"It was my hap," he writes, "since I undertook the ministery, to question an ignorant soul (whom by undoubted report I had known to have been seduced by a teacher of unhallowed arts, to make a dangerous experiment) what he saw or heard, when he watcht the falling of the _Fernseed_ at an unseasonable and suspicious hour. Why (quoth he), fearing (as his brief reply occasioned me to conjecture) lest I should press him to tell before company, what he had voluntarily confessed unto a friend in secret some fourteen years before, do you think that the devil hath aught to do with that good seed? No; it is in the keeping of the _king of Fayries_, and _he_, I know, will do me no harm, although I should watch it again; yet had he utterly forgotten this king's name, upon whose kindness he so presumed, until I remembered it unto him out of my reading in _Huon of Burdeaux_. "And having made this answer, he began to pose me thus; S'r, you are a scholar, abut I am none: Tell me what said the angel to our Lady? or what conference had our Lady with her cousin Elizabeth concerning the birth of St. John the Baptist? "As if his intention had been to make bystanders believe that he knew somewhat more on this point than was written in such books as I use to read. "Howbeit the meaning of his riddle I quickly conceived, and he confessed to be this; that the angel did foretell John Baptist should be born at that very instant, in which the _Fernseed_, at other times invisible, did fall: intimating further (as far as I could then perceive) that this saint of God had some extraordinary vertue from the _time_ or _circumstance_ of his birth." _Jackson's Works_, book v. cap. xix. 8. vol. i. p. 916. Lond. 1673, fol. In the sixth and seventh sections of the same chapter and book I find allusions to a maiden over whom Satan had no power "so long as she had vervine and St. John's grass about her;" to the danger of "robbing a swallow's nest built in a fire-house;" and to the virtues of "south-running water." Delrius also is referred to as having collected many similar instances. I have not access to Delrius, nor yet to Huon of Burdeaux, and so am compelled deeply to regret that the good doctor did not leave on record the name of the "king of the Fayries."[8] [Footnote 8: [_Oberon_ is his name, which Mr. Keightley shows to be identical with _Elberich_. See _Fairy Mythology_, p. 208. (ed. 1850).--ED.]] RT. _Cornish Folk Lore._--A recent old cottage tenant at Poliphant, near Launceston, when asked why he allowed a hole in the wall of his house to remain unrepaired, answered that he would not have it stopped up on any account, as he left it on purpose for the _piskies_ (Cornish for _pixies_) to come in and out as they had done for many years. This is only a sample of the current belief and action. S. R. P. DICTIONARY OF ARCHAIC AND PROVINCIAL WORDS.