Note X.'

For thou wert christen'd man.-St. XII. p. 161.

The Elves were supposed greatly to envy the privileges acquired by Christian initiation, and they gave to those mortals who had fallen into their power, a certain precedence, founded upon this advantageous distinction. Tamlane, in the old ballad, describes his own rank in the fairy procession:

"For I ride on a milk-white steed,

And aye nearest the town;
Because I was a christened knight,

They gie me that renown."

I presume, that, in the Danish ballad, the obstinacy of the "Weiest Elf," who would not flee for cross or sign, is to be derived from the circumstance of his having been "christen'd

man.

How eager the elves were to obtain for their offspring the prerogatives of Christianity, will be proved by the following story: "In the district called Haga, in Iceland, dwelt a nobleman called Sigward Forster, who had an intrigue with one of the subterranean females. The elf became pregnant, and exacted from her lover a firm promise that he would procure the baptism of the infant. At the appointed time, the mother came to the church-yard, on the wall of which she placed a golden cup, and a stole for the priest, agreeable to the custom of making an offering at baptism. She then stood a little apart. When the priest left the church, he enquired the

meaning of what he saw, and demanded of Sigward, if he avowed himself the father of the child. But Sigward, ashamed of the connection, denied the paternity. He was then interrogated if he desired that the child should be baptized; but this also he answered in the negative, lest, by such request, he should admit himself to be the father. On which the child was left untouched, and unbaptized. Whereupon the mother, in extreme wrath, snatched up the infant and the cup, and retired, leaving the priestly cope, of which fragments are still in preservation. But this female denounced and imposed upon Sigward, and his posterity, to the ninth generation, a singular disease, with which many of his descendants are afflicted at this day." Thus wrote Einar Gudmund, pastor of the parish of Garpsdale, in Iceland, a man profoundly versed in learning, from whose manuscript it was extracted by the learned Torfæus.-Historia Hrolfi Krakii, Hafnia, 1715, prefatio.

Note XI.

And gaily shines the fairy land;

But all is glistening show.-St. XV. p. 163.

No fact respecting Fairy-land seems to be better ascertained than the fantastic and illusory nature of their apparent pleasure and splendour. It has been already noticed, in the former quotations from Dr Grahame's entertaining volume, and may be confirmed by the following Highland tradition. "A woman, whose new-born child had been conveyed by them into their secret abodes, was also carried thither herself, to re

main, however, only until she should suckle her infant. She, one day, during this period, observed the Shi'ichs busily employed in mixing various ingredients in a boiling cauldron; and, as soon as the composition was prepared, she remarked that they all carefully anointed their eyes with it, laying the remainder aside for future use. In a moment when they were all absent, she also attempted to anoint her eyes with the precious drug, but had time to apply it to one eye only, when the Daoine Shi returned. But with that eye she was henceforth enabled to see every thing as it really passed in their secret abodes :-she saw every object, not as she hitherto had done, in deceptive splendour and elegance, but in its genuine colours and form. The gaudy ornaments of the apartment were reduced to the walls of a gloomy cavern. Soon after, having discharged her office, she was dismissed to her own home. Still, however, she retained the faculty of seeing, with her medicated eye, every thing that was done, any where in her presence, by the deceptive art of the order. One day, amidst a throng of people, she chanced to observe the Shi'ich, or man of peace, in whose possession she had left her child though to every other eye invisible. Prompted by maternal affection, she inadvertently accosted him, and began to enquire after the welfare of her child. The man of peace, astonished at being thus recognised by one of mortal race, demanded how she had been enabled to discover him. Awed by the terrible frown of his countenance, she acknowledged

;

what she had done. He spat in her eye, and extinguished it for ever."-GRAHAME's Sketches, p. 116-118. It is very remarkable, that this story, translated by Dr Grahame from popular Gælic tradition, is to be found in the Otia Imperialia of Gervase of Tilbury. A work of great interest might be compiled upon the origin of popular fiction, and the transmission of similar tales from age to age, and from country to country. The mythology of one period would then appear to pass into the romance of the next century, and that into the nursery-tale of the subsequent ages. Such an investigation, while it went greatly to diminish our ideas of the richness of human invention, would also shew, that these fictions, however wild and childish, possess such charms for the populace, as enable them to penetrate into countries unconnected by manners and language, and having no apparent intercourse, to afford the means of transmission. It would carry me far beyond my bounds, to produce instances of this community of fable, among nations who never borrowed from each other any thing intrinsically worth learning. Indeed the wide diffusion of popular fictions may be compared to the facility with which straws and feathers are dispersed abroad by the wind, while valuable metals cannot be transported without trouble and labour. There lives, I believe, only one gentleman, whose unlimited acquaintance with this subject might enable him to do it justice; I mean my friend Mr Francis Douce, of the British Museum, whose usual kindness will, I hope, pardon my

mentioning his name, while on a subject so closely connected with his extensive and curious researches.

Note XII.

-I sunk down in a sinful fray,

And 'twixt life and death was snatch'd away,

To the joyless fairy bower.

The subjects of Fairy Land were recruited from the regions of humanity by a sort of crimping system, which extended to adults as well as to infants. Many of those who were in this world supposed to have discharged the debt of nature, had only become denizens of the "Londe of Faery." In the beautiful fairy Romance of Orfee and Heurodiis (Orpheus and Eurydice) in the Auchinleck MS. is the following striking enumeration of persons thus abstracted from middle earth. Mr Ritson unfortunately published this romance from a copy in which the following, and many other highly poetical passages, do not occur:

"Then he gan biholde aboute al,

And seighe ful liggeand within the wal,
Of folk that wer thidder y-brought,

And thought dede and ne're nought;

Some stode withouten hadde;

And sum none armes nade;

And sum thurch the bodi hadde wounde;

And sum lay wode y-bounde;

And sum armed on hors sete;

And sum astrangled as thai ete;