Fairy Faith of Europe has been received from the Eaft and from the West, from the North and from the South, but from none of these in particular. It is an agglomeration of the fuperftitions of all nations, fables from the Roman, Celtic, Gothic and Oriental mythologies." Says a fixth "Yea, they are all wrong, and thou art the fartheft wrong of any; the converse of this is the right. The attributes have been dispersed, not collected. Fables have radiated from a common centre, and their univerfal confent does not prove their fubfequent reaction upon each other, but their common derivation from a common origin." Behold how they wander!-loft on the waste of conjecture and doubt. Whence they came we know full well from the lips of one who had fojourned. there [Thomas of Ercildoune, the prophet-bard of Scotland] and who was gifted by the Fairy Queen herself with "The tongue which could not lie.' They came from their own green land, the everbright Realm of Faërie. The Elf-Folk. "They ftole little Bridget The Elf-folk lived in focieties of confiderable numbers, in the British Islands, Northern Germany, and Scandinavia. By day they dwelt in the fhady groves; and at night they came forth to vifit the dwellings of men, in order to perform the duties appointed them by their King and Queen. The most important of these duties was that of protecting ill-used or orphan children, or benefiting those who, on the death of a child's parents, had undertaken to protect or fupport it. When no adequate protection for the child was afforded by its kindred or neighbours, it was not uncommon for the Elffolk to remove it, either to their own fecret haunts in the groves, or to convey it direct to Fairy Land for a season, which might confift of seven, twice seven, or thrice feven years—the time being determined by the nature of the home from which the child had been taken, and to which it must |