "Well done, my
+little men!" whereupon the startled sprites uttered a cry, and whirled
+and whisked out of sight, never to toil again in his barn.
+
+It is said that not long ago, there was a whole tribe of tiny, naked
+Kobolds (Brownie's German name) called Heinzelmaenchen, who bound
+themselves for love to a tailor of Cologne, and did, moreover, all the
+washing and scouring and kettle-cleaning for his wife. Whatever work
+there was left for them to do was straightway done; but no man ever
+beheld them. The tailor's prying spouse played many a ruse to get sight
+of them, to no avail. And they, knowing her curiosity and grieved at it,
+suddenly marched, with music playing, out of the town forever. People
+heard their flutes and viols only, for none saw the little exiles
+themselves, who got into a boat, and sailed "westward, westward!" like
+Hiawatha, and the city's luck is thought to have gone with them.
+
+But Brownie, who would take neither money, nor thanks, nor a glance of
+mortal eyes, and who departed in high dudgeon as soon as a reward was
+offered him, could be bribed very prettily, if it were done in a polite
+and secretive way. He was not too scrupulous to pocket whatever might be
+dropped on a stair, or a window-sill, where he was sure to pass several
+times in a day, and walk off, whistling, to keep his own counsel, and
+say nothing about it. And for goodies, mysterious goodies left in queer
+places by chance, he had excellent tooth. Housewives, from the era of
+the first Brownie, never failed slyly to gladden his favorite haunt with
+the dish which he liked best, and which, so long as it was fresh and
+plentiful, he considered a satisfactory squaring-up of accounts. One of
+these desired treats was knuckled cakes, made of meal warm from the
+mill, toasted over the embers, and spread with honey. To other tidbits,
+also, he was partial; but, first and last, he relished his bowl of cream
+left on the floor overnight. Cream he drank and expected the world over;
+and in Devon, and in the Isle of Man, he liked a basin of water for a
+bath.
+
+[Illustration: BROWNIE RELISHES HIS BOWL OF CREAM.]
+
+Fine clothes were quite to his mind; he was very vain when he had them;
+and it was what Pet Marjorie called "majestick pride," and no whim of
+anger or sensitiveness, which sent him hurrying off the moment his
+wardrobe was supplied by some grateful housekeeper, to eschew work
+forever after, and set himself up as a gentleman of leisure. Many funny
+stories are told of his behavior under an unexpected shower of dry
+goods. Brownie, who in his humble station, was so steadfast and
+sensible, had his poor head completely turned by the vision of a new
+bright-colored jacket. The gentle little Piskies or Pixies of
+Devonshire, who are of the Brownie race, and very different from the
+malicious Piskies in Cornwall, were likewise great dandies, and sure to
+decamp as soon as ever they obtained a fresh cap or petticoat. Indeed,
+they dropped violent hints on the subject. Think of a sprite-of-all-work,
+recorded as being too proud to accept any regular payment even in fruit
+or grain, standing up brazenly before his mistress, his sly eyes fixed
+on her, drawling out this absurd, whimpering rhyme (for Piskies scorned
+to talk prose!):
+
+    Little Pisky, fair and slim,
+    Without a rag to cover him!
+
+With his lisp, and his funny snicker, and his winning impudence
+generally, don't you think he could have wheedled clothes out of a
+stone? Of course the lady humored him, and made him a costly, trimmed
+suit; and the ungrateful small beggar made off with it post-haste,
+chanting to another tune:
+
+    Pisky fine, Pisky gay!
+    Pisky now will run away.
+
+The moment the Brownie-folk could cut a respectable figure in
+fashionable garments, they turned their backs on an honest living, and
+skurried away to astonish the belles in Fairyland.
+
+Very much the same thing befell some German house-dwarves, who used to
+help a poor smith, and make his kettles and pans for him. They took
+their milk evening by evening, and went back gladly to their work, to
+the smith's great profit and pleasure. When he had grown rich, his
+thankful wife made them pretty crimson coats and caps, and laid both
+where the wee creatures might stumble on them. But when they had put the
+uniforms on, they shrieked "Paid off, paid off!" and, quitting a task
+half-done, returned no more.
+
+The Pisky was not alone in his bold request for his sordid little
+heart's desire. A certain Pueck lived thirty years in a monastery in
+Mecklenburg, Germany, doing faithful drudgery from his youth up; and one
+of the monks wrote, in his ingenious Latin, that on going away, all he
+asked was "_tunicam de diversis coloribus, et tintinnabulis plenam!_"
+You may put the goblin's vanity into English for yourselves. Brownie is
+known as Shelley-coat in parts of Scotland, from a German term meaning
+bell, as he wears a bell, like the Ruegen Dwarves, on his parti-colored
+coat.
+
+[Illustration: "_Tunicam de diversis coloribus, et tintinnabulis
+plenam!_" WAS ALL THAT PUeCK DEMANDED.]
+
+The famous Cauld Lad of Hilton was considered a Brownie. If everything
+was left well-arranged in the rooms, he amused himself by night with
+pitching chairs and vases about; but if he found the place in confusion,
+he kindly went to work and put it in exquisite order. But the Cauld Lad
+was, more likely, by his own confession, a ghost, and no true fairy.
+Romances were told of him, and he had been heard to sing this canticle,
+which makes you wonder whether he had ever heard of the House that Jack
+Built:
+
+                  Wae's me, wae's me!
+    The acorn's not yet fallen from the tree
+    That's to grow the wood that's to make the cradle
+    That's to rock the bairn that's to grow to the man
+                  That's to lay me!
+
+It was only ghosts who could be "laid," and to "lay" him meant to give
+him freedom and release, so that he need no longer go about in that
+bareboned and mournful state.
+
+But the merriest grig of all the Brownies was called in Southern
+Scotland, Wag-at-the-Wa'. He teased the kitchen-maids much by sitting
+under their feet at the hearth, or on the iron crook which hung from the
+beam in the chimney, and which, of old, was meant to accommodate pots
+and kettles. He loved children, and he loved jokes; his laugh was very
+distinct and pleasant; but if he heard of anybody drinking anything
+stronger than home-brewed ale, he would cough virtuously, and frown
+upon the company. Now Wag-at-the-Wa' had the toothache all the time,
+and, considering his twinges, was it not good of him to be so cheerful?
+He wore a great red-woollen coat and blue trousers, and sometimes a grey
+cloak over; and he shivered even then, with one side of his poor face
+bundled up, till his head seemed big as a cabbage. He looked impish and
+wrinkled, too, and had short bent legs. But his beautiful, clever tail
+atoned for everything, and with it, he kept his seat on the swinging
+crook.
+
+[Illustration: "WAG-AT-THE-WA'."]
+
+Scotch fairies called Powries and Dunters haunted lonely
+Border-mansions, and behaved like peaceable subjects, beating flax from
+year to year. The Dutch Kaboutermannekin worked in mills, as well as in
+houses. He was gentle and kind, but "touchy," as Brownie-people are.
+Though he dressed gayly in red, he was not pretty, but boasted a fine
+green tint on his face and hands. Little Killmoulis was a mill-haunting
+brother of his, who loved to lie before the fireplace in the kiln. This
+precious old employee was blest with a most enormous nose, and with no
+mouth at all! But he had a great appetite for pork, however he managed
+to gratify it.
+
+Bolieta, a Swiss Kobold, distinguished himself by leading cows safely
+through the dangerous mountain-paths, and keeping them sleek and happy.
+His branch of the family lived as often in the trunk of a near tree, as
+in the house itself.
+
+In Denmark and Sweden was the Kirkegrim, the "church lamb," who
+sometimes ran along the aisles and the choir after service-time, and to
+the grave-digger betokened the death of a little child. But there was
+another Kirkegrim, a proper church-Brownie, who kept the pews neat, and
+looked after people who misbehaved during the sermon.
+
+As queer as any of these was the Phynodderee, or the Hairy One, the Isle
+of Man house-helper. He was a wild little shaggy being, supposed to be
+an exile from fairy society, and condemned to wander about alone until
+doomsday. He was kind and obliging, and drove the sheep home, or
+gathered in the hay, if he saw a storm coming.
+
+The Klabautermann was a ship-Brownie, who sat under the capstan, and in
+time of danger, warned the crew by running up and down the shrouds in
+great excitement. This eccentric Flying Dutchman had a fiery red head,
+and on it a steeple-like hat; his yellow breeches were tucked into heavy
+horseman's boots.
+
+Huettchen was a German Brownie, who lived at court, but who dressed like
+a little peasant, with a flapping felt hat over his eyes. The Alraun, a
+sort of house-imp shorn of all his engaging diligence, was very small,
+his body being made of a root; he lived in a bottle. If he was thrown
+away, back he came, persistently as a rubber ball. But that instinct
+was common to the Brownie race.
+
+The Roman Penates, _Vinculi terrei_, which brave old Reginald Scott
+called "domesticall gods," were Brownie's venerable and honorable
+ancestors. We shall see presently what names their descendants bore in
+various countries. But the Russian Domovoi we shall not count among
+them, because they were ghostly, like the poor Cauld Lad, and seem to
+have been full-sized.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+OTHER HOUSE-HELPERS.
+
+
+IN modern Greece the Brownie was known as the Stoechia. He was called
+Para in Finland; Trasgo or Duende in Spain; Lutin, Gobelin, Follet, in
+France and Normandy; Niss-god-drange in Norway and Denmark; Tomte, in
+Sweden; Niss in Jutland, Denmark and Friesland; Bwbach or Pwcca in
+Wales; in Ireland, Fir-Darrig and, sometimes, Cluricaune; Kobold, in
+Germany; and in England, Brownie figured as Boggart, Puck, Hobgoblin,
+and Robin Goodfellow.
+
+Often the Stoechia, a wayward little black being, went about the house
+under the shape of a lizard or small snake. He was harmless; his
+presence was an omen of prosperity; and great care was taken that no
+disrespect was shown him.
+
+The services of the Para, who was a well-meaning rascal, were rather
+singular, and not at all indispensable. He had a way of following the
+neighbor's cows to pasture, and milking them himself, in a calf's
+fashion, until he had swallowed quart on quart, and was as full as a
+little hogshead. Then he went home, uncorked his thieving throat, and
+obligingly emptied every drop of his ill-gotten goods into his master's
+churn! How his feelings must have been hurt if anybody criticized the
+cheese and butter!
+
+The Spanish house-goblin was a statelier person, and wore an enormous
+plumed hat, and threw stones in a stolid and haughty manner at people he
+disliked. But occasionally the Duende had the form of a little busy
+friar, like the Monachiello at Naples.
