Legends of the South of Ireland;" but it is proper to state, as the authors of these works make a point of doing, that the great masters of Fairy lore now living are Messrs. Grimm, the German writers, with whose language (the language of Goethe) we are, to our regret, unacquainted. But we are zealous students at second hand.

A man who had a Nis, or goblin, in his house, could think of no other way of getting rid of him than by moving. He accordingly packed up his goods, and was preparing to set off with the cart, when the Nis put up his head from it, and cried out-"Eh! Well, we're moving to-day, you see."

A German, for a similar reason, set fire to his barn, hoping to burn the goblin with it.

Turning round to look at the blaze, as he was driving away, the goblin said, "It was time to move, wasn't it?”

There was a Nis that was plagued by a mischievous boy. He went one night to the boy, as he was sleeping in bed by the side of a tall man, and kept pulling him up and down, under the pretence of not being able to make him fit the other's stature. When he was down he was too short; and when up, not long enough. "Short and long don't match,” said he; and kept pulling him up and down all night. Being tired by daylight, he went and sat on a wall, and as the dog barked, but could not get at him, the Nis kept plaguing him, by thrusting down first one leg and then the other, saying, “Look at my little leg! Look at my little leg! By this time the boy got up dreadfully tired with his dream, and while the Nis was wrapt up in his amusement, the boy went behind him, and tumbled him into the yard, saying, "Look at him altogether."

Two Scotch lassies were eating a bowl of broth. They had but one spoon, and yet they scarcely seemed to have

tasted their mess, but they had come to the bottom of it. "I hae got but three sups," cried the one, "and it's a' dune!" "It's a' dune, indeed,” cried the other. "Ha! ha ha!" cried a third voice, "Brownie has got the raist o't."

A husband going a journey, gave a Kobold the charge of his wife during his absence. The good man departed, and Kobold had nothing to do from that day forward but assume frightful shapes, fling people down, and crack ribs. At length the husband came back, and a figure at the door welcomed him with a face pale, but delighted. "Who are you?" cried the husband; for he did not know Kobold, he had grown so thin. "I am the keeper of our fair friend," said the elf, "but it is for the last time. Whew!" continued he, blowing, "what a time I've had of it!"

A Neck, or water spirit, was playing upon his harp, when two boys said to him, "What is the use, Neck, of your sitting and playing there? you will never be saved.". Upon this the poor spirit began to weep bitterly. The boys ran home, and told their father, who rebuked them; so they came back again, and said, "Be of good cheer, Neck, father says you will be saved as well as us." The Neck then took his harp again, and played sweetly, long after it was too dark to see him. This is very beautiful.

The most ghastly, to our taste, of all the equivocal fairies, are the Elle-women, or Female Elves, of Denmark. The male is a little old man with a low-crowned hat; the female is young and fair, very womanly to all appearance, and with an attractive countenance, "but behind she is hollow, like a dough-trough. She has so many lures that people find it difficult to resist her; and they must always follow her about, if they once fondle her; otherwise they

lose their senses. But she is apt to bring herself into
suspicion by trying never to let her back be seen.
If you
make the sign of the cross, she is obliged to turn round.
We know not whether the charm remains in spite of the
dough-trough, provided you are once beguiled. A more
unsatisfactory charm could not be found. Think of clasp-
ing her to your heart, and finding your hands come together
within an ace of your breastbone!

When lonely German clasps an Elle-maid,
And finds too late a butcher's tray-

We may laugh at such horrors at this time of day, especially in England; but these darker parts of superstition are still mischievous sometimes to those who believe in them; and we have no doubt there are still believers, upon grounds which it would be found difficult to shake. Το say the truth, we are among the number of those who, with all allowance for the lies that have been plentifully told on such matters, do yet believe that fairies have actually been seen; but then it was by people whose perceptions were disturbed. It is observable that the ordinary seers have been the old, the diseased, or the intoxicated; young people's aunts, or grandfathers, or peasants going home from the ale-house. When the young see them, their minds are prepared by a firm belief in what their elders have told them; so that terrors which should pass off for nothing, on closer inspection, become a real perception with these weaker heads; the ideas impressed upon the brain taking the usual morbid stand outside of it. We have no doubt that the case is precisely the same, in its degree, with the spectral illusion of faces and more horrid sights, experienced by opium-eaters, and others in a delicate state of health. We learn from a work of the late Mr. Bingley,

that the metal known by the name of cobalt, is so called from the German word kobold, or goblin, so often mentioned in this article, the miners who dig for it appearing to be particularly subject to the vexations of the elf, in consequence of the poison which his namesake exhales.* If it should be asked how we can tell that any thing which is really seen does not really exist, we answer, that such a state of existence is, at all events, not a healthy one, and therefore its perceptions are not to be taken as proper to humanity. Not to mention that spectral illusions are of no use but to terrify, and are quite as likely, and more so, to happen to the conscientious and the delicately organized and considerate, as to those whose vices might be supposed to require them.

The consequence of these darker parts of the belief in fairies, is that deliriums have frequently been occasioned by them; fancied announcements and forebodings have preyed on the spirits in domestic life, and the popular mind kept in a state, which bigotry and worldliness have been enabled to turn to the worst account. But a countercharm was nevertheless growing up in secret against the witchcrafts of imagination, by dint of imagination itself, and the readiness with which it was prepared to enter into the thoughts of others, and sympathize with the great cause of knowledge and humanity. The cure for these and a hundred evils, is not the rooting out of imagination, which would be a proceeding, in fact, as impossible as undesirable, but the cultivation of its health and its cheerfulness. Good sense and fancy need never be separated. Imagination is no enemy to experience, nor can experience draw her from her last and best holds. She stands by,

"Useful Knowledge," vol. i. p. 220.

willing to know every thing he can discover, and able to recommend it, by charms infinite, to the good will and sentiment of all men. What has been in the world is, perhaps, the best for what is to be, none of its worst evils excepted; but found out and known to be evils, the latter have lost even their doubtful advantages; imagination, in the finer excitements of sympathy and the beautiful creations of the poets, casts off these shades of uneasy slumber; and all that she says to knowledge is, "Discard me not, for your own sake as well as mine; lest with want of me, want of sympathy itself return, and utility be again mistaken for what it is not, as superstition has already mistaken it."

The sum of our creed in these matters is this: Spectral illusion, or the actual sight of spiritual appearances, takes place only with the unhealthy, and therefore is not desirable as a general condition: but spiritual or imaginative sight is consistent with the healthiest brain, and enriches our sources of enjoyment and reflection. The three things we have to take care of, on these and all other occasions, are health, knowledge, and imagination.