Among the mountains of our own island we have a profuse legion. In Wales, the _Tylwth Tag_ and the Pooka; and many a hollow in the mountain where these strange animals resort, is called _Cwm Pooka_; and the wondrous cavern of the Meltè, in Breconshire, was believed to be haunted by this little pony.
In Ireland, they have a _Merrow_, the Runic sea, or oigh-maid; the _Banshee_, or fairy prophet; the _Fear-Dearg_, the Irish Puck; the _Clurricane_, a sottish pigmy; and the _Pooke_, the wild pony.
CAST. These must have been a prolific as well as a wandering brood, for I also have seen many caverns in the rocky districts, called _Poola Phouka_, in which these mischievous little creatures concealed themselves.
ASTR. In Man there is a hill called the “Fairy Hill,” a tumulus of the Danes, which is thought to be a nocturnal revel-place for the Man fairies which preside over their fisheries.
Scotland was a fertile mother of monsters: the _Ourisks_ or _Uriskin_, the goblin-satyrs or shaggy men; the _Brownies_; the _Kelpies_, or river-demons; the _Bargheists_; the _Red-cap_; the _Daoine Shi_, or Men of Peace; the _Glaslic_, or noontide hag, which haunted the district of Knoidart; and the _Lham-Dearg_, or red-hand, in the forests of Glenmore, and Rothiemurchus; the _Bodach-Glas_; and the _Pixies_, or small grey men.
CAST. There is an islet among the Scottish Hebrides, which is called the Isle of Pigmies; and I remember a chapel there, in which very minute human bones were some time ago discovered. Think you, Astrophel, that these were the skeletons of pixies?
ASTR. I cannot think the notion irrational; there are dwarfs and giants even in our days. The _Bosgis-men_ of the Cape, and the Patagonians of South America, prove the existence of beings of another stature; and perchance of another _nature_, in days long agone. The Laplander and Bushman of the Cape are little more than three feet high; and that there were giants _too_, is proved by the fossil bones which have been found in the strata of our earth.
CAST. Then we have really dwindled in our growth, and Adam was really a hundred and twenty-three feet nine inches high, and Eve a hundred and eighteen feet nine inches and three quarters, as we are solemnly informed by our profane chronicles? Nay, even the story may be true of the Pict, who bit off the end of the mattock, with which some slave of science was opening his coffin, and thundered forth this exclamation: “I see the degeneracy of your race by the smallness of your little finger.”