+
+The Lutin, or Gobelin, or Follet of French belief, was likewise a
+stone-thrower. He was fond of children, and of horses; taking it upon
+himself to feed and caress his landlord's children when they were good,
+and to whip them when they were naughty; and he rode the willing horses,
+and combed them, and plaited their manes into knotty braids, for which,
+we may fear, the stable-boy never thanked him. He knew, too, how to
+worry and tease; and certain French mothers threatened troublesome
+little folk with the "Gobelin:" "_Le gobelin vous mangera!_" which we
+may translate into: "The goblin will gobble you!" or into the whimsical
+lines of an American poet:
+
+    The gobble uns'll git you,
+    Ef
+        You
+            Don't
+                  Watch
+                        Out!
+
+The Norwegian Nis was like a strong-shouldered child, in a coat and
+peaky cap, who carried a pretty blue light at night. He enjoyed hopping
+or skating across the farmyard under the moon's ray. Dogs he would not
+allow in his house. If he was first promised a gray sheep for his own,
+he would teach any one to play the violin. Like many another of the
+Brownie race, he was a dandy, and loved nothing better than fine
+clothes.
+
+Tomte of Sweden lived in a tree near the house. He was as tall as a
+year-old boy, with a knowing old face beneath his cap. In harvest-time
+he tugged away at one straw, or one grain, until he laid it in his
+master's barn; for his strength was not much greater than an ant's. If
+the farmer scorned his diligent little servant, and made fun of his tiny
+load, all luck departed from him, and the Tomte went away in anger. He
+liked tobacco, played merry pranks, and doubled up comically when he
+laughed. But he had another laugh, scoffing and sarcastic, which he
+sometimes gave at the top of his voice.
+
+Like the Devon Piskies, the Niss-Puk required water left at his disposal
+over-night. The Nis of Jutland was the Puk of Friesland. He also liked
+his porridge with butter. He lived under the roof, or in dark corners of
+the stable and house. He was of the Tomte's size; he wore red stockings
+on his stumpy little legs, and a pointed red cap, and a long gray or
+green coat. For soft, easy slippers he had a great longing; and if a
+pair were left out for him, he was soon heard shuffling in them over the
+floor. He had long arms, and a big head, and big bright eyes, so that
+the people of Silt have a saying concerning an inquisitive or astonished
+person: "He stares like a Puk." Puk, too, played sorry tricks on the
+servants, and was indignant if he was ever deprived of his nightly bowl
+of groute.
+
+The Bwbach of Wales churned the cream, and begged for his portion, like
+a true Brownie; he was a hairy blackamoor with the best-natured grin in
+the world. But he had an unpleasant habit of whisking mortals into the
+air, and doing flighty mischiefs generally.
+
+[Illustration: AN IRISH CLURICAUNE.]
+
+The unique Irish Cluricaune, who had that name in Cork, was called
+Luricaune and Leprechaun in other parts of the country. He differed from
+the Shefro in living alone, and in his queer appearance and habits. For
+though he was a house-spirit and did house-work, his ambitions ran in an
+opposite direction, and in his every spare minute, when he was not
+smoking or drinking, you might have seen him, a miniature old man, with
+a cocked hat, and a leather apron, sitting on a low stool, humming a
+fairy-tune, and perpetually cobbling at a pair of shoes no bigger than
+acorns. The shoes were occasionally captured and shown. And as we have
+seen, Mr. Cluricaune was a fortune-hunter, and a very wide-awake,
+versatile goblin altogether. In his capacity of Brownie, he once wreaked
+a hard revenge on a maid who served him shabbily. A Mr. Harris, a
+Quaker, had on his farm a Cluricaune named Little Wildbeam. Whenever the
+servants left the beer-barrel running through negligence, Little
+Wildbeam wedged himself into the cock, and stopped the flow, at great
+inconvenience to his poor little body, until some one came to turn the
+knob. So the master bade the cook always put a good dinner down cellar
+for Little Wildbeam. One Friday she had nothing but part of a herring,
+and some cold potatoes, which she left in place of the usual feast. That
+very midnight the fat cook got pulled out of bed, and thrown down the
+cellar-stairs, bumping from side to side, so that it made her very sore
+indeed, and meanwhile the smirking Cluricaune stood at the head of the
+steps, and sang at the luckless heap below:
+
+    Molly Jones, Molly Jones!
+    Potato-skin and herring-bones!
+    I'll knock your head against the stones,
+              Molly Jones!
+
+In Japanese houses, even, Brownies were familiar comers and goers. They
+were important and smooth-mannered pigmies, and serenely dealt out
+rewards and punishments as they saw fit. When they were engaged in
+befriending commendable boys and girls, their features had, somehow, the
+ingenious likeness of letters signifying "good;" and if they made it
+their business to plague and hinder naughty idlers, who, instead of
+doing their errands promptly, stopped at the shops to buy goodies, their
+queer little faces were screwed up to mean "bad," as you see in
+Japanese artists' pictures.
+
+[Illustration: JAPANESE CHILDREN AND BROWNIES.]
+
+The English names for the affable Brownie-folk bring to our minds the
+most wayward, frolicsome elves of all fairydom. Boggart was the
+Yorkshire sprite, and the Boggart commonly disliked children, and stole
+their food and playthings; wherein he differed from his kindly kindred.
+Hobgoblin (Hop-goblin) was so called because he hopped on one leg.
+Hobgoblin is the same as Rob or Bob-Goblin, a goblin whose full name
+seemed to be Robert. Robin Hood, the famous outlaw, dear to all of us,
+was thought to have been christened after Robin Hood the fairy, because
+he, too, was tricksy and sportive, wore a hood, and lived in the deep
+forest.
+
+[Illustration: A LITTLE FIR-DARRIG.]
+
+In Ireland lived the mocking, whimsical little Fir-Darrig, Robin
+Goodfellow's own twin. He dressed in tight-fitting red; Fir-Darrig
+itself meant "the red man." He had big humorous ears, and the softest
+and most flexible voice in the world, which could mimic any sound at
+will. He sat by the fire, and smoked a pipe, big as himself, belonging
+to the man of the house. He loved cleanliness, brought good-luck to his
+abode, and, like a cat, generally preferred places to people.
+
+Puck and Robin Goodfellow were the names best known and cherished.
+There is no doubt that Shakespeare, from whom we have now our prevailing
+idea of Puck, got the idea of him, in his turn, from the popular
+superstitions of his day. But Puck's very identity was all but
+forgotten, and since Shakespeare was, therefore, his poetical creator,
+we will forego mention of him here, and entitle Robin Goodfellow, the
+same "shrewd and meddling elf," under another nickname, the true Brownie
+of England.
+
+He was both House-Helper and Mischief-Maker, "the most active and
+extraordinary fellow of a fairy," says Ritson, "that we anywhere meet
+with." He was said to have had a supplementary brother called Robin
+Badfellow; but there was no need of that, because he was Robin Badfellow
+in himself, and united in his whimsical little character so many
+opposite qualities, that he may be considered the representative elf the
+world over; for the old Saxon Hudkin, the Niss of Scandinavia, and
+Knecht Ruprecht, the Robin of Germany, are nothing but our masquerading
+goblin-friend on continental soil. And in the red-capped smiling
+Mikumwess among the Passamaquoddy Indians, there he is again!
+
+By this name of Robin he was known earlier than the thirteenth century,
+and "famosed in everie olde wives' chronicle for his mad merrie
+prankes," two hundred years later. His biography was put forth in a
+black-letter tract in 1628, and in a yet better-known ballad which
+recited his jests, and was in free circulation while Queen Bess was
+reigning. The forgotten annalist says very heartily, alluding to his
+string of aliases:
+
+    But call him by what name you list;
+    I have studied on my pillow,
+    And think the name he best deserves
+    Is Robin, the Good Fellow!
+
+We class him rightly as a Brownie, because he skimmed milk, knew all
+about domestic life, and was the delight or terror of servants, as the
+case might be. He was fond of making a noise and clatter on the stairs,
+of playing harps, ringing bells, and misleading passing travellers; and
+despite his knavery, he came to be much beloved by his house-mates. Very
+like him was the German Hempelman, who laughed a great deal. But the
+laugh of Master Robin sometimes foreboded trouble and death to people,
+which Hempelman's never did.
+
+The jolly German Kobold had a laugh which filled his throat, and could
+be heard a mile away. Bu he was a gnome malignant enough if he was
+neglected or insulted. He very seldom made a mine-sprite of himself, but
+stayed at home, Brownie-like, and "ran" the house pretty much as he saw
+fit. To the Dwarves he was, however, closely related, and dressed after
+their fashion, except that sometimes he wore a coat of as many colors as
+the rainbow, with tinkling bells fastened to it. He objected to any
+chopping or spinning done on a Thursday. Change of servants, while he
+held his throne in the kitchen, affected him not in the least; for the
+maid going away recommended her successor to treat him civilly, at her
+peril. A very remarkable Kobold was Hinzelmann, who called himself a
+Christian, and came to the old castle of Huedemuehlen in 1584; whose
+history, too long to add here, is given charmingly in Mr. Keightley's
+Fairy Mythology.
+
+A certain bearded little Kobold lived with some fishermen in a hut, and
+tried a trick which was quite classic, and reminds one of the Greek
+story of Procrustes, which all of you have met with, or will meet with,
+some day. Says Mr. Benjamin Thorpe: "His chief amusement, when the
+fishermen were lying asleep at night, was to lay them even. For this
+purpose he would first draw them up until their heads all lay in a
+straight line, but then their legs would be out of the line! and he had
+to go to their feet and pull them up until the tips of their toes were
+all in a row. This game he would continue till broad daylight."
+
+Now all Brownies, Nissen, Kobolds and the rest, were very much of a
+piece, and when you know the virtues and faults of one of them, you know
+the habits of the race. So that you can understand, despite the slight
+but steady help given in household matters, that a person so variable
+and exacting and high-tempered as this curious little sprite might
+happen sometimes to be a great bore, and might inspire his master or
+mistress with the sighing wish to be rid of him. It was a tradition in
+Normandy that to shake off the Lutin or Gobelin, it was merely necessary
+to scatter flax-seed where he was wont to pass; for he was too neat to
+let it lie there, and yet tired so soon of picking it up, that he left
+it in disgust, and went away for good. And there was a sprite named
+Flerus who lived in a farm-house near Ostend, and worked so hard,
+sweeping and drawing water, and turning himself into a plough-horse that
+he might replace the old horse who was sick, for no reward, either, save
+a little fresh sugared milk--that soon his master was the wealthiest man
+in the neighborhood. But a giddy young servant-maid once offended him,
+at the day's end, by giving him garlic in his milk; and as soon as poor
+Flerus tasted it, he departed, very wrathful and hurt, from the
+premises, forever.
