[321] Otia Imperialia apud Leibnitz Scriptores rerum Brunsvicarum, vol. i. p. 981.

[322] Vice calicis.

[323] Otia Imperialia apud Leibnitz Scriptores rerum Brunsvicarum, vol. i. p. 980.

[324] There is, as far as we are aware, no vestige of these names remaining in either the French or English language, and we cannot conceive how the Latin names of sea-gods came to be applied to the Gotho-German Kobolds, etc.

[325] Dimidium pollicis. Should we not read pedis?

[326] Otia Imperialia apud Leibnitz Scriptores rerum Brunsvicarum, vol. i. p. 980.

[327] Can this name be connected with that of Grendel, the malignant spirit in Beówulf?

[328] Edited for the Percy Society by J. P. Collyer, Esq. , 1841. Mr.

Collyer says there is little doubt but that this work was printed before 1588, or even 1584. We think this is true only of the First Part; for the Second, which is of a different texture, must have been added some time after tobacco had come into common use in England: see the verses in p. 34.

[329] Mr. Collyer does not seem to have recollected that Huon de Bordeaux had been translated by Lord Berners; see above, p. 56.

[330] It is, according to this authority the man-fairy Gunn that steals children and leaves changelings.

[331] Discoverie of Witchcrafte, iv. ch. 10.

[332] R. Scot, Discoverie of Witchcrafte, ii. ch. 4.

[333] Ib. vii. 15.

[334] This appears to us to be rather a display of the author's learning than an actual enumeration of the objects of popular terror; for the maids hardly talked of Satyrs, Pans, etc. For Bull-beggar, see p. 316; for Urchin, p. 319. Hag is the Anglo-Saxon hæeie, German hexe, "witche," and hence the Nightmare (see p.

332) which was ascribed to witches; we still say Hag-ridden. Calcar and Sporn (spurs? ) may be the same, from the idea of riding: the French call the Nightmare, Cauchemare, from Caucher, calcare. Kit-wi-the-Canstick is Jack-with-the-Lanthorn. The Man in the Oak is probably Puck, "Turn your cloakes, quoth hee, for Pucke is busy in these oakes.

"—Iter Boreale. The Hell-wain is perhaps the Death-coach, connected with Northern and German superstitions, and the Fire-drake an Ignis Fatuus. Boneless may have been some impalpable spectre; the other terms seem to be mere appellations of Puck.

[335] Anat. of Mel. p. 47.

[336] Chap. xx. p. 134. Lond.

1604.

[337] This is, we apprehend, an egg at Easter or on Good Friday. Housle is the Anglo-Saxon huel; Goth. hunsl, sacrifice or offering, and thence the Eucharist.

[338] Terrors of the Night, 1594.

[339] Hutchinson, History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 269.

[340] As quoted by Thoms in his Essay on Popular Songs, in the Athenæum for 1847.

[341] Morgan, Phœnix Britannicus, Lond. 1732.

[342] Pandemonium, p. 207. Lond. 1684.

[343] Aubrey, Natural History of Surrey, iii 366, ap. Ritson, Fairy Tales, p. 166.

[344] The Local Historian's Table-Book, by M. A. Richardson, iii. 239. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1846.

[345] Bourne, Antiquitates Vulgares, 1725.

[346] Quoted by Brand in his Popular Antiquities, an enlarged edition of Bourne's work.

[347] This word Pixy, is evidently Pucksy, the endearing diminutive sy being added to Puck, like Betsy, Nancy, Dixie. So Mrs. Trimmer in her Fabulous Histories—which we read with wonderful pleasure in our childhood, and would recommend to our young readers—calls her hen-robins Pecksy and Flapsy. Pisgy is only Pixy transposed. Mrs.

Bray derives Pixy from Pygmy. At Truro, in Cornwall, as Mr. Thoms informs us, the moths, which some regard as departed souls, others as fairies, are called Pisgies. He observes the curious, but surely casual, resemblance between this and the Greek ψυχη, which is both soul and moth. Grimm (p.

