CHAPTER VI. Fairies. “Come, frolick youth, and follow me My frantique boy, and I’ll show thee The country of the Fayries.” --_Drayton’s “Muses Elizium, 1630.”_ “O l’heureux temps que celui de ces fables, Des bon démons, des esprits familiers, Des forfadets, aux mortels secourables! On écoutait tous ces faits admirables Dans son château, près d’un large foyer: Le père et l’oncle, et la mère et la fille, Et les voisins, et toute la famille, Ouvraient l’oreille à Monsieur l’aumonier, Qui leur ferait des contes de sorcier. On a banni les démons et les fées; Sous la raison les grâces étouffées, Livrent nos cœurs à l’insipidité; Le raisonner tristement s’accrédite; On court hélas! après la vérité, Ah! croyez-moi, l’erreur a son mérite.” --_Voltaire._ “Fairy elves Whose midnight frolics by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees.” --_Milton._ POPULAR NOTIONS ABOUT FAIRIES. It is not very easy to ascertain precisely what the popular idea of a fairy is. The belief in them seems to have died out, or, perhaps, to speak more correctly, they are no longer looked upon as beings that have any existence in the present day. That such a race did once exist, that they possessed supernatural powers, that they sometimes entered into communication with mankind, is still believed, but all that is related of them is told as events that happened long before the memory of man, and it is curious to see how a known historical fact--the invasion of the island by Yvon de Galles in the fourteenth century,--has, in the lapse of ages, assumed the form of a myth, and how his Spanish troops have been converted into denizens of fairyland. Perhaps, as has been suggested by some writers who have made popular antiquities their peculiar study, all fairy mythology may be referred to a confused tradition of a primæval race of men, who were gradually driven out by the encroachments of more advanced civilization. According to this theory the inferior race retired before their conquerors into the most remote parts of the woods and hills, where they constructed for themselves rude dwellings, partly underground and covered with turf, such as may still be found in Lapland and Finland, or made use of the natural fissures in the rocks for their habitations, thus giving rise to the idea that fairies and dwarfs inhabit hills and the innermost recesses of the mountains. In the superior cunning which an oppressed race frequently possesses may have originated the opinion generally entertained of the great intelligence of the fairy people--and, as it is not to be supposed that a constant warfare was going on between the races, it is far from improbable that some of the stories which turn on the kindly intercourse of fairies with mortals,