Priestley styles this affair “the best-authenticated that is anywhere extant.” He supposes it to have been “a trick of the servants, for mere amusement.” The _modus operandi_ is difficult to explain. We hear nothing of bad health or hysterics in the household.[22] For our purpose it is enough that a few incidents of this kind, however produced, might originate and keep alive the belief in Brownies, and “That shrewd and knavish sprite Called Robin Goodfellow,” who “Frights the maidens of the villagery, Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern.” By a curious coincidence, we can show a case in which phenomena of the kind usually reported as occurring at _séances_, and in examples like that of William Morse, were actually accepted as manifestations of the _Sleagh Maith_, or Fairies. In his account of the disturbances in the Wesley family, Dr. Clarke, the author, averred that he had himself witnessed similar events. It thus became necessary to consult his _Life_ (London, 1833). “In the history of my own life,” says Dr. Clarke, “I have related this matter in sufficient detail.”[23] Unluckily, in his _Life_ (pp. 76, 77) he gives scarce any details. Previous to sudden deaths in a family called Church, the phenomena of falling plates, heavy tread, and other noises occurred. Mr. Clarke “sat up one whole night in the kitchen, and most distinctly heard the above noises.” He was a born mystic, and even in childhood a reader of Cornelius Agrippa, and, later, of the alchemists. But he records the instance of a woman, who solemnly declared to Mrs. Clarke that a number of the _gentle people_ (_Sleagh Maith_) “occasionally frequented her house; that they often conversed with her, one of them putting its hands on her eyes during the time, which hands she represented, from the sensation she had, to be about the size of those of a child of four or five years of age.” The family were “worn down” with these visits, and from the mention of touches of hands it is pretty plain that we have to do with the kind of sprite who paws people at _séances_. But these sprites are recognised (the scene is the North of Ireland) as “gentle people,” Folk of Peace. The amusing thing is, that Mr. Clarke, while he believes in Mr. Wesley’s Jeffrey, and in the supernatural origin of a noise in a kitchen, laughs at similar phenomena when assigned to Fairies. It is a mere difference of terminology.