430) tells us from an old glossary, that the caterpillar was named in Germany, Alba, i. e. Elbe, and that the Alp often takes the form of a butterfly.

[348] Whip says he, as Mrs. Bray conjectures.

[349] Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 513. Bohn's edit.

[350] Given in the Literary Gazette for 1825. No. 430.

[351] Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 503. Bohn's edit.

[352] The Elfbore of Scotland, where it is likewise ascribed to the fairies, Jamieson, s. v. The same opinion prevails in Denmark, where it is said that any one who looks through it will see things he would not otherwise have known: see Thiele, ii. 18.

[353] The Anglo-Saxon lǽan, laécan, to play.

[354] We have abridged this legend from a well-written letter in the Literary Gazette, No. 430 (1825), the writer of which says, he knew the house in which it was said to have occurred. He also says he remembered an old tailor, who said the horn was often pitched at the head of himself and his apprentice, when in the North-country fashion they went to work at the farm-house. Its identity with other legends will be at once perceived.

[355] And true no doubt it is, i. e. the impression made on her imagination was as strong as if the objects had been actually before her. The narrator is the same person who told the preceding Boggart story.

[356] Fairy Tales, pp. 24, 56.

[357] In Northumberland the common people call a certain fungous excrescence, sometimes found about the roots of old trees, Fairy-butter. After great rains and in a certain degree of putrefaction, it is reduced to a consistency, which, together with its colour, makes it not unlike butter, and hence the name. Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 492, Bohn's edit.

The Menyn Tylna Têg or Fairy-butter of Wales, we are told in the same place, is a substance found at a great depth in cavities of limestone-rocks when sinking for lead-ore.

[358] Comp. Milton, L'Allegro, 105 seq.

[359] Richardson, Table-Book, iii. 45; see above, p. 297.

[360] This word, as we may see, is spelt faries in the following legends; so we may suppose that fairy is pronounced farry in the North, which has a curious coincidence with Peri: see above, p. 15.

[361] Probably pronounced Poke, as still in Worcestershire. Our ancestors frequently used ou, or oo for the long o while they expressed the sound of oo by o followed by e, as rote root, coke cook, more moor, pole pool.

[362] Passus xvii. v. 11,323 seq. ed. 1842.

Comp. vv. 8363, 9300, 10,902.

[363] Mr. Todd is right, in reading pouke for ponke, an evident typographic error: wrong in saying, "He is the Fairy, Robin Good-fellow, known by the name of Puck." Robin is the "hob-goblin" mentioned two lines after.

[364] We know nothing of the Oriental origin of Puck, and cannot give our full assent to the character of our ancestry, as expressed in the remaining part of Mr. Gifford's note: "but a fiend engendered in the moody minds, and rude and gloomy fancies of the barbarous invaders of the North." It is full time to have done with describing the old Gothic race as savages.

[365] Der Putz würde uns über berg und thäler tragen. To frighten children they say Der Butz kommt! see Grimm, Deut. Mythol. p.

474.

[366] The former made by adding the Anglo-Saxon and English el, le; the latter by adding the English art: see p. 318.

[367] By Sir F. Palgrave, from whose article in the Quarterly Review, we have derived many of the terms named above. He adds that the Anglo-Saxon pæcan is to deceive, seduce; the Low-Saxon picken to gambol; pickeln to play the fool; pukra in Icelandic to make a murmuring noise, to steal secretly; and pukke in Danish to scold. He further adds the Swedish poika boy, the Anglo-Saxon and Swedish piga and Danish pige girl. If, however, Pouke is connected with the Sclavonic Bog, these at the most can be only derivations from it.

By the way boy itself seems to be one of these terms; the Anglo-Saxon piga was probably pronounced piya, and a is a masculine termination in that language.