+
+There were few such successful instances on record. Though Brownie was
+ready, in every land under the sun, to leave home when he took the
+fancy, or when he was puffed up with gifts of lace and velvet, so that
+no mortal residence was gorgeous enough for him, yet he would take no
+hint, nor obey any command, when either pointed to a banishment.
+
+[Illustration: THE PERSISTENT KOBOLD OF KOePENICK.]
+
+Near Koepenick once, a man thought of buying a new house, and turning his
+back on a vexatious Kobold. The morning before he meant to change
+quarters, he saw his Kobold sitting by a pool, and asked him what he was
+doing. "I am doing my washing!" said the sharp rogue, "because we move
+to-morrow." And the man saw very well that as he could not avoid him, he
+had better take the little nuisance along. The same thing happened in
+the capital Polish anecdote of Iskrzycki (make your respects to his
+excruciating name!) and over Northern Europe the sarcastic joke "Yes,
+we're flitting!" prevails in folk-song and story.
+
+There is many and many an example of families selling the old house, and
+going off in great glee with the furniture, thinking the elf-rascal
+cheated and left behind; and lo! there he was, perched on a rope, or
+peering from a hole in the cart itself, on his congratulated master.
+
+The funniest hap of all befell an ungrateful farmer who fired his barn
+to burn the poor Kobold in it. As he was driving off, he turned to look
+at the blaze, and what should he see on the seat behind him but the same
+excited Kobold, chattering, monkey-like, and shrieking sympathizingly:
+"It was about time for us to get out of that, wasn't it?"
+
+The dark-skinned little house-sprites came to stay; and as for being
+snubbed, they were quite above it. They were the sort of callers to
+whom you could never show the door, with any dignity; for if you had
+done so, the grinning goblin would have examined knob and panels with a
+squinted eye, and gone back whistling to your easy-chair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+WATER-FOLK.
+
+
+OF old, there were Oreads and Naiads to people the rivers and the sea,
+but they were not fairies; and in after-years the beautiful, bright
+water-life of Greece, with its shells and dolphins, its palaces, its
+subaqueous music, and its happy-hearted maids and men, faded wholly out
+of memory. No one dominant race came to replace them. Merpeople, Tritons
+and Sirens we meet now and then, as did Hendrik Hudson's crew, and the
+Moruachs of Ireland, the Morverch (sea-daughters) of Brittainy; but
+they, too, were grown, and half-human. They were beautiful and swift,
+and usually sat combing their long hair, with a mirror in one hand, and
+their glossy tails tapering from the waist. The Danish Mermaid was
+gold-haired, cunning and treacherous; the Havmand or Merman was
+handsome, too, with black hair and beard, but kind and beneficent.
+
+The Swedish pair offered presents to those on shore, or passing in
+boats, in hopes to sink them beneath the waves.
+
+England and Ireland had no water-sprites which answered to the Nix and
+the Kelpie, only the Merrow, who was a Mermaid. She was a fair woman,
+with white, webbed fingers. She carried upon her head a little
+diving-cap, and when she came up to the rocks or the beach, she laid it
+by; but if it were stolen from her, she lost the power of returning to
+the sea. So that if her cap were taken by a young man, she very often
+could do nothing better than to marry him, and spend her time hunting
+for it up and down over his house. And once she had found it, she forgot
+all else but her desire to go home to "the kind sea-caves," and despite
+the calling of her neighbors and husband and children, she flitted to
+the shore, and plunged into the first oncoming billow, and walked the
+earth no longer.
+
+[Illustration: MER-FOLK.]
+
+Tales of these spirit-brides who suddenly deserted the green earth for
+their dear native waters, are common in Arabian and European folk-lore.
+And this characteristic was noted also in the Sea-trows of the Shetland
+Islands, who divested themselves of a shining fish-skin, and could not
+find the way to their ocean-beds if it were kept out of their reach. It
+was the Danish sailor's belief that seals laid by their skins every
+ninth night, and took maiden's forms wherewith to sport and sleep on the
+reefs. And for their capture as they were, warm, living and human, one
+had only to snatch and hide away their talisman-skin.
+
+The strange German Water-man wore a green hat, and when he opened his
+mouth, his teeth as well were green; he appeared to girls who passed his
+lake, and measured out ribbon, and flung it to them.
+
+But we must search for smaller sprites than these.
+
+The little water-fairies who devoted themselves to drawing under
+whomsoever encroached on their pools and brooks, were called Nixies in
+Germany, Korrigans (for this was part of their office) in Brittainy;
+Ondins about Magdebourg, and Roussalkis, the long-haired, smiling ones,
+among the Slavic people.
+
+[Illustration: THE LITTLE OLD NIX NEAR GHENT.]
+
+The engaging Nixies were very minute and mischievous, and abounded in
+the Shetland Isles and Cornwall, as did, moreover, the Kelpies, who were
+like tiny horses, known even in China; sporting on the margin, and
+foreboding death by drowning, to any who beheld them; or tempting
+passers-by to mount, and plunging, with their victims, headlong into
+the deep. The Nix-lady was recognized when she came on shore by the
+edges of her dress or apron being perpetually wet. The dark-eyed Nix-man
+with his seaweed hair and his wide hat, was known by his slit ears and
+feet, which he was very careful to conceal. Once in a while he was
+observed to be half-fish. The naked Nixen were draped with moss and
+kelp; but when they were clothed, they seemed merely little men and
+women, save that the borders of their garments, dripping water, betrayed
+them. They did their marketing ashore, wheresoever they were, and,
+according to all accounts, with a sharp eye to economy. Like the
+land-elves, they loved to dance and sing. Nix did not favor divers,
+fishermen, and other intruders on his territory, and he did his best to
+harm them. He was altogether a fierce, grudging, covetous little
+creature. His comelier wife was much better-natured, and befriended
+human beings to the utmost of her power.
+
+[Illustration: THE WORK OF THE NICKEL.]
+
+Near Ghent was a little old Nix who lived in the Scheldt; he cried and
+sighed much, and did mischief to no one. It grieved him when children
+ran away from him, yet if they asked what troubled his conscience, he
+only sighed heavily, and disappeared.
+
+The modern Greeks believed in a black sprite haunting wells and springs,
+who was fond of beckoning to strangers. If they came to him, he bestowed
+gifts upon them; if not, he never seemed angry, but turned patiently to
+wait for the next passer-by.
+
+There was a curious sea-creature in Norway, who swam about as a thin
+little old man with no head. About the magical Isle of Ruegen lived the
+Nickel. His favorite game was to astonish the fishers, by hauling their
+boats up among the trees.
+
+At Arles and other towns near the Spanish border in France, were the
+Dracs, who inhabited clear pools and streams, and floated along in the
+shape of gold rings and cups, so that women and children bathing should
+grasp them, and be lured under.
+
+The Indian water-manittos, the Nibanaba, were winning in appearance, and
+wicked in disposition. They, joining the Pukwudjinies, helped to kill
+Kwasind.
+
+In Wales were the Gwragedd Annwn, elves who loved the stillness of
+lonely mountain-lakes, and who seldom ventured into the upper world.
+They had their own submerged towns and battlements; and from their
+little sunken city the fairy-bells sent out, ever and anon, muffled
+silver voices. The Gwragedd Annwn were not fishy-finned, nor were they
+ever dwellers in the sea; for in Wales were no mermaid-traditions, nor
+any tales of those who beguiled mortals--
+
+    Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave.
+
+The Neck and the Stroemkarl of Swedish rivers were two little chaps with
+hardly a hair's breadth of difference. Either appeared under various
+shapes; now as a green-hatted old man with a long beard, out of which he
+wrung water as he sat on the cliffs; now loitering of a summer night on
+the surface, like a chip of wood or a leaf, he seemed a fair child,
+harping, with yellow ringlets falling from beneath a high red cap to his
+shoulders. Both fairies had a genius for music; and the Stroemkarl,
+especially, had one most marvellous tune to which he put eleven
+variations. Now, to ten of them any one might dance decorously, and with
+safety; but at the eleventh, which was the enchanted one, all the world
+went mad; and tables, belfries, benches, houses, windmills, trees,
+horses, cripples, babies, ghosts, and whole towns full of sedate
+citizens began capering on the banks about the invisible player, and
+kept it up in furious fashion until the last note died away.
+
+You know that the wren was hunted in certain countries on a certain day.
+Well, here is one legend about her. There was a malicious fairy once in
+the Isle of Man, very winsome to look at, who worked a sorry
+Kelpie-trick, on the young men of the town, and inveigled them into the
+sea, where they perished. At last the inhabitants rose in vengeance, and
+suspecting her of causing their loss and sorrow, gave her chase so hard
+and fast by land, that to save herself, she changed her shape into that
+of an innocent brown wren. And because she had been so treacherous, a
+spell was cast upon her, inasmuch as she was obliged every New Year's
+Day to fly about as that same bird, until she should be killed by a
+human hand. And from sunrise to sunset, therefore, on the first bleak
+day of January, all the men and boys of the island fired at the poor
+wrens, and stoned them, and entrapped them, in the hope of reaching the
+one guilty fairy among them. And as they could never be sure that they
+had captured the right one, they kept on year by year, chasing and
+persecuting the whole flock. But every dead wren's feather they
+preserved carefully, and believed that it hindered them from drowning
+and shipwreck for that twelvemonth; and they took the feathers with them
+on voyages great and small, in order that the bad fairy's magic may
+never be able to prevail, as it had prevailed of yore with their unhappy
+brothers.
+
+The presence of the sea-fairies had a terror in it, and against their
+arts only the strongest and most watchful could hope to be victorious.
+Their sport was to desolate peaceful homes, and bring destruction on
+gallant ships. They, dwelling in streams and in the ocean, the world
+over, were like the waters they loved: gracious and noble in aspect, and
+meaning danger and death to the unwary. We fear that, like the
+earth-fairies, they were heartless quite.
