In Mr. Kirk’s book we meet “the invisible Wights which haunt Houses, ... throw great Stones, Pieces of Earth and Wood at the Inhabitants,” but “hurt them not at all.” As we have said, Major (1518) calls these wights “Fauni or Brobne”—that is, Brownies—and says that they thrash as much grain in one night as twenty men could do, and throw stones about. The legend of their working was common in Scotland, and a correspondent says that in Devonshire the belief in Pixies who set the house in order exists among the grand-parents of the present generation. But the sportive is more common than the kindly aspect of Brownies. Through history we constantly find them causing objects to move without visible contact, and “acting in sport, like Buffoons and Drolls.” In his _Letters on Demonology_ (p. 377) Scott gives instances where the buffoon or droll was detected, and confessed that the rattlings of plates and movements of objects were caused by an apparatus of threads or horse-hair. He also quotes the famous doings of “The Just Devil of Woodstock” in 1649, which so perplexed and discomfited the Cromwellian Commissioners. He accounts for those annoyances by the confessions of Joe Collins of Oxford, “Funny Joe,” which he quotes from Hone’s _Every-Day Book_, while Hone quotes from the _British Magazine_ of 1747. But the writer in the _British Magazine_ gives no references or authorities for the authenticity of Funny Joe’s confessions, nor even for the existence of Joseph. Scott could not find his original in the pamphlets of the British Museum, and some of the statements attributed to Joe do not tally with the official account, and other contemporary documents collected in Sir Walter’s _Woodstock_. Joe pretends, for example, to have been secretary to the Commission under the name of Giles Sharpe; but in the other accounts the secretary is named Browne. A Royalist Brownie or Polter-geist lies under shrewd suspicion, but Joe’s own existence is unproved, and his alleged evidence is of no value. However, no sane person can dream of doubting that many a Brownie has been as much in flesh and blood as the Brownie of Bodsbeck in Hogg’s story.