“En la forest et environ, Mais jo ne sais par quel raison La scut l’en les fées veeir, Se li Breton nos dient veir, etc.” (In the forest and around, I wot not by what reason found, There may a man the fairies spy, If Britons do not tell a lie.) but it may be difficult to conceive an accurate idea, from the mere name, of the popular French _fays_ or _fairies_ of the twelfth century. In Vienne, in Dauphiny, is _Le puit des fées_, or Fairy–well. These _fays_, it must be confessed, have a strong resemblance to the nymphs of the ancients, who inhabited caves and fountains. Upon a little rock which overlooks the Rhone are three round holes which nature alone has formed, although it seem, at first sight, that art has laboured after her. They say that they were formerly frequented by Fays; that they were full of water when it rained; and that they there frequently took the pleasure of the bath; than which they had not one more charming (Chorier, _Recherches_, etc.). Pomponius Mela, an eminent geographer, and, in point of time, far anterior to Pliny, relates, that beyond a mountain in Æthiopia, called by the Greeks the “High Mountain,” burning, he says, with perpetual fire, is a hill spread over a long tract by extended shores, whence they rather go to see wide plains than to behold [the habitations] of Pans and Satyrs. Hence, he adds, this opinion received faith, that, whereas, in these parts is nothing of culture, no seats of inhabitants, no footsteps—a waste solitude in the day, and a mere waste silence—frequent fires shine by night; and camps, as it were, are seen widely spread; cymbals and tympans sound; and sounding pipes are heard more than human (B. 3, c. 9). These invisible essences, however, are both anonymous and nondescript.