+
+[Illustration: HOB IN HOBHOLE]
+
+But it may be that the gentle Nixies had only a blind longing for human
+society, and would not willingly have wrought harm to the creatures of
+another element. We are more willing to urge excuses for their
+wrong-doing than for the like fault in our frowzly under-ground folk;
+for ugliness seems, somehow, not so shocking when allied with evil as
+does beauty, which was destined for all men's delight and uplifting. As
+the air-elves had their Fairyland whither mortal children wandered, and
+whence they returned after an unmeasured lapse of time, still children,
+to the ivy-grown ruins of their homes, so the water-elves had a reward
+for those they snatched from earth; and legends assure us the
+wave-rocked prisoners a hundred fathoms down, never grew old, but kept
+the flush of their last morning rosy ever on their brows.
+
+Among a little community full of guile, there is great comfort in
+spotting one honest, kind water-boy, who, not content with being
+harmless, as were the Flemish and Grecian Nixies, put himself to work to
+do good, and charm away some of the worries and ills that burdened the
+upper world. His name was Hob, and he lived in Hobhole, which was a cave
+scooped out by the beating tides in old Northumbria.
+
+The lean pockets of the neighboring doctors were partly attributed to
+this benignant little person; for he set up an opposition, and his
+specialty was the cure of whooping-cough. Many a Scotch mother took her
+lad or lass to the spray-covered mouth of the wise goblin's cave, and
+sang in a low voice:
+
+            Hobhole Hob!
+    Ma bairn's gotten t' kink-cough:
+    Tak't off! tak't off!
+
+And so he did, sitting there with his toes in the sea. For Hobhole Hob's
+small sake, we can afford to part friends with the whole naughty race of
+water-folk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MISCHIEF-MAKERS.
+
+
+THE fairy-fellows who made a regular business of mischief-making seemed
+to have two favorite ways of setting to work. They either saddled
+themselves with little boys and spilled them, sooner or later, into the
+water, or else they danced along holding a twinkling light, and led any
+one so foolish as to follow them a pretty march into chasms and
+quagmires. Their jokes were grim and hurtful, and not merely funny, like
+Brownie's; for Brownie usually gave his victims (except in Molly Jones's
+case) nothing much worse than a pinch. So people came to have great awe
+and horror of the heartless goblins who waylaid travellers, and left
+them broken-limbed or dead.
+
+Very often quarrelsome, disobedient or vicious folk fell into the snare
+of a Kelpie, or a Will-o'-the-Wisp; for the little whipper-snappers had
+a fine eye for poetical justice, and dealt out punishments with the
+nicest discrimination. We never hear that they troubled good, steady
+mortals; but only that sometimes they beguiled them, for sheer love,
+into Fairyland.
+
+We know that all "ouphes and elves" could change their shapes at will;
+therefore when we spy fairy-horses, fairy-lambs, and such quadrupeds, we
+guess at once that they are only roguish small gentlemen masquerading.
+Never for the innocent fun of it, either; but alas! to bring silly
+persons to grief.
+
+In Hampshire, in England, was a spirit known as Coltpixy, which, itself
+shaped like a miniature neighing horse, beguiled other horses into bogs
+and morasses. The Irish Pooka or Phooka was a horse too, and a famous
+rascal. He lived on land, and was something like the Welsh Gwyll: a
+tiny, black, wicked-faced wild colt, with chains dangling about him.
+Again, he frisked around in the shape of a goat or a bat. Spenser has
+him:
+
+    "Ne let the Pouke, ne other evill spright, . . .
+     Ne let hobgoblins, names whose sense we see not,
+     Fray us with things that be not."
+
+"Fray," as you are likely to guess, means to frighten or to scare.
+
+[Illustration: THE IRISH POOKA WAS A HORSE TOO.]
+
+Kelpies, who were Scotch, haunted fords and ferries, especially in
+storms; allured bystanders into the water, or swelled the river so that
+it broke the roads, and overwhelmed travellers.
+
+Very like them were the Brag, the little Shoopil-tree of the Shetland
+Islands, and the Nick, who was the Icelandic Nykkur-horse; gamesome
+deceivers all, who enticed children and others to bestride them, and who
+were treacherous as a quicksand, every time. And there were many more of
+the Kelpie kingdom, of whom we can hunt up no clews.
+
+A man who saw a Kelpie gave himself up for lost; for he was sure, by
+hook or crook, to meet his death by drowning. Kelpie, familiar so far
+away as China, never stayed in the next-door countries, Ireland or
+England, long enough to be recognized. They knew nothing of him by
+sight, nor of the Nix his cousin, nor of anything resembling them. In
+Ireland lived the merrow; but she was only an amiable mermaid.
+
+[Illustration: WILL-O'-THE-WISP.]
+
+The Japanese had a water-dragon called Kappa, "whose office it was to
+swallow bad boys who went to swim in disobedience to their parents'
+commands, and at improper times and places." In the River Tees was a
+green-haired lady named Peg Powler, and in some streams in Lancashire
+one christened Jenny Greenteeth; two hungry goblins whose only
+delight was to drown and devour unlucky travellers. But we know already
+that the water-sprites were more than likely so to behave.
+
+In Provence there is a tale told of seven little boys who went out at
+night against their grandmother's wishes. A little dark pony came
+prancing up to them, and the youngest clambered on his sleek back, and
+after him, the whole seven, one after the other, which was quite a
+wonderful weight for the wee creature; but his back meanwhile kept
+growing longer and larger to accommodate them. As they galloped along,
+the children called such of their playmates as were out of doors, to
+join them, the obliging nag stretching and stretching until thirty pairs
+of young legs dangled at his sides! when he made straight for the sea,
+and plunged in, and drowned them all.
+
+The Piskies, or Pigseys, of Cornwall, were naughty and unsociable. Their
+great trick was to entice people into marshes, by making themselves look
+like a light held in a man's hand, or a light in a friendly cottage
+window. Pisky also rode the farmers' colts hard, and chased the
+farmers' cows. For all his diabolics, you had to excuse him in part,
+when you heard his hearty fearless laugh; it was so merry and sweet. "To
+laugh like a Pisky," passed into a proverb. The Barguest of Yorkshire,
+like the Osschaert of the Netherlands, was an open-air bugaboo whose
+presence always portended disaster. Sometimes he appeared as a horse or
+dog, merely to play the old trick with a false light, and to vanish,
+laughing.
+
+The Tueckebold was a very malicious chap, carrying a candle, who lived in
+Hanover; his blood-relation in Scandinavia was the Lyktgubhe. Over in
+Flanders and Brabant was one Kludde, a fellow whisking here and there as
+a half-starved little mare, or a cat, or a frog, or a bat; but who was
+always accompanied by two dancing blue flames, and who could overtake
+any one as swiftly as a snake. The Ellydan (dan is a Welsh word meaning
+fire, and also a lure or a snare: a luring elf-fire) was a rogue with
+wings, wide ears, a tall cap and two huge torches, who precisely
+resembled the English Will-o'-the-Wisp, the Scandinavian Lyktgubhe and
+the Breton Sand Yan y Tad. Our American negroes make him out
+Jack-muh-Lantern: a vast, hairy, goggle-eyed, big-mouthed ogre, leaping
+like a giant grasshopper, and forcing his victims into a swamp, where
+they died. The gentlemen of this tribe preferred to walk abroad at
+night, like any other torchlight procession. Their little bodies were
+invisible, and the traveller who hurried towards the pleasant lamp
+ahead, never knew that he was being tricked by a grinning fairy, until
+he stumbled on the brink of a precipice, or found himself knee-deep in a
+bog. Then the brazen little guide shouted outright with glee, put out
+his mysterious flame, and somersaulted off, leaving the poor tourist to
+help himself. The only way to escape his arts was to turn your coat
+inside out.
+
+You may guess that the ungodly wights had plenty of fun in them, by this
+anecdote: A great many Scotch Jack-o'-Lanterns, as they are often
+called, were once bothering the horse belonging to a clergyman, who with
+his servant, was returning home late at night. The horse reared and
+whinnied, and the clergyman was alarmed, for a thousand impish fires
+were waltzing before the wheels. Like a good man, he began to pray
+aloud, to no avail. But the servant just roared: "Wull ye be aff noo, in
+the deil's name!" and sure enough, in a wink, there was not a goblin
+within gunshot.
+
+[Illustration: PISKY ALSO CHASED THE FARMERS' COWS.]
+
+There were some freakish fairies in old England, whose names were
+Puckerel, Hob Howland, Bygorn, Bogleboe, Rawhead or Bloodybones; the
+last two were certainly scarers of nurseries.
+
+The Boggart was a little spectre who haunted farms and houses, like
+Brownie or Nis; but he was usually a sorry busybody, tearing the
+bed-curtains, rattling the doors, whistling through the keyholes,
+snatching his bread-and-butter from the baby, playing pranks upon the
+servants, and doing all manner of mischief.
+
+[Illustration: RED COMB WAS A TYRANT.]
+
+The Dunnie, in Northumberland, was fond of annoying farmers. When night
+came, he gave them and himself a rest, and hung his long legs over the
+crags, whistling and banging his idle heels. Red Comb or Bloody Cap was
+a tyrant who lived in every Border castle, dungeon and tower. He was
+short and thickset long-toothed and skinny-fingered, with big red eyes,
+grisly flowing hair, and iron boots; a pikestaff in his left hand, and a
+red cap on his ugly head.
+
+The village of Hedley, near Ebchester, in England, was haunted by a
+churlish imp known far and wide as the Hedley Gow. He took the form of a
+cow, and amused himself at milking-time with kicking over the pails,
+scaring the maids, and calling the cats, of whom he was fond, to lick up
+the cream. Then he slipped the ropes and vanished, with a great laugh.
+In Northern Germany we find the Hedley Gow's next-of-kin, and there,
+too, were little underground beings who accompanied maids and men to the
+milking, and drank up what was spilt; but if nothing happened to be
+spilt in measuring out the quarts, they got angry, overturned the pails,
+and ran away. These jackanapes were a foot and a half high, and dressed
+in black, with red caps.
+
+Many ominous fairies, such as the Banshee, portended misfortune and
+death. The Banshee had a high shrill voice, and long hair. Once in a
+while she seemed to be as tall as an ordinary woman, very thin, with
+head uncovered, and a floating white cloak, wringing her hands and
+wailing. She attached herself only to certain ancient Irish families,
+and cried under their windows when one of their race was sick, and
+doomed to die. But she scorned families who had a dash of Saxon and
+Norman ancestry, and would have nothing to do with them.
