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[Illustration: THE LITTLE "NECK" IN THE SWEDISH RIVER.]
Author of Songs at the Start Goose-Quill Papers The White Sail
_Fifty Illustrations by Edmund H Garrett_
BOSTON D LOTHROP COMPANY FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS
CHAPTER I. WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID 11
CHAPTER XII. THE PASSING OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE 159
The little river-neck of Sweden _Frontis._ "God speed you, gentlemen!" 16 The Neapolitan fairy 25 The elf-monarch who was made court-fool 29 The Isle of Rügen Dwarfs that give presents to children 31 The Dwarf that borrowed the silk gown 35 The Black Dwarfs of Rügen planning mischief 38 The Troll's children 40 A Coblynau 42 "I can't stay any longer!" 45 An elle-maid of Denmark 48 Bertha, the White Lady 49 Some Greek fairies 51 An elf-traveller 58 Brownie's delight was to do domestic service 65 Brownie relishes his bowl of cream 70 All that Pück demanded 73 "Wag-at-the-Wa'" 75 An Irish Cluricaune 84 Japanese children and Brownies 86 A little Fir-Darrig 87 The persistent Kobold of Köpenick 93 Mer-folk 98 The old Nix near Ghent 100 The work of the Nickel 101 Hob in Hobhole 106 The Irish Pooka was a horse too 111 Will o'-the-Wisp 113 Pisky also chased the farmers' cows 118 Red Comb was a tyrant 119 The Welsh Puck 126 A merry night-wanderer 127 "By the moon we sport and play" 129 The elves whose little eyes glow 132 There was an Irish changeling 137 "The acorn before the oak have I seen" 139 She heard a faint voice singing under a leaf 143 "Ainsel" 144 Gitto Bach and the fairies 148 Kaguyahime, the moon-maid 149 The little hunchback 152 Taknakanx Kan 156 "Al was this loud fulfilled of faeries" 161 Fairy stories 163 The capture of Skillywidden 165 Good-bye 171
A FAIRY is a humorous person sadly out of fashion at present, who has had, nevertheless, in the actors' phrase, a long and prosperous run on this planet. When we speak of fairies nowadays, we think only of small sprites who live in a kingdom of their own, with manners, laws, and privileges very different from ours. But there was a time when "fairy" suggested also the knights and ladies of romance, about whom fine spirited tales were told when the world was younger. Spenser's Faery Queen, for instance, deals with dream-people, beautiful and brave, as do the old stories of Arthur and Roland; people who either never lived, or who, having lived, were glorified and magnified by tradition out of all kinship with common men. Our fairies are fairies in the modern sense. We will make it a rule, from the beginning, that they must be small, and we will put out any who are above the regulation height. Such as the charming famous Melusina, who wails upon her tower at the death of a Lusignan, we may as well skip; for she is a tall young lady, with a serpent's tail, to boot, and thus, alas! half-monster; for if we should accept any like her in our plan, there is no reason why we should not get confused among mermaids and dryads, and perhaps end by scoring down great Juno herself as a fairy! Many a dwarf and goblin, whom we shall meet anon, is as big as a child. Again, there are rumors in nearly every country of finding hundreds of them on a square inch of oak-leaf, or beneath the thin shadow of a blade of grass. The fairies of popular belief are little and somewhat shrivelled, and quite as apt to be malignant as to be frolicsome and gentle. We shall find that they were divided into several classes and families; but there is much analogy and vagueness among these divisions. By and by you may care to study them for yourselves; at present, we shall be very high-handed with the science of folk-lore, and pay no attention whatever to learned gentlemen, who quarrel so foolishly about these things that it is not helpful, nor even funny, to listen to them. A widely-spread notion is that when our crusading forefathers went to the Holy Land, they heard the Paynim soldiers, whom they fought, speaking much of the Peri, the loveliest beings imaginable, who dwelt in the East. Now, the Arabian language, which these swarthy warriors used, has no letter P, and therefore they called their spirits Feri, as did the Crusaders after them; and the word went back with them to Europe, and slipped into general use.
