“For a long time the fairies alone had possession of L’Ancresse, the cromlechs, hougues, and caves. But evil men rose up, and ambition and the lust of knowledge led them to cross the sea, and there to learn the mighty art of magic. They returned and quickly spread the sin of witchcraft in the island, so quickly that the harmless fairies had no time to accustom themselves to the miseries which were caused thereby, and which they had no power to remedy. Their hearts fairly broke to see their happy haunts invaded by witches and wizards, their fairy rings trampled down by the heavy feet of ‘sorcières,’ and scorched by the hoofs of their demon partners every Friday night; and their human friends and pet animals pining beneath charms and spells. Unable to bear these sorrows, the poor fairies met on their beloved L’Ancresse, and finding, after much consultation, that they could do nothing against the disturbers of their happiness, they sadly resolved to get rid of their past by drinking of the fountain of forgetfulness. There is, or rather was,--for the ruthless quarries have much diminished its size--a huge pile of rocks rising from the sea at the eastern extremity of L’Ancresse Bay. At the very top of this granite castle rises a little fountain, cool in the hottest summer, unfrozen in the keenest frost. Its waters have the properties of Lethe--those who drink of them forgetting the past. In a sad procession the fairy tribe moved across the bay, and, after having scaled the steep rocks, clustered round the fountain which was to give them the bliss of unconsciousness. But for them the fountain had no virtue; they drank, and still the past came back, with all its joys and sorrows. In despair at finding even oblivion denied to them, they hastily determined to get rid of life itself. Rushing down the rocks they hurried across the Common to where stood three tall upright stones, with a third resting upon them--a monument of far-off Druid times--and there they hung themselves with blades of grass. So ended the kindly race in Guernsey, the fairy fountain and the upright stones their only monuments.” “There are still a few lingering remnants of fairy lore to be found among the old country people. Old Miss Fallaize, aged eighty, remembers how, in her youth, eatables and drinkables were left outside the door with any unfinished work, and how in the morning the food was gone--but she could not quite remember whether the work was done. But old Mr. Tourtel, over eighty, who was brought up as a boy at an old house at the Mont Durand, now pulled down, said that it was well known that the fairies lived in a ‘vôte’ (a Guernsey word for the French ‘voute,’ a vaulted cave), above La Petite Porte. They were a little people, but very strong, and would mend your cart wheels or spokes for you if you would put out some food for them.”