+
+Every single fairy that ever was known to the annals of this world was,
+at times, a mischief-maker. He could no more keep out of mischief than a
+trout out of water. What lives the dandiprats led our poor
+great-great-great-great grand-sires! As a very clever living writer put
+it:
+
+      "A man could not ride out without risking an encounter
+      with a Puck or a Will-o'-the Wisp. He could not
+      approach a stream in safety unless he closed his ears
+      to the sirens' songs, and his eyes to the fair form of
+      the mermaid. In the hillside were the dwarfs, in the
+      forest Queen Mab and her court. Brownie ruled over him
+      in his house, and Robin Goodfellow in his walks and
+      wanderings. From the moment a Christian came into the
+      world until his departure therefrom, he was at the
+      mercy of the fairy-folk, and his devices to elude them
+      were many. Unhappy was the mother who neglected to lay
+      a pair of scissors or of tongs, a knife or her
+      husband's breeches, in the cradle of her new-born
+      infant; for if she forgot, then was she sure to
+      receive a changeling in its place. Great was the loss
+      of the child to whose baptism the fairies were not
+      invited, or the bride to whose wedding the Nix, or
+      water-spirit, was not bidden. If the inhabitants of
+      Thale did not throw a black cock annually into the
+      Bode, one of them was claimed as his lawful victim by
+      the Nickelmann dwelling in that stream. The Russian
+      peasant who failed to present the Rusalka or
+      water-sprite he met at Whitsuntide, with a
+      handkerchief, or a piece torn from his or her
+      clothing, was doomed to death."
+
+One had to be ever on the lookout to escape the sharp little immortals,
+whose very kindness to men and women was a species of coquetry, and who
+never spared their friends' feelings at the expense of their own saucy
+delight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+PUCK; AND POETS' FAIRIES.
+
+
+PUCK, as we said, is Shakespeare's fairy. There is some probability that
+he found in Cwm Pwca, or Puck Valley, a part of the romantic glens of
+Clydach, in Breconshire, the original scenes of his fanciful _Midsummer
+Night's Dream_. This glen used to be crammed with goblins. There, and in
+many like-named Welsh places, Puck's pranks were well-remembered by old
+inhabitants. This Welsh Puck was a queer little figure, long and
+grotesque, and looked something like a chicken half out of his shell; at
+least, so a peasant drew him, from memory, with a bit of coal. Pwcca, or
+Pooka, in Wales, was but another name for Ellydan; and his favorite joke
+was also to travel along before a wayfarer, with a lantern held over his
+head, leading miles and miles, until he got to the brink of a
+precipice. Then the little wretch sprang over the chasm, shouted with
+wicked glee, blew out his lantern, and left the startled traveller to
+reach home as best he could. Old Reginald Scott must have had this sort
+of a Puck in mind when he put Kitt-with-the-Candlestick, whose identity
+troubled the critics much, in his catalogue of "bugbears."
+
+The very old word Pouke meant the devil, horns, tail, and all; from that
+word, as it grew more human and serviceable, came the Pixy of
+Devonshire, the Irish Phooka, the Scottish Bogle, and the Boggart in
+Yorkshire; and even one nursery-tale title of Bugaboo. Oddest of all,
+the name Pug, which we give now to an amusing race of small dogs, is an
+every-day reminder of poor lost Puck, and of the queer changes which,
+through a century or two, may befall a word. Puck was considered
+court-jester, a mild, comic, playful creature:
+
+                A little random elf
+    Born in the sport of Nature, like a weed,
+    For simple sweet enjoyment of myself,
+    But for no other purpose, worth or need;
+    And yet withal of a most happy breed.
+
+But he kept to the last his character of practical joker, and his
+alliance with his grim little cousins, the Lyktgubhe and the Kludde.
+Glorious old Michael Drayton made a verse of his naughty tricks, which
+you shall hear:
+
+      This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt,
+    Still walking like a ragged colt,
+    And oft out of a bush doth bolt
+    On purpose to deceive us;
+    And leading us, makes us to stray
+    Long winter nights out of the way:
+    And when we stick in mire and clay,
+    He doth with laughter leave us.
+
+Shakespeare, who calls him a "merry wanderer of the night," and allows
+him to fly "swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow," was the first to
+make Puck into a house spirit. The poets were especially attentive to
+the offices of these house-spirits.
+
+According to them, Mab and Puck do everything in-doors which we think
+characteristic of a Brownie. William Browne, born in Tavistock, in the
+county of Devon, where the Pixies lived, prettily puts it how the
+fairy-queen did--
+
+                    ----command her elves
+    To pinch those maids that had not swept their shelves;
+    And further, if by maiden's oversight,
+    Within doors water was not brought at night,
+    Or if they spread no table, set no bread,
+    They should have nips from toe unto the head!
+    And for the maid who had performed each thing
+    She in the water-pail bade leave a ring.
+
+[Illustration: THE WELSH PUCK.]
+
+Herrick confirms what we have just heard:
+
+      If ye will with Mab find grace,
+    Set each platter in its place;
+    Rake the fire up, and get
+    Water in ere the sun be set;
+    Wash your pails, and cleanse your dairies;
+    Sluts are loathsome to the fairies!
+    Sweep your house: who doth not so,
+    Mab will pinch her by the toe.
+
+John Lyly, in his very beautiful _Mayde's Metamorphosis_ has this
+charming fairy song, which takes us out to the grass, and the soft night
+air, and the softer starshine:
+
+    By the moon we sport and play;
+    With the night begins our day;
+    As we dance, the dew doth fall.
+    Trip it, little urchins all!
+    Lightly as the little bee,
+    Two by two, and three by three,
+    And about go we, and about go we.
+
+[Illustration: A MERRY NIGHT-WANDERER.]
+
+What a picture of the wee tribe at their revels! Here is another, from
+Ben Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_:
+
+      Span-long elves that dance about a pool,
+    With each a little changeling in her arms.
+
+In what is thought to be Lyly's play, just mentioned, Mopso, Joculo, and
+Prisio have something in the way of a pun for each fairy they address:
+
+    _Mop._: I pray you, what might I call you?
+
+    _1st Fairy_: My name is Penny.
+
+    _Mop._: I am sorry I cannot purse you!
+
+    _Pris._: I pray you, sir, what might I call you?
+
+    _2nd Fairy_: My name is Cricket.
+
+(Mr. Keightley says that the Crickets were a family of great note in
+Fairyland: many poets celebrated them.)
+
+    _Pris._: I would I were a chimney for your sake!
+
+    _Joc._: I pray you, you pretty little fellow, what's your
+    name?
+
+    _3rd Fairy_: My name is Little Little Prick.
+
+    _Joc._: Little Little Prick! O you are a dangerous fairy,
+    and fright all the little wenches in the country out of their
+    beds. I care not whose hand I were in, so I were out of
+    yours.
+
+Drayton, again, gives us a list of tinkling elfin-ladies' names, which
+are pleasant to hear as the drip of an icicle:
+
+      Hop and Mop and Drop so clear,
+    Pip and Trip and Skip that were
+    To Mab their sovereign ever dear,
+    Her special maids-of-honor:
+
+    Pib and Tib and Pinck and Pin,
+    Tick and Quick, and Jil and Jin,
+    Tit and Nit, and Wap and Win,
+    The train that wait upon her!
+
+[Illustration: "BY THE MOON WE SPORT AND PLAY."]
+
+Young Randolph has an equally delightful account in the pastoral drama
+of _Amyntas_, of his wee folk orchard-robbing; whose chorused Latin
+Leigh Hunt thus translates, roguishly enough:
+
+      We the fairies blithe and antic,
+    Of dimensions not gigantic,
+    Tho' the moonshine mostly keep us,
+    Oft in orchard frisk and peep us.
+
+    Stolen sweets are always sweeter;
+    Stolen kisses much completer;
+    Stolen looks are nice in chapels;
+    Stolen, stolen, be our apples!
+
+    When to bed the world is bobbing,
+    Then's the time for orchard-robbing:
+    Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling,
+    Were it not for stealing, stealing!
+
+You will notice that Shakespeare places his Gothic goblins in the woods
+about Athens, a place where real fairies never set their rose-leaf feet,
+but where once sported yet lovelier Dryads and Naiads. These dainty
+British Greeks are very small indeed: Titania orders them to make war on
+the rear-mice, and make coats of their leathern wings. Mercutio's Queen
+Mab is scarce bigger than a snowflake. Prospero, in _The Tempest_,
+commands, besides his "delicate Ariel," all
+
+    --elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves.
+
+The make-believe fairies in _The Merry Wives_ know how to pinch
+offenders black and blue. The shepherd, in the _Winter's Tale_, takes
+the baby Perdita for a changeling. So that all the Shakespeare people
+seem wise in goblin-lore.
+
+You see that we have looked for the literature of our pretty friends
+only among the old poets, and only English poets at that; but the
+foreign fairies are no less charming. Chaucer and Spenser loved the
+brood especially. Robert Herrick knew all about
+
+    --the elves also,
+    Whose little eyes glow;
+
+Sidney smiled on them once or twice, and great Milton could spare them a
+line out of his majestic verse. But the high-tide of their praise was
+ebbing already when Dryden and Pope were writing. Lesser poets than any
+of these, Parnell and Tickell, wrote fairy tales, but they lack the
+relish of the honeyed rhymes Drayton, Lyly, and supreme Shakespeare,
+give us. Keats was drawn to them, though he has left us but sweet and
+brief proof of it; and Thomas Hood, of all gentle modern poets, has
+done most for the "small foresters and gay." In prose the fairies are
+"famoused" east and west; for which they may sing their loudest canticle
+to the good Brothers Grimm, in Fairyland. The arts have been their
+handmaids; and some of this world's most lovable spirits have delighted
+to do them merry honor: Mendelssohn in his quicksilver orchestral music,
+and dear Richard Doyle in the quaintest drawings that ever fell,
+laughing, from a pencil-point.
+
+[Illustration: THE ELVES WHOSE LITTLE EYES GLOW.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CHANGELINGS.
+
+
+KIDNAPPING was a favorite pastime with our small friends, and a great
+many reasons concurred to make it a necessary and thriving trade. We are
+told that both the Tylwyth Teg and the Korrigans had a fear that their
+frail race was dying out, and sought to steal hearty young children, and
+leave the wee, bright, sickly "changeling," or ex-changeling, in its
+place. That sounds like a quibble; for we know that fairies were free
+from the shadow of death, and could not possibly dread any lessening of
+their numbers from the old, old cause. Yet we saw that the air-elves
+held pitched battles, and murdered one another like gallant soldiers,
+from the world's beginning; and again comes a straggling little proof to
+make us suspect that they had not quite the immortality they boasted.
