The Still-Folk of Central Germany were another tribe of the Fairy Kingdom: they inhabited the interior of hills, in which they had their spacious halls and strong rooms filled with gold, silver, and precious stones--the entrance to which was only obtained by mortals by means of the Luck-flower, or the Key-flower (_Schlüsselblume_). They held communication with the outer world, like the Trolls of Scandinavia, through certain springs or wells, which possessed great virtues: not only did they give extraordinary growth and fruitfulness to all trees and shrubs that grew near them, whose roots could drink of their waters, or whose leaves be sprinkled with the dews condensed from their vapours, but for certain human diseases they formed a sovereign remedy. In Monmouthshire, in years gone by, there existed a good Fairy, or Procca, who was wont to appear to Welshmen in the guise of a handful of loose dried grass, rolling and gambolling before the wind. Fairy Revels. The English Fays and Fairies, the Pixies of Devon-- “Fantastic Elves, that leap The slender Hare-cup, climb the Cowslip bells, And seize the wild bee as she lies asleep,” according to the old pastoral poets, were wont to bestir themselves soon after sunset--a time of indistinctness and gloomy grandeur, when the moonbeams gleam fitfully through the wind-stirred branches of their sylvan retreats, and when sighs and murmurings are indistinctly heard around, which whisper to the listener of unseen beings. But it is at midnight that the whole Fairy kingdom is alive: then it is that the faint music of the blue Harebell is heard ringing out the call to the Elfin meet: “’Tis the hour of Fairy ban and spell, The wood-tick has kept the minutes well, He has counted them all with click and stroke, Deep on the heart of the forest Oak; And he has awakened the sentry Elve, That sleeps with him in the haunted tree, To bid him ring the hour of twelve, And call the Fays to their revelry. “They come from the beds of the Lichen green, They creep from the Mullein’s velvet screen, Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swing in their cobweb hammocks high, And rocked about in the evening breeze; Some from the hum-bird’s downy nest, Had driven him out by Elfin power, And pillowed on plumes of his rainbow crest, Had slumbered there till the charmed hour; Some had lain in a scarp of the rock, By glittering ising-stars inlaid, And some had opened the ‘Four-o’-Clock,’ And stolen within its purple shade; And now they throng the moonlight glade, Above, below,--on every side, Their little minim forms arrayed, In the tricksy pomp of Fairy pride.”--_Dr. Drake’s ‘Culprit Fay.’_