The tales and superstitions of the early Britons were intimately related to their religious ideas, and exerted as powerful an influence on their lives as their belief in the gods. So it is in keeping with our subject that we proceed to present some of these fairy tales and legends. Shakespeare has preserved ancient and quaint traditions of the Fairies and Puck, and of Mab, Queen of the Fairies, from which we quote. “_Fairy._--Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call’d Robin Good-fellow. Are you not he That frights the maidens of the villagery, Skims milk, and sometimes labors in the quern, And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn; And sometimes makes the drink to bear no harm; Misleads night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck, Are not you he? _Puck._--Thou speakest aright, I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly-foal; And sometimes lurk I in a gossip’s bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab, And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her withered durlap pour the ale. The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometimes for three-foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum--down topples she, And tailor cries, and falls into a cough; And then the whole quire hold their hips and laffe, And waxen in their mirth, and neeze and swear, A merrier hour was never wasted there. O then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies’ midwife; and she comes, In shape no bigger than an agate stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies, Over men’s noses as they lie asleep: Her wagon-spokes, made of long spinner’s legs; The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; The traces, of the smallest spider’s web; The collars of the moonshines’ watery beams; Her whip of cricket’s bone; the lash of film; Her wagoner, a small gray-coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid: Her chariot is an empty hazel nut, Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out of mind the fairies’ coachmakers. This is that very Mab That plats the manes of horses in the night; And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, Which once untangled much misfortune bode. This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them.” A few of the very many fairy tales once current in Old England and in Western Europe generally, may well be given here in illustration of their general character. AN ELFIN STORY.