{403}At the time when Christianity came, the women played a prominent and truly glorious part there; all the historians bear witness. Between the fourth and the sixth century Fritigill, Queen of the Marcomanni, Clotilda, Queen of France, and Bertha. Queen of England, had compelled their husbands to bow down before the Cross, and not by witchcraft, as the pagans wickedly maintained, but simply by persuasion. Other women, who belonged to noble families or to the common people at large, a Krimhild, a Thekla, and a Liobat, assisted the missionaries in their dangerous enterprise and actually helped them in cutting down the sacred oak trees. What had become, during these long continued persecutions, of you, fair Gann, noble Aurinia, majestic Velleda, and of your sisters, the other Druidesses? They were wandering about in dark forests, proscribed and weeping over their departed glory; they concealed themselves in remote places where the agents of the civil power but rarely appeared. Sometimes, of an evening, they would venture forth, approach a belated traveller on a cross-road, and {404}hold with him mysterious converse. Sometimes, also, the inhabitants of a village, or even of a larger place, would go secretly to their well chosen hiding places to consult them on the good or evil chances of their prospects in life, or on an epidemic that was attacking their cattle. Some people, and among them not unfrequently recent converts, who were still strongly imbued with their former creed, would ask them to name their new-born infants and thus to bring them good luck. Hence they were at first known as _Godmothers_, and at a later time as _Fairies_. It was naturally supposed that like the ancient fairies of the East, these women also derived their power from the stars, for why else should they have been met so constantly on the mountain slopes, when the moon was shining brightly, or slipping suddenly from behind a rock or a tree, where will-o’-the-wisps and fireflies alone were in the habit of being about? Among these fairies many were kind and naturally benevolent; others, no doubt embittered by their fate, appeared irascible and ill disposed. Woe to the men, or even the cattle upon whom they cast an evil eye! This evil influence could be averted only by the assistance of another fairy, a good one in this case, who relieved you more or less promptly by means {405}of a talisman, a constellated stone, or certain words possessed of magic power. Now, if we add to these godmothers, to these godchildren, to good and bad fairies, the terrible Ogres, whose very name filled the people of those days with terror, you will know all the mysterious personages which appear in the myths of children and which we have all known in our early days.