The people who tell fairy stories like the _Well of the World's End_, the _Knight of the Red Shield_, the _Castle East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon_, have no belief, have neither belief nor disbelief, in the adventures of them. But the same people have other stories of which they take a different view, stories of wonderful things more near to their own experience. Many a man to whom the _Well of the World's End_ is an idea, a fancy, has in his mind a story like that of Grendel which he believes, which makes him afraid. The bogle that comes to a house at night and throttles the goodman is a creature more hardy than the dragon, and more persevering. Stories like that of Beowulf and Grendel are to be found along with other popular stories in collections; but they are to be distinguished from them. There are popular heroes of tradition to this day who are called to do for lonely houses the service done by Beowulf for the house of Hrothgar. Peer Gynt (not Ibsen's Peer Gynt, who is sophisticated, but the original Peter) is a lonely deer-stalker on the fells, who is asked by his neighbour to come and keep his house for him, which is infested with trolls. Peer Gynt clears them out,[43] and goes back to his deer-stalking. The story is plainly one that touches the facts of life more nearly than stories of _Shortshanks_ or the _Blue Belt_. The trolls are a possibility. [Footnote 43: Asbjörnsen, _Norske Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn_. _At renske Huset_ is the phrase--"to cleanse the house." Cf. _Heorot is gefælsod_, "Heorot is cleansed," in _Beowulf_.] The story of Uistean Mor mac Ghille Phadrig is another of the same sort.[44] It is not, like the _Battle of the Birds_ or _Conal Gulban_, a thing of pure fantasy. It is a story that may pass for true when the others have lost everything but their pure imaginative value as stories. Here, again, in the West Highlands, the champion is called upon like Beowulf and Peer Gynt to save his neighbours from a warlock. And it is matter of history that Bishop Gudmund Arason of Hólar in Iceland had to suppress a creature with a seal's head, Selkolla, that played the game of Grendel.[45] [Footnote 44: J.F. Campbell, _Tales of the West Highlands_, ii. p. 99. The reference to this story in _Catriona_ (p. 174) will be remembered.] [Footnote 45: _Biskupa Sögur_, i. p. 604.]