Throughout the West of England still linger some few stray waifs and legends of the past. In the New Forest Sir Bevis of Southampton is no mythical personage, and the peasant will tell how the Knight used to take his afternoon’s walk, across the Solent, from Leap to the Island. Here in the Forest still dwell fairies. The mischievous sprite, Laurence, still holds men by his spell and makes them idle. If a peasant is lazy, it is proverbially said, “Laurence has got upon him,” or, “He has got a touch of Laurence.” He is still regarded with awe, and barrows are called after him. Here, too, in the Forest still lives Shakspeare’s Puck, a veritable being, who causes the Forest colts to stray, carrying out word for word Shakspeare’s description,— “I am that merry wanderer of the night, When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile Neighing in likeness of a filly foal.” (_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act ii., Sc. 1.) This tricksy fairy, so the Forest peasant to this hour firmly believes, inhabits the bogs, and draws people into them, making merry, and laughing at their misfortunes, fulfilling his own roundelay— “Up and down, up and down, I will lead them up and down; I am feared in field and town, Goblin, lead them up and down.” (_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act iv., Sc. 2.) Only those who are eldest born are exempt from his spell. The proverb of “as ragged as a colt Pixey” is everywhere to be heard, and at which Drayton seems to hint in his _Court of Faerie_:— “This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt, Still walking like a ragged colt.” He does not, however, in the Forest, so much skim the milk, or play pranks with the chairs, but, as might be expected from the nature of the country, misleads people on the moors, turning himself into all sorts of shapes, as Shakspeare, Spenser, and Jonson, have sung. There is scarcely a village or hamlet in the Forest district which has not its “Pixey Field,” and “Pixey Mead,” or its “Picksmoor,” and “Cold Pixey,” and “Puck Piece.” At Prior’s Acre we find Puck’s Hill, and not far from it lies the great wood of Puckpits; whilst a large barrow on Beaulieu Common is known as the Pixey’s Cave.[213] Then, too, on the south-west borders of the Forest remains the legend, its inner meaning now perhaps forgotten, that the Priory Church of Christchurch was originally to have been built on the lonely St. Catherine’s Hill, instead of in the valley where the people lived and needed religion. The stones, however, which were taken up the hill in the day were brought down in the night by unseen hands. The beams, too, which were found too short on the heights, were more than long enough in the town. The legend further runs, beautiful in its right interpretation, that when the building was going on, there was always one more workman—namely, Christ—than came on the pay-night.