+However, we pass it by, sure at least that the philosopher who first
+observed the merry goblins to be at bottom wavering and disconsolate,
+recognized an instance of it in this pathetic eagerness to adopt babies
+not their own. Fairy-folk were believed, in general, to have power over
+none but unbaptized children.
+
+A tradition older and wider than the Tylwyth Teg's runs that a yearly
+tribute was due from Fairyland to the prince of the infernal regions, as
+poor King AEgeus had once to pay Minos of Crete with the seven fair boys
+and girls; and that, for the sake of sparing their own dear ones, the
+little beings, in their fantastic dress, flew east and west on an
+anxious hunt for human children, who might be captured and delivered
+over to bondage instead. And they crept cautiously to many a cradle, and
+having secured the sleeping innocent, "plucked the nodding nurse by the
+nose," as Ben Jonson said, and vanished with a scream of triumphant
+laughter. Welsh fairies have been caught in the very act of the theft,
+and a pretty fight they made, every time, to keep their booty; but the
+strength of a man or a woman, was, of course, too much for them to
+resist long.
+
+Now, whenever a mother, who, you may count upon it, thought her own
+urchin most beautiful of all under the moon, found him growing cross and
+homely, in despite of herself, she suddenly awoke to this view of the
+case: that the dwindled babe was her babe no longer, but a miserable
+young gosling from Fairyland slipped into its place. A miserable young
+foreign gosling it was from that hour, though it had her own
+grandfather's special kind of a nose on its unmistakable face.
+
+The discovery always made a great sensation; people came from the
+surrounding villages to wonder at the lean, gaping, knowing-eyed small
+stranger in the crib, and to propose all sorts of charms which should
+rid the house of his presence, and restore the rightful heir again. They
+were not especially polite to the poor changeling. In Denmark, and in
+Ireland as well, they dandled him on a hot shovel! If he were really a
+changeling, the fairies, rather than see him singed, were sure to
+appear in a violent fluster and whisk him away, and at the same minute
+to drop its former owner plump into the cradle. And if it were not a
+changeling, how did those queer by-gone mammas know when to stop the
+broiling and baking?
+
+Mr. George Waldron, who in 1726 wrote an entertaining _Description of
+the Isle of Man_, recorded it that he once went to see a baby supposed
+to be a changeling; that it seemed to be four or five years old, but
+smaller than an infant of six months, pale, and silky-haired, and (what
+was unusual) with the fairest face under heaven; that it was not able to
+walk nor to move a joint, seldom smiled, ate scarcely anything, and
+never spoke nor cried; but that if you called it a fairy-elf, it fixed
+its gaze on you as if it would look you through. If it were left alone,
+it was overheard laughing and frolicking, and when it was taken up
+after, limp as cloth, its hair was found prettily combed, and there were
+signs that it had been washed and dressed by its unseen playfellows.
+
+The main point to put the family mind at rest on the matter, was to
+make the changeling "own up," force him to do something which no tender
+mortal in socks and bibs ever was able to do, such as dance, prophesy,
+or manage a musical instrument. There was an Irish changeling, the
+youngest of five sons, who, being teased, snatched a bagpipe from a
+visitor, and played upon it in the most accomplished and melting manner,
+sitting up in his wooden chair, his big goggle-eyes fixed on the
+company. And when he knew he was found out, he sprang, bagpipe and all,
+into the river; which leads one to suspect that he was a sort of stray
+Stroemkarl.
+
+[Illustration: THERE WAS AN IRISH CHANGELING.]
+
+The Welsh fairies had good taste, and admired wholesome and handsome
+children. They stole such often, and left for substitute the
+plentyn-newid (the change-child) who at first was exactly like the
+absent nursling, but soon grew ugly, shrivelled, biting, wailing,
+cunning and ill-tempered. In the hope of proving whether it were a
+fairy-waif or not, people put the little creature to such hard tests,
+that sometimes it nearly died of acquaintance with a rod, or an oven, or
+a well.
+
+[Illustration: "THE ACORN BEFORE THE OAK HAVE I SEEN."]
+
+If the bereaved parent did some very astonishing thing in plain view of
+the wonder-chick, that would generally entrap it into betraying its
+secrets. A French changeling was once moved unawares to sing out that it
+was nine hundred years old, at least! In Wales, and also in Brittainy
+(which are sister-countries of one race) the following story is current:
+A mother whose infant had been spirited away, and who was much perplexed
+over what she took to be a changeling, was advised to cook a meal for
+ten farm-servants in one egg-shell. When the queer little creature,
+burning with curiosity, asked her from his high-chair what she was
+about, she could hardly answer, so excited was she to hear him speak. At
+that he cried louder: "A meal for ten, dear mother, in one egg-shell?
+The acorn before the oak have I seen, and the wilderness before the
+lawn, but never did I behold anything like that!" and so gave damaging
+evidence of his age and his unlucky wisdom. And the woman replied: "You
+have seen altogether too much, my son, and you shall have a beating!"
+And thereupon she began to thrash him, until he screeched, and a fairy
+appeared hurriedly to rescue him, and in the crib lay the round, rosy,
+real child, who had been missing a long while.
+
+Now the "gentry" of modern Greece had an eye also to clever children;
+but they almost always brought them back, laden with gifts, lovelier in
+person than when they were taken from home. And if they appointed a
+changeling in the meantime (which they were not very apt to do) it never
+showed its elfin nature until it was quite grown up! unlike the uncanny
+goblins who were all too ready from the first to give autobiographies on
+the slightest hint.
+
+The Drows of the Orkney Islands fancied larger game. They used to stalk
+in among church congregations and carry off pious deacons and
+deaconesses! So wrote one Lucas Jacobson Debes, in 1670.
+
+In a pretty Scotch tale, a sly fairy threatened to steal the "lad
+bairn," unless the mother could tell the fairy's right name. The latter
+was a complete stranger, and the woman was sore worried; and went to
+walk in the woods to ease her anxious and aching heart, and to think
+over some means of outwitting the enemy of her boy. And presently she
+heard a faint voice singing under a leaf:
+
+      Little kens the gude dame at hame
+    That Whuppity Stoorie is ma name!
+
+When the smart lady in green came to take the beautiful "lad bairn," the
+mother quietly called her "Whuppity Stoorie!" and off she hurried with a
+cry of fear; like the Austrian dwarf Kruzimuegeli, the "dear Ekke
+Nekkepem" of Friesland, and many another who tried to play the same
+trick, and who were always themselves the means of telling mortals the
+very names they would conceal.
+
+[Illustration: SHE HEARD A FAINT VOICE SINGING UNDER A LEAF.]
+
+Fairy-folk young and old were coquettish enough about their names, and
+greatly preferred they should not be spoken outright. This habit got
+them into many a scrape. The anecdote of "Who hurt you? Myself!" was
+told in Spain, Finland, Brittainy, Japan, and a dozen other kingdoms,
+and seems to be as old as the Odyssey. Do you remember where Ulysses
+tells the Cyclop that his name is Outis, which means Nobody? and how,
+after the eye of the wicked Polyphemus has been put out, the comrades
+of the big blinded fellow ask him who did the deed, and he growls back,
+very sensibly: "Nobody!" Consider what follows a typical modern version
+of the same trick.
+
+[Illustration: "AINSEL."]
+
+A young Scotch child, whom we will call Alan, sits by the fire, when a
+pretty creature the size of a doll, waltzes down the chimney to the
+hearth, and begins to frolic. When asked its name it says shrewdly:
+"Ainsel"; which to the boy sounds like what it really is, "Ownself," and
+makes him, when it is his turn to be questioned, as saucy and reticent
+as he supposes his elfin playfellow to be. So Alan tells the sprite that
+his name is "_My_ Ainsel," and gets the better of it. For bye-and-bye
+they wax very frisky and friendly, and right in the middle of their
+sport, when little Alan pokes the fire, and gets a spark by chance on
+Ainsel's foot, and when he roars with pain, and the old fairy-mother
+appears instantly, crying angrily: "Who has hurt thee? Who has hurt
+thee?" the elf blurts, of course, "My Ainsel!" and she kicks him
+unceremoniously up chimney, and bids him stop whimpering, since the burn
+was of his own silly doing! Alan, meanwhile, climbs upstairs to bed,
+rejoicing to escape the vengeance of the fairy-mother, and chuckling in
+his sleeve at the funny turn things have taken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+FAIRYLAND.
+
+    "And never would I tire, Janet,
+    In Fairyland to dwell."
+
+
+SO runs the song. Who would weary of so sweet a place? At least, we
+think of it as a sweet place; but like this own world of ours, it was
+whatever a man's eyes made it: good and gracious to the good, troublous
+to the evil. According to an old belief, a mean or angry, or untruthful
+person, always exposed himself, by the very violence of his wrong-doing,
+to become an inmate of Fairyland; and for such a one, it could not have
+been all sunshine. A foot set upon the fairy-ring was enough to cause a
+mortal to be whisked off, pounded, pinched, bewildered, and left far
+from home. It was a strange experience, and it is recorded that it
+befell many a lad and maid to be loosed from earth, and cloistered for
+uncounted years, to return, like our Catskill hero, Rip Van Winkle,
+after what he supposes to be a little time, and to find that generations
+had passed away. For those absent took no thought of time's passing, and
+on reaching earth again, would begin where their lips had dropped a
+sentence half-spoken, a hundred years before. Tales of such truants are
+common the world over.
+
+Gitto Bach (little Griffith) was a Welsh farmer's boy, who looked after
+sheep on the mountain-top. When he came home at evenfall he often showed
+his brothers and sisters bits of paper stamped like money. Now when it
+was given to him, it was real money; but the fairy-gifts would not bear
+handling, and turned useless and limp as soon as Gitto showed them. One
+day he did not return. After two years his mother found him one morning
+at the door, smiling, and with a bundle under his arm. She asked him,
+with many tears, where he had been so long, while they had mourned for
+him as dead. "It is only yesterday I went away!" said Gitto. "See the
+pretty clothes the mountain-children gave me, for dancing with them to
+the music of their harps." And he opened his bundle, and showed a
+beautiful dress: but his mother saw it was only paper, after all, like
+the fairy money.
+
+[Illustration: GITTO BACH AND THE FAIRIES.]
+
+[Illustration: KAGUYAHIME, THE MOON-MAID.]
+
+Our pretty friends enjoyed beguiling mortals into their shining
+underworld, with song, and caresses, and winning promises. Once the
+mortal entered, he met with warm welcomes from all, and the most
+exquisite meat and drink were set before him. Now, if he had but the
+courage to refuse it, he soon found himself back on earth, whence he was
+stolen. But if he yielded to temptation, and his tongue tasted fairy
+food, he could never behold his native hills again for years and years.
