Here, with the exception of a few general reflections which are of little value, Mr. Beckwith's paper ends. It was read, I ought to say, by the Rev. Richard Walsh at the meeting of the South Wilts Folk-lore Society and Field Club held at Amesbury in June 1892, and is to be found in the published transactions of that body (Vol. IV. New Series, pp. 305 _seq._). THE FAIRY WIFE There is nothing surprising in that story, to my mind, but the reprobation with which Beckwith visits himself. What could he have done that he did not? How could he have refrained from doing what he did? Yet there are curious things about it, and one of those is the partiality of the manifestation. The fairy was visible to him, his child and his dogs but to no one else. So, in my own experience, had she been whom I saw in K---- Park, whom Harkness, my companion, did not see. My explanation of it does not carry me over all the difficulties. I say, or will repeat if I have said it before, that the fairy kind are really the spirit, essence, substance (what you will) of certain sensible things, such as trees, flowers, wind, water, hills, woods, marshes and the like, that their normal appearance to us is that of these natural phenomena; but that in certain states of mind, perhaps in certain conditions of body, there is a relation established by which we are able to see them on our own terms, as it were, or in our own idiom, and they also to treat with us to some extent, to a large extent, on the same plane or standing-ground. That there are limitations to this relationship is plain already; for instance, Beckwith was not able to get his fairy prisoner to speak, and I myself have never had speech with more than one in my life. But as to that I shall have a very curious case to report shortly, where a man taught his fairy-wife to speak.