"He might se him besides Oft in hot undertides.

The king of fairi with his route,

Come to hunt him al about,

With dim cri and shrill blowing, &c.—

Ac best thai no nome

No never he nist whider thai be come."

Romance of Orfeo and Heurodis.

The fiction of fairies is supposed to have been brought, with other extravagancies of a like nature, from the eastern nations, whilst the European christians were engaged in the holy war; such, at least, is the notion of an ingenious writer, who thus expresses himself: " nor were the monstrous embellishments of enchantments the invention of romancers, but formed upon eastern tales, brought thence by travellers from their crusades and pilgrimages, which, indeed, have given a cast peculiar to the wild imagination of the Eastern people."*. That fairies, in particular, came from the east, we are assured by that learned orientalist, Mr. Herbelot, who tells us that the Persians called the fairies Peri, and the Arabs genies; that according to the eastern fiction, there is a certain country inhabited by fairies, called gennistian, which answers to our fairy-land; and that the ancient romances of Persia are full of Peri, or fairies †. Mr.

Supplement to the Trans. Pref. to Jarvis's Don Quixote. + Herbelot tells us, that there is an Arabian book, entitled "Pièces de Corail amassées, sur ce qui regarde les Ginnes, ou Génies. But above all see the Arabian Nights' entertain. ments.

Warton (vol. I. p. 64) in his observations on Spenser's Fairy Queen, is decided in his opinion that the fairies came from the east, but he justly remarks that they were introduced into this country long before the period of the crusades. The race of fairies, he informs us, were established in Europe in very early times, but “not universally." The fairies were confined to the north of Europe-to the ultima Thule-to the British isles to the divisis orbe Britannicis. They were unknown at this remote era to the Gauls or the Germans, and they were, probably, familiar to the vallies of Scotland and Danmonium, when Gaul and Germany were yet unpeopled either by real or imaginary beings. The belief, indeed, of such invisible agents, assigned to different parts of nature, prevails at this very day in Scotland, and in Devonshire and Cornwall, regularly transmitted from the remotest antiquity to the present time, and totally unconnected with the spurious romance of the crusader or the pilgrim. Hence those superstitious notions now existing in our western villages, where the spriggian* are still believed to delude benighted travellers, to discover hidden treasures, to influence the weather, and to rule the winds. This, then," says Warton, "strengthens the hypothesis of the northern parts of Europe being peopled by colonies from the east!"

"That the Druids worshipped rocks, stones, and fountains, and imagined them inhabited, and actuated by divine intelligence of a lower rank, may be plainly inferred from their stone monuments. These inferior deities, the Cornish call spriggian, or spirits, which answer to genii or fairies; and the vulgar in Cornwall, still discourse of these spriggian as of real beings, and pay them a kind of veneration."-Borlasse, p. 163, 164.

The inhabitants of Shetland and the isles pour libations of milk or beer through a holed stone, in honour of the spirit Brownie, and it scarcely can admit of a doubt that the Danmonii were accustomed to sacrifice to the same spirit, since the Cornish and the Devonians on the border of Cornwall, invoke to this day, the spirit Brownie, on the swarming of their bees. With respect to rivers, it is a certain fact, that the primitive Britons paid them divine honours; even now, in many parts of Devonshire and Cornwall, the vulgar may be said to worship brooks and wells, to which they resort at stated periods, performing various ceremonies in honour of those consecrated waters; and the Highlanders, to this day, talk with great respect of the genius of the sea; never bathe in a fountain, lest the elegant spirit that resides in it should be offended, and remove; and mention not the water of rivers without prefixing to it the name of excellent.* In one of the western islands, the inhabitants retained the custom to the close of the last century, of making an annual sacrifice to the Genius of the Ocean.†

* See Macpherson's Introduction to the History of Great Britain and Ireland.

It is a well-known fact, that the inhabitants of India deify their principal rivers; the waters of the Ganges possess an uncommon sanctity; and the modern Arabians, like the Ishmalites of old, concur with the Danmonii, in their reverence of springs and fountains. Even the names of the Arabian and Danmonium wells have a striking correspondence. We have the singing well or the white fountain, and there are springs with similar names in the deserts of Arabia. Perhaps the veneration of the Danmonii in fountains and rivers, may be accepted as no trivial proof, to be thrown into the mass of circumstancial evidence in favour of their Eastern original. That the Arabs, in their thirsty deserts, should even adore their wells of "springing water," need not excite our

In the west of Europe, a host of other demons was brought upon the stage, far more formidable, who had their origin in Celtic, Teutonic, and even Eastern fables; and as their existence as well as influence, was, not only by the early Christians, but even by the reformers, boldly asserted; it was long before the rites to which they have been accustomed, were totally eradicated. Thus in Orkney, for instance, it was customary, even during the last century, for lovers to meet within the pale of a large circle of huge stones, which had been dedicated to the chief of the Scandinavian deities. Through a hole in one of the pillars, the hands of the contracting parties were joined, and the faith they plighted was named, the promise of Odin, to violate which, was infamous. But the influence of the Dii majores of the Edda was slight and transient, in comparison with that of the duergan or dwarfs, who figure away in the same mythology, and whose origin is thus recited :-Odin and his brothers killed the giant Ymor, from whose wound ran so much blood, that all the families of the earth were drowned, except one who saved himself on board a bark. These gods, then made of the giant's bones, of his flesh and blood, the earth, the waters, and the heavens. But, in the body of the monster, several worms had, in the course of putrefaction, been engendered, which, by order of the gods, partook of both human shape and reason. These little beings

surprise; but we may justly wonder at the inhabitants of Devonshire and Cornwall, thus worshipping the gods of nume rous rivers, and never failing brooks, familiar to every part of Danmonium.

VOL. I.

X

possessed the most delicate figures, and always dwelt in subterraneous caverns, or clefts in the rocks. They were remarkable for their riches, their activity, and their malevolence.* This is the origin of our modern fairies, who, at the present day are described as people of a small stature, gaily dressed in habiliments of green. They possess material shapes, with the means, however, of making themselves invisible. They multiply their species; they have a relish for the same kind of food that affords sustenance to the human race, and when, on some festal occasion, they would regale themselves with good beef or mutton; they employ elf arrows to bring down their victims. At the same time they delude the shepherds with the substitution of some vile substance, or illusory image, possessing the same form as that of the animal they had taken away. These spirits are much addicted to music; and when they make their excursions, a most exquisite band of music never fails to accompany them in their course. They are addicted to the abstraction of the human species, in whose place they leave substitutes for living beings, named, changelings, the unearthly origin of whom is known by their mental imbecility, or some wasting disease. When

* Sir Walter Scott has supposed that this mythological account of the duergan, bears a remote allusion to real history, having an ultimate reference to the oppressed Fins, who, before, the arrival of the invaders, under the conduct of Odin, were the prior possessors of Scandinavia. The followers of this hero saw a people, who knew how to work upon the minds of the people better than they did; and, therefore, from a superstitious regard, transformed them into spirits of an unfavourable character, dwelling in the interior of rocks, and surrounded with immense riches. See Border Minstrelsy, vol. II, p. 179.