+And when, after that exquisite imprisonment, he should be torn from his
+delights and set back at his father's door, he should find his memory
+almost forgotten, and others sitting with a claim in his empty seat. And
+he should not remember how long he had been missing, but grow silent and
+depressed, and sit for hours, with dreamy eyes, on lonely slopes and
+wildwood bridges, not desiring fellowship of any soul alive; but with a
+heartache always for his little lost playfellows, and for that bright
+country far away, until he died.
+
+Often the creature who has once stood in the courts of Fairyland, is
+placed under vow, when released, and allowed to visit the earth, to come
+back at call, and abide there always. For the spell of that place is so
+strong, no heart can escape it, nor wish to escape it. Thus ends the old
+romance of Thomas the Rhymer: that, at the end of seven years, he was
+freed from Fairyland, made wise beyond all men; but he was sworn to
+return whenever the summons should reach him. And once as he was making
+merry with his chosen comrades, a hart and a hind moved slowly along the
+village street; and he knew the sign, laid down his glass, and smiled
+farewell; and followed them straightway into the strange wood, never to
+be seen more by mortal eyes.
+
+A wonderful and beautiful Japanese story, too, the ancient Taketori
+Monogatari, written in the first half of the tenth century, tells us how
+a grey-haired bamboo-gatherer found in a bamboo-blade a radiant
+elf-baby, and kindly took it home to his wife; and because of their
+great and ready generosity to the waif, the gods made them thrive in
+purse and health; and how, when the little one had been with them three
+months, Kaguyahime, for that was she, grew suddenly to a tall and fair
+girl, and so remained unchanging, for twenty years, while five gallant
+Japanese lords were doing her strange commands, and running risks the
+world over. Then, though the emperor, also, was her suitor, and though
+she was unspeakably fond of her old foster-parents, and grieved to go
+from them, she, being a moon-maid, went back in her chariot one glorious
+night to her shining home, whence she had been banished for some old
+fault, and whither the love and longing and homage of all the land
+pursued her.
+
+Many sweet wild Welsh and Cornish legends deal with shepherds and yeomen
+who set foot on a fairy mound by chance, or who, in some other fashion,
+were transplanted to the realm of the dancing, feasting elves. But they
+have a pathetic ending, since no wanderer ever strayed back with all his
+old wits sound and sharp. He seemed as one who walked in sleep, and had
+no care or recognition for the faces that once he held dear. And if he
+were roused too rudely from his long reverie, he died of the shock.
+
+[Illustration: THE LITTLE HUNCHBACK.]
+
+A merrier tale, and one which is very wise and pretty as well, is
+current in many literatures. The Irish version runs somewhat in this
+fashion, and the Spanish and Breton versions are extraordinarily like
+it. A little hunchback resting at nightfall in an enchanted
+neighborhood, heard the fairies, from their borderlands near by, singing
+over and over the names of the days of the week. "And Sunday, and
+Monday, and Tuesday!" they chorus: "and Sunday and Monday and Tuesday."
+The boy thinks it rather hard that they do not know enough to finish
+their musical chant with the names of the remaining days; so, when they
+pause a little, very softly, and tunefully, he adds: "And Wednesday"!
+The wee folk are delighted, and make their chant longer by one strophe;
+and they crowd out in their finery from the mound, bearing the stranger
+far down into its depths where there are the glorious open halls of
+Fairyland: kissing and praising their friend, and bringing him the
+daintiest fruit lips ever tasted; and to reward him lastingly, their
+soft little hands lift the cruel hump from his back, and he runs dancing
+home, at a year's end, to acquaint the village with his happy fortune.
+Now another deformed lad, his neighbor, is racked with jealousy at the
+sight of his former friend made straight and fair; and he rushes to the
+fairy-mound, and sits, scowling, waiting to hear them begin the magic
+song. Presently rise the silver voices: "And Sunday, and Monday, and
+Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and
+Wednesday": whereat the audience breaks in rudely, right in the middle
+of a cadence: "And Friday." Then the gentle elves were wrathful, and
+swarmed out upon him, snarling and striking at him in scorn; and before
+he escaped them, they had fastened on his crooked back beside his own,
+the very hump that had belonged to the first comer! In the anecdote, as
+it is given in Picardy, the justice-dealing goblins are described as
+very small and comely, clad in violet-colored velvet, and wearing hats
+laden with peacock plumes. In the Japanese rendering, a wen takes the
+place of the hump.
+
+Fairyland is the home of every goblin, bright or fierce, that ever we
+heard of; the home, too, of the ogres and dragons, and enchanted
+princesses, and demons, and Jack-the-giant-killers of all time. The
+Brownies belonged there, and went thither in their worldly finery, when
+service was over; the gnomes and snarling mine-sprites, the sweet
+dancing elves, the fairies who stole children, or romped under the
+river's current, or plagued honest farmers, or tiptoed it with a torch
+down a lonesome road--every one there had his country and his fireside.
+
+[Illustration: TAKNAKANX KAN.]
+
+In that merry company were many who have escaped us, and who sit in a
+blossomy corner by themselves, the oddest of the odd: like the Japanese
+Tengus, who have little wings and feathers, like birds, until they grew
+up; mouths very seldom opened, and most amazing big noses, with which,
+on earth, they were wont to fence, to whitewash, to write poetry, and to
+ring bells! There, too, were the dark-skinned Indian wonder-babies:
+Weeng, whom Mr. Longfellow celebrates as Nepahwin, the Indian god of
+sleep, with his numerous train of little fairy men armed with clubs; who
+at nightfall sought out mortals, and with innumerable light blows upon
+their foreheads, compelled them to slumber. The great boaster, Iagoo,
+whom Hiawatha knew, once declared that he had seen King Weeng himself,
+resting against a tree, with many waving and music-making wings on his
+back. Indian, likewise, was the spirit named Canotidan, who dwelt in
+many a hollow tree; and the lively fellow, Taknakanx Kan, who sported
+"in the nodding flowers; who flew with the birds, frisked with the
+squirrels, and skipped with the grasshopper; who was merry with the gay
+running brooks, and shouted with the waterfall; who moved with the
+sailing cloud, and came forth with the dawn." He never slept, and never
+had time to sleep, being the god of perpetual motion. Near him, perhaps,
+see-sawed a couple of long-eyed Chinese San Sao, or the glossy-haired
+Fees of Southern France pelted one another with dew-drops. There also,
+the African Yumboes had their magnificent tents spread: those strange
+little thieving Banshee-Brownies, wrapped in white cotton pangs, who
+leaned back in their seats after a gorgeous repast, and beheld an army
+of hands appear and carry off the golden dishes! There abided, as the
+venerated elder of the rest, the long-bearded Pygmies whom Homer,
+Aristotle and good Herodotus had not scorned to celebrate, whom Sir John
+Mandeville avowed to be "right fair and gentle, after their quantities,
+both the men and the women.... And he that liveth eight year, men hold
+him right passing old ... and of the men of our stature have they as
+great scorn and wonder as we would have among us of giants!"
+
+Of these and thousands more marvellous is Fairyland full; full of things
+startling and splendid and grewsome and visionary:
+
+                      ----full of noises,
+    Sounds and sweet airs that give delight, and hurt not.
+
+Any picture of it is tame, any worded description dull and heavy, to you
+who discover it daily at first hand, and who know its faces and voices,
+which fade too quickly from the brain. All fine adventures spring
+thence: all loveliest color, odor and companionship are in that
+stirring, sparkling world. Can you not help us back there for an hour?
+Who knows the path? Who can draw a map, and set up a sign-post? Who can
+bar the gate, when we are safe inside, and keep us forever and ever in
+our forsaken "dear sweet land of Once-upon-a-Time"?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE PASSING OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE.
+
+
+THERE was once a very childish child who laid her fairy-book on its face
+across her knee, and sat all the morning watching the cups of the
+honeysuckle, grieved that not one solitary elf was left to swing on its
+sun-touched edges, and laugh back at her, with unforgetful eyes.
+
+We are sorry for her, and sorry with her. The Little People, alas! have
+gone away; would that they might return! No man knows why nor when they
+left us; nor whither they turned their faces. The exodus was made softly
+and slowly, till the whole bright tribe had stolen imperceptibly into
+exile. Mills, steam-engines and prowling disbelievers joined to banish
+them; their poetic and dreamy drama is over, their magic lamp out, and
+their jocund music hushed and forbidden. Or perhaps they of themselves
+went lingeringly and sorrowfully afar, because the world had grown too
+rough for them.
+
+Geoffrey Chaucer, in the fourteenth century, wrote in his sweet,
+tranquil fashion:
+
+      In olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour . . .
+    Al was this lond fulfilled of faerie . . . . .
+    I speke of mony hundrid yeer ago;
+    But now can no man see non elves mo:
+
+which you may understand as an announcement somewhat ahead of time. For
+many, many "elves mo" were on record after the good poet's lyre was
+hushed, and "thick as motes in the sunbeam" centuries after their
+reported flight. There have been sound-headed folk in every age, of whom
+Chaucer was one, who jested over the poor fairies and their arts, and
+spoke of them only for gentle satire's sake. But though Chaucer was sure
+the goblins had perished, his neighbors saw manifold lively specimens of
+the race, without stirring out of the parish. Up to two hundred years
+ago prayers were said in the churches against bad fairies!
+
+[Illustration: "AL WAS THIS LOND FULFILLED OF FAERIE."]
+
+Sir Walter Scott related that the last Brownie was the Brownie of
+Bodsbeck, who lived there long, and vanished, as is the wont of his
+clan, when the mistress of the house laid milk and a piece of money in
+his haunts. He was loath to go, and moaned all night: "Farewell to
+Bonnie Bodsbeck!" till his departure at break of day. A girl from
+Norfolk, England, questioned by Mr. Thomas Keightley, admitted that she
+had often seen the _Frairies_, dressed in white, coming up from their
+little cities underground! Mr. John Brand saw a man who said he had seen
+one that had seen fairies! And Mr. Robert Hunt, author of the _Drolls
+and Traditions of Old Cornwall_, wrote that forty years ago every rock
+and field in that country was peopled with them! and that "a gentleman
+well-known in the literary world of London very recently saw in
+Devonshire a troop of fairies! It was a breezy summer afternoon, and
+these beautiful little creatures were floating on circling zephyrs up
+the side of a sunlit hill, fantastically playing,
+
+    'Where oxlips and the nodding violet grow.'
