Thus far for the Pixies of Devon; as for the adjoining Somerset, all we have to say is, that a good woman from that county, with whom we were acquainted, used, when making a cake, always to draw a cross upon it. This, she said, was in order to prevent the Vairies from dancing on it. She described these Vairies as being very small people, who, with the vanity natural to little personages, wear high-heeled shoes, and if a new-made cake be not duly crossed, they imprint on it in their capers the marks of their heels. Of the actual existence of the Vairies, she did not seem to entertain the shadow of a doubt. * * * * * In Dorset also, the Pixy-lore still lingers. The being is called _Pexy_ and _Colepexy_; the fossil belemnites are named Colepexies'-fingers; and the fossil echini, Colepexies'-heads. The children, when naughty, are also threatened with the Pexy, who is supposed to haunt woods and coppices.[349] * * * * * "In Hampshire," says Captain Grose, "they give the name of Colt-Pixy to a supposed spirit or fairy, which in the shape of a horse _wickers_, i. e. neighs, and misleads horses into bogs, etc." The following is a Hampshire legend:[350] _The Fairy-Thieves._ A farmer in Hampshire was sorely distressed by the unsettling of his barn. However straightly over-night he laid his sheaves on the threshing-floor for the application of the morning's flail, when morning came, all was topsy-turvy, higgledy-piggledy, though the door remained locked, and there was no sign whatever of irregular entry. Resolved to find out who played him these mischievous pranks, Hodge couched himself one night deeply among the sheaves, and watched for the enemy. At length midnight arrived, the barn was illuminated as if by moonbeams of wonderful brightness, and through the key-hole came thousands of elves, the most diminutive that could be imagined. They immediately began their gambols among the straw, which was soon in a most admired disorder. Hodge wondered, but interfered not; but at last the supernatural thieves began to busy themselves in a way still less to his taste, for each elf set about conveying the crop away, a straw at a time, with astonishing activity and perseverance. The key-hole was still their port of egress and regress, and it resembled the aperture of a bee-hive, on a sunny day in June. The farmer was rather annoyed at seeing his grain vanish in this fashion, when one of the fairies said to another in the tiniest voice that ever was heard--"_I weat, you weat?_" Hodge could contain himself no longer. He leaped out crying, "The devil sweat ye. Let me get among ye!" when they all flew away so frightened that they never disturbed the barn any more. * * * * *