“Pioneers or diggers for metal,” according to Lavater, “do affirme that in many mines there appeare straunge shapes and spirites, who are apparelled like unto other laborers in the pit. These wander up and down in caves and underminings, and seeme to bestuire themselves in all kinde of labour, as to digge after the veine, to carrie to–gither oare, to put it in baskets, and to turne the winding–whele to draw it up, when, in very deede, they do nothing lesse. They very seldome hurte the labourers (as they say) except they provoke them by laughing and rayling at them, for then they threw gravel stones at them, or hurt them by some other means. These are especially haunting in pittes where mettall moste aboundeth.”—(_Of ghostes_, etc., London, 1572, 4to, p. 73.) This is our great Milton’s “Swart faëry of the mine.” “Simple foolish men imagine, I know not howe, that there be certayne elves or fairies of the earth, and tell many straunge and marvellous tales of them, which they have heard of their grandmothers and mothers, howe they have appeared unto those of the house, have done service, have rocked the cradell, and (which is a signe of good luck) do continually tarry in the house.”—(_Of ghostes_, etc., p. 49.) Mallet, though without citing any authority, says, “after all, the notion is not everywhere exploded that there are in the bowels of the earth, fairies, or a kind of dwarfish and tiny beings of human shape, and remarkable for their riches, their activity, and malevolence. In many countries of the north, the people are still firmly persuaded of their existence. In Ireland, at this day, the good folk show the very rocks and hills in which they maintain that there are swarms of these small subterraneous men, of the most tiny size, but the most delicate figures.”—(_Northern Antiquities_, etc., ii. 47.) There is not a more generally received opinion throughout the principality of Wales than that of the existence of fairies. Amongst the commonalty it is, indeed, universal, and by no means unfrequently credited by the second ranks. Fairies are said, at a distant period, “to have frequented Bussers–hill in St. Mary’s island, but their nightly pranks, aërial gambols, and cockle–shell abodes, are now quite unknown.”—(Heath’s _Account of the Islands of Scilly_, p. 129.) “Evil spirits, called fairies, are frequently seen in several of the isles [of Orkney], dancing and making merry, and sometimes seen in armour.”—(Brand’s _Description of Orkney_, Edin., 1703, p. 61.) NELLY, THE KNOCKER.