+
+So here are three trustworthy gentlemen, makers of books on this special
+subject, and none of them very long dead, to offset Master Geoffrey
+Chaucer, and to bring the "lond fulfilled of faerie" closer than he
+dreamed. About the year 1865, a correspondent told Mr. Hunt the
+following queer little story:
+
+[Illustration: FAIRY STORIES.]
+
+"I heard last week of three fairies having been seen in Zennor very
+recently. A man who lived at the foot of Trendreen Hill in the valley of
+Treridge, I think, was cutting furze on the hill. Near the middle of
+the day he saw one of the small people, not more than a foot long,
+stretched at full length and fast asleep, on a bank of heath, surrounded
+by high brakes of furze. The man took off his furze-cuff and slipped the
+little man into it without his waking up, went down to the house, and
+took the little fellow out of the cuff on the hearthstone, when he
+awoke, and seemed quite pleased and at home, beginning to play with the
+children, who were well pleased also with the small body, and called him
+Bobby Griglans. The old people were very careful not to let Bob out of
+the house, nor be seen by the neighbors, as he had promised to show the
+man where crocks of gold were buried on the hill. A few days after he
+was brought, all the neighbors came with their horses, according to
+custom, to bring home the winter's reek of furze, which had to be
+brought down the hill in trusses on the backs of the horses. That Bob
+might be safe and out of sight, he and the children were shut up in the
+barn. Whilst the furze-carriers were in to dinner, the prisoners
+contrived to get out to have a run round the furze-reek, when they saw a
+little man and woman not much larger than Bob, searching into every hole
+and corner among the trusses that were dropped round the unfinished
+reek. The little woman was wringing her hands and crying 'O my dear and
+tender Skillywidden! wherever canst thou be gone to? Shall I ever cast
+eyes on thee again?' 'Go 'e back!' says Bob to the children; 'my father
+and mother are come here too.' He then cried out: 'Here I am, mammy!' By
+the time the words were out of his mouth, the little man and woman, with
+their precious Skillywidden, were nowhere to be seen, and there has
+been no sight nor sign of them since. The children got a sound thrashing
+for letting Skillywidden escape."
+
+[Illustration: THE CAPTURE OF SKILLYWIDDEN.]
+
+Such is the latest evidence we can find of the whereabouts of our
+goblins.
+
+We may, however, consider ourselves their contemporaries, since among
+the peasantry of many countries over-seas, the belief is not yet
+extinct. But it is pretty clear to us, modern and American as we are
+(safer in so thinking than anybody was anywhere before!) that the
+"restless people," as the Scotch called them, are at rest, and clean
+quit of this world; and perhaps satisfied, at last, of their chance of
+salvation, along with fortunate Christians.
+
+Such a great system as this of fairy-lore, propped on such show of
+earnestness, grew up, not of a sudden like a mushroom after a July
+rain, but gradually and securely, like a coral-reef. And the
+dream-building was not nonsense at all, but a way of putting what was
+evident and marvellous into a familiar guise. If certain strange things,
+which are called phenomena, happened--things like the coming of pebbles
+from clouds, music from sand, sparkling light from decay, or disease and
+death from the mere handling of a velvety leaf--then our forefathers,
+instead of gazing straight into the eyes of the fact, as we are taught
+to do, looked askance, and made a fantastic rigmarole concerning the
+pebbles, or the music, and passed it down as religion and law.
+
+The simple-minded citizens of old referred any trifling occurrence,
+pleasant or unpleasant, to the fairies. The demons and deities,
+according to their notion of fitness, governed in vaster matters; and
+the new, potent sprites took shape in the popular brain as the
+controllers of petty affairs. If a shepherd found one of his flock sick,
+it had been elf-shot; if a girl's wits went wool-gathering, it was a
+sign she had been in fairyland; if a cooing baby turned peevish and
+thin, it was a changeling! Wherever you now see a mist, a cobweb, a
+moving shadow on the grass; wherever you hear a cricket-chirp, or the
+plash of a waterfall, or the cry of the bird on the wing, there of yore
+were the fairy-folk in their beauty. They stood in the mind to represent
+the lesser secrets of Nature, to account for some wonder heard and seen.
+It was many a century before nations stopped romancing about the brave
+things on land and sea, and began to speculate, to observe more keenly,
+to hunt out reasons, and to lift the haze of their own fancy from heroic
+facts and deeds.
+
+Think a moment of the Danish moon-man, who breathed pestilence, and the
+moon-woman, whose harp was so charming. Well, the moon-man meant nothing
+else than the marsh, slimy and dangerous, which yielded a malarial odor;
+and the wee woman with her harp represented the musical night-wind,
+which played over the marsh rushes and reeds. Was it not so, too, with
+the larger myths of Greece? For the story of Proserpine, carried away by
+the god of the under world, and after a weary while, given back for
+half-a-year to her fond mother Ceres, tells really of the seed-corn
+which is cast into her dark soil, and long hidden; but reappears in
+glory, and stays overground for months, basking in the sun. And so on
+with many a fable, which we read, unguessing of the thought and purpose
+beneath. Though it was erring, we can hardly thank too much that joyous
+and reverent old paganism which fancied it saw divinity in each move of
+Nature, kept a natural piety towards everything that lived, and made a
+thousand sweet memoranda, to remind us forever of the wonder and charm
+of our earth. All mythology, and the part the fairies play in it, stands
+for what is true.
+
+                    ----"Still
+    Doth the old instinct bring back the old names":
+
+and again and again, when we cite some beautiful fiction of Merman and
+Kobold, of White Dwarf or Pooka, we but repeat, whether aware of it or
+not, how the dews come down at morning, or the storm-wind breaks the
+strong trees, or how a comet, trailing light, bursts headlong across the
+wide sky.
+
+To comprehend fairy-stories, to get under the surface of them, we would
+have to go over them all at great length, and with exhaustless patience.
+And as in digging for the tendrils of a delicate, berry-laden vine, we
+have to search, sometimes, deep and wide into the woodland loam, among
+gnarly roots of shrubs and giant pines, so in tracing the sources of the
+simplest tale which makes us glad or sad, we fall across a network of
+ponderous ancient lore; of custom, prejudice, and lost day-dreams, from
+which this vine, also, is hard to be severed.
+
+The spirit of these neat little goblin-chronicles was right and sincere;
+but the matter of them was often sadly astray. Of course, sometimes,
+useless, misleading details gathered to obscure the first idea, and to
+overrun it with a tangle of error; and not only were fine stories
+spoiled, but many were started which were funny, or silly, or grim
+merely, without serving any use beyond that.
+
+But so powerful is Truth, when there was actually a grain of it at the
+centre, that even those versions which were exaggerated and distorted,
+played into the hands of what we call Folk-lore, and laid their golden
+key at the feet of Science. You will discover that, besides pointing out
+the workings of the natural world, the fairy-tales rested often on the
+workings of our own minds and consciences. The Brownie was a little
+schoolmaster set up to teach love of order, and the need of perfect
+courtesy; the Nix betokened anything sweet and beguiling, which yet was
+hurtful, and to which it was, and is, a gallant heart's duty not to
+yield. And thus, from beginning to end, the elves at whom we laugh, help
+us toward larger knowledge, and a more chivalrous code of behavior. How
+shall we say, then, that there never was a fairy?
+
+[Illustration: GOOD-BYE]
+
+A miner, hearing the drip of subterranean water, took it to be a Duergar
+or a Bucca, swinging his tiny hammer over the shining ore. His notion of
+the Bucca, askew as it was, was one at bottom with our knowledge of the
+dark brooklet. You, the young heirs of mighty Science, can often
+outstrip the slow-gathered wisdom of dead philosophers. But do not
+despise that fine old imagination, which felt its way almost to the
+light. A sixteenth-century boy, who was all excitement once over the
+pranks of Robin Goodfellow, knew many precious things which our very
+great nineteenth-century acuteness has made us lose!
+
+Good-bye, then, to the army of vanishing "gentry," and to their
+steadfast friends, and to you, children dear! who are the guardians of
+their wild unwritten records. Shall you not miss them when next the moon
+is high on the blossomy hillocks, and the thistledown, ready-saddled,
+plunges to be off and away? Merry fellows they were, and shrewd and
+just; and we were very fond of them; and now they are gone. And their
+going, like a mounting harmony, note by note, which ends in one noble
+chord, with a hush after it, leads us to a serious parting word. Keep
+the fairies in kindly memory; do not lose your interest in them. They
+and their history have an enchanting value, which need never be outgrown
+nor set aside; and to the gravest mind they bring much which is
+beautiful, humane and suggestive.
+
+We have found that believers in the Little People were not so wrong,
+after all; and that the eye claiming to have seen a fairy saw, verily, a
+sight quite as astonishing. Let us think as gently of other myths to
+which men have given zeal, awe and admiration, of every faith hereafter
+which seems to us odd and mistaken. For many things which are not true
+in the exact sense, are yet dear to Truth; and follow her as a baby's
+tripping tongue lisps the language of its mother, not very successfully,
+but still with loyalty, and with a meaning which attentive ears can
+always catch.
+
+Surely, our ancestors loved the "span-long elves" who wrought them no
+great harm, and who gave them help and cheer. We will praise them, too.
+Who knows but some little goblin's thorny finger directed many an
+innocent human heart to march, albeit waveringly, towards the ample
+light of God?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page vii, "Puck" changed to "Pueck" (All that Pueck demanded)
+
+Page vii, "wa" changed to "Wa" (Wag-at-the-Wa')
+
+Page viii, "Kopenick" changed to "Koepenick" (Kobold of Koepenick)
+
+Page viii, "changling" changed to "changeling" (was an Irish changeling)
+
+Page viii, "Taknakaux" changed to "Taknakanx" (Taknakanx Kan)
+
+Page 27, "airy" changed to "fairy" (to the fairy neighbors)
+
+Page 30, illustration caption, "RUGEN" changed to "RUeGEN" (THE ISLE OF
+RUeGEN)
+
+Page 37, illustration caption, "RUGEN" changed to "RUeGEN" (DWARVES OF
+RUeGEN)
+
+Page 38, repeated word "and" removed from text. Original read (by twos
+and and threes)
+
+Page 93, illustration caption, "KOPENICK" changed to "KOePENICK" (KOBOLD
+OF KOePENICK)
+
+Page 169, "scources" changed to "sources" (the sources of the simplest)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Brownies and Bogles, by Louise Imogen Guiney
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