[368] See above, p. 291. In Low German, however, the Kobold is called Bullmann, Bullermann, Bullerkater, from bullen, bullern, to knock: see Grimm, ut sup. p. 473.

[369] Essay on the Ignis Fatuus, quoted by Thoms.

[370]

[371] Jack-o'-the-lanthorn, Will-o'-the-wisp. In Worcestershire they call it Hob-and-his-lanthorn, and Hobany's- or Hobredy's-lanthorn. Allies, ut sup.

[372] Knight of the Burning Pestle: see above, p. 309.

[373] Ard is the German hart, and is, like it, depreciatory. It is not an Anglo-Saxon termination, but from the Anglo-Saxon oll, dull, we have dullard. May not haggard be hawk-ard, and the French hagard be derived from it, and not the reverse?

[374] For in Anglo-Saxon áttorcoppe (Poison-head?) is spider, and from áttorcoppe-web, by the usual aphœresis of the two first syllables we put coppe-web, cobweb. May not the same have been the case with lob? and may not the nasty bug be in a similar manner connected with Puck? As dvergsnat is in Swedish a cobweb, one might be tempted to suppose that this last, for which no good etymon has been offered, was lob-web; but the true etymon is cop-web, from its usual site.

[375] Deut. Mythol. p. 492.

[376] See France. In is a mere termination, perhaps, like on, a diminutive, as in Catin Kate, Robin Bob. Lutin was also spelt Luyton: see p. 42.

[377] The two lines which follow

are rather perplexing. We would explain them thus. Bergerac, as quoted by Brand (Pop. Antiq. i.

312. Bohn's edit. ) makes a magician say "I teach the shepherds the wolf's paternoster," i. e. one that keeps off the wolf.

Wite may then be i. q. wight, and wight paternoster be a safeguard against the wights, and we would read the verse thus: "Fro the nightes mare the wite paternoster" sc. blisse it or us. St.

Peter's suster, i. e. wife (see I Cor. ix. 5) may have been canonised in the popular creed, and held to be potent against evil beings.

The term suster was used probably to obviate the scandal of supposing the first Pope to have been a married man. This charm is given at greater length and with some variations by Cartwright in his Ordinary, Act iii. sc. 1.

[378] He derives it from the French oursin, but the Ang.-Sax. name of the hedgehog is ecen.

[379] Athenæum, Oct. 9, 1847.

[380] Hist. of England, i. 478, 8vo edit.

[381] Deut. Mythol. p. 419.

[382] Layamon's Brut, etc., by Sir Frederick Madden.

[383] Tales and Popular Fictions, ch. viii. We do not wonder that this should have eluded previous observation, but it is really surprising that we should have been the first to observe the resemblance between Ariosto's tale of Giocondo and the introductory tale of the Thousand and One Nights. It is also strange that no one should have noticed the similarity between Ossian's Carthon and the tale of Soohrâb in the Shâh-nâmeh.

[384] Both here and lower down we would take faërie in its first sense.

[385] Thrope, thorpe, or dorp, is a village, the German dorf; Dutch dorp; we may still find it in the names of places, as Althorpe. Dorp occurs frequently in Drayton's Polyolbion; it is also used by Dryden, Hind and Panther, v. 1905.

[386] Undermeles i. e. undertide (p 51), aftermeal, afternoon.

[387] This is the third sense of Faërie. In the next passage it is doubtful whether it be the second or third sense; we think the latter.

[388]

[389] The derivation of Oberon has been already given (p. 208). The Shakspearean commentators have not thought fit to inform us why the poet designates the Fairy-queen, Titania. It, however, presents no difficulty. It was the belief of those days that the Fairies were the same as the classic Nymphs, the attendants of Diana: "That fourth kind of spritis," says King James, "quhilk be the gentilis was called Diana, and her wandering court, and amongst us called the Phairie.

" The Fairy-queen was therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid (Met. iii. 173) styles Titania; Chaucer, as we have seen, calls her Proserpina.

[390]

The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries

The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries

The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries