The Project Gutenberg eBook ofBrownies and BoglesThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Brownies and BoglesAuthor: Louise Imogen GuineyIllustrator: Edmund H. GarrettRelease date: May 24, 2012 [eBook #39782]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Chris Curnow, Emmy and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNIES AND BOGLES ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Brownies and BoglesAuthor: Louise Imogen GuineyIllustrator: Edmund H. GarrettRelease date: May 24, 2012 [eBook #39782]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Chris Curnow, Emmy and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)
Title: Brownies and Bogles
Author: Louise Imogen GuineyIllustrator: Edmund H. Garrett
Author: Louise Imogen Guiney
Illustrator: Edmund H. Garrett
Release date: May 24, 2012 [eBook #39782]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow, Emmy and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNIES AND BOGLES ***
THE LITTLE "NECK" IN THE SWEDISH RIVER.
BYLOUISE IMOGEN GUINEYAuthor ofSongs at the StartGoose-Quill PapersThe White SailFifty Illustrations by Edmund H GarrettBOSTOND LOTHROP COMPANYFRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS
Copyright, 1888,byD. Lothrop Company.PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, BOSTON.
CHAPTER I.WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID11CHAPTER II.FAIRY RULERS22CHAPTER III.THE BLACK ELVES33CHAPTER IV.THE LIGHT ELVES46CHAPTER V.DEAR BROWNIE63CHAPTER VI.OTHER HOUSE-HELPERS79CHAPTER VII.WATER-FOLK96CHAPTER VIII.MISCHIEF-MAKERS109CHAPTER IX.PUCK; AND POETS' FAIRIES123CHAPTER X.CHANGELINGS133CHAPTER XI.FAIRYLAND146CHAPTER XII.THE PASSING OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE159
The little river-neck of SwedenFrontis."God speed you, gentlemen!"16The Neapolitan fairy25The elf-monarch who was made court-fool29The Isle of Rügen Dwarfs that give presents to children31The Dwarf that borrowed the silk gown35The Black Dwarfs of Rügen planning mischief38The Troll's children40A Coblynau42"I can't stay any longer!"45An elle-maid of Denmark48Bertha, the White Lady49Some Greek fairies51An elf-traveller58Brownie's delight was to do domestic service65Brownie relishes his bowl of cream70All thatPückdemanded73"Wag-at-the-Wa'"75An Irish Cluricaune84Japanese children and Brownies86A little Fir-Darrig87The persistent Kobold ofKöpenick93Mer-folk98The old Nix near Ghent100The work of the Nickel101Hob in Hobhole106The Irish Pooka was a horse too111Will o'-the-Wisp113Pisky also chased the farmers' cows118Red Comb was a tyrant119The Welsh Puck126A merry night-wanderer127"By the moon we sport and play"129The elves whose little eyes glow132There was an Irishchangeling137"The acorn before the oak have I seen"139She heard a faint voice singing under a leaf143"Ainsel"144Gitto Bach and the fairies148Kaguyahime, the moon-maid149The little hunchback152TaknakanxKan156"Al was this loud fulfilled of faeries"161Fairy stories163The capture of Skillywidden165Good-bye171
WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID.
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 eithernever 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 severalclasses 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.
"Elf" and "goblin," too, are interesting to trace. There was a great Italian feud, in the twelfth century, between the German Emperor and the Pope, whose separate partisans were known as the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. As time went on, and the memory of that long strife was still fresh,a descendant of the Guelfs would put upon anybody he disliked the odious name of Ghibelline; and the latter, generation after generation, would return the compliment ardently, in his own fashion. Both terms, finally, came to be mere catch-words for abuse and reproach. And the fairies, falling into disfavor with some bold mortals, were angrily nicknamed "elf" and "goblin"; in which shape you will recognize the last threadbare reminder of the once bitter and historic faction of Guelf and Ghibelline.
It is likely that the tribe were designated as fairies because they were, for the most part, fair to see, and full of grace and charm, especially among the Celtic branches; and people, at all times, had too much desire to keep their good-will, and too much shrinking from their rancor and spite, to give them any but the most flattering titles. They were seldom addressed otherwise than "the little folk," "the kind folk," "the gentry," "the fair family," "the blessings of their mothers," and "the dear wives"; just as, thousands of years back, the noblest and cleverest nation the world has everseen, called the dreaded Three "Eumenides," the gracious ones. It is a sure and fast maxim that wheedling human nature puts on its best manners when it is afraid. In Goldsmith's racy play, She Stoops to Conquer, old Mistress Hardcastle meets what she takes to be a robber. She hates robbers, of course, and is scared half out of her five wits; but she implores mercy with a cowering politeness at which nobody can choose but laugh, of her "good Mr. Highwayman." Now, fairies, who knew how to be bountiful and tender, and who made slaves of themselves to serve men and women, as we shall see, were easily offended, and wrought great mischief and revenge if they were not treated handsomely; all of which kept people in the habit of courtesy toward them. A whirlwind of dust is a very annoying thing, and makes one splutter, and feel absurdly resentful; but in Ireland, exactly as in modern Greece, the peasantry thought that it betokened the presence of fairies going a journey; so they lifted their hats gallantly, and said: "God speed you, gentlemen!"
"GOD SPEED YOU, GENTLEMEN!"
Fairies had their followers and votaries fromearly times. Nothing in the Bible hints that they were known among the heathens with whom the Israelites warred; nothing in classic mythology has any approach to them, except the beautiful wood and water-nymphs. Yet poet Homer, Pliny the scientist, and Aristotle the philosopher, had some notion of them, and of their influence. In old China, whole mountains were peopled with them, and the coriander-seeds grown in their gardensgave long life to those who ate of them. The Persians had a hierarchy of elves, and were the first to set aside Fairyland as their dwelling-place. Saxons, in their wild forests, believed in tiny dwarves or demons called Duergar. Celtic countries, Scotland, Brittany, Ireland, Wales, were always crowded with them. In the "uttermost mountains of India, under a merry part of heaven," or by the hoary Nile, according to other writers, were the Pigmeos, one cubit high, full-grown at three years, and old at seven, who fought with cranes for a livelihood. And the Swiss alchemist, Paracelsus (a most pompous and amusing old bigwig), wrote that in his day all Germany was filled with fairies two feet long, walking about in little coats!
Their favorite color, noticeably in Great Britain, was green; the majority of them wore it, and grudged its adoption by a mortal. Sir Walter Scott tells us that it was a fatal hue to several families in his country, to the entire gallant race of Grahames in particular; for in battle a Grahame was almost always shot through the greencheck of his plaid. French fairies went in white; the Nis of Jutland, and many other house-sprites, in red and gray, or red and brown; and the plump Welsh goblins, whose holiday dress was also white, in the gayest and most varied tints of all. In North Wales were "the old elves of the blue petticoat"; in Cardiganshire was the familiar green again, though it was never seen save in the month of May; and in Pembrokeshire, a uniform of jolly scarlet gowns and caps. The fairy gentlemen were quite as much given to finery as the ladies, and their general air was one of extreme cheerful dandyism. Only the mine and ground-fairies were attired in sombre colors. Indeed, their idea of clothes was delightfully liberal; an elf bespoke himself by what he chose to wear; and fashions ranged all the way from the sprites of the Orkney Islands, who strutted about in armor, to the little Heinzelmänchen of Cologne, who scorned to be burdened with so much as a hat!
People accounted in strange ways for their origin. A legend, firmly held in Iceland, says that once upon a time Eve was washing a number ofher children at a spring, and when the Lord appeared suddenly before her, she hustled and hid away those who were not already clean and presentable; and that they being made forever invisible after, became the ancestors of the "little folk," who pervade the hills and caves and ruins to this day. In Ireland and Scotland fairies were spoken of as a wandering remnant of the fallen angels. The Christian world over, they were deemed either for a while, or perpetually, to be locked out from the happiness of the blessed in the next world. The Bretons thought their Korrigans had been great Gallic princesses, who refused the new faith, and clung to their pagan gods, and fell under a curse because of their stubbornness. The Small People of Cornwall, too, were imagined to be the ancient inhabitants of that country, long before Christ was born, not good enough for Heaven, and yet too good to be condemned altogether, whose fate it is to stray about, growing smaller and smaller, until by and by they vanish from the face of the earth.
Therefore the poor fairy-folk, with whom theologydeals so rudely, were supposed to be tired waiting, and anxious to know how they might fare everlastingly; and they waylaid many mortals, who, of course, really could tell them nothing, to ask whether they might not get into Heaven, by chance, at the end. It was their chief cause of doubt and melancholy, and ran in their little minds from year to year. And since we shall revert no more to the sad side of fairy-life, let us close with a most sweet story of something which happened in Sweden, centuries ago.
Two boys were gambolling by a river, when a Neck rose up to the air, smiling, and twanging his harp. The elder child watched him, and cried mockingly: "Neck! what is the good of your sitting there and playing? You will never be saved!" And the Neck's sensitive eyes filled with tears, and, dropping his harp, he sank forlornly to the bottom. But when the brothers had gone home, and told their wise and saintly father, he said they had been thoughtlessly unkind; and he bade them hurry back to the river, and comfort the little water-spirit. From afar off they saw him again on thesurface, weeping bitterly. And they called to him: "Dear Neck! do not grieve; for our father says that your Redeemer liveth also." Then he threw back his bright head, and, taking his harp, sang and played with exceeding gladness until sunset was long past, and the first star sent down its benediction from the sky.
FAIRY RULERS.
THE forming of character among the fairy-folk was a very simple and sensible matter. You will imagine that the Pagan, Druid and Christian elves varied greatly. And they did; still their morals had nothing to do with it, nor pride, nor patriotism, nor descent, nor education; nor would all the philosophy you might crowd into a thimble have made one bee-big resident of Japan different from a man of his own size in Spain.
They saved themselves no end of trouble by setting up the local barometer as their standard. The only Bible they knew was the weather, and they followed it stoutly. Whatever the climate was, whatever it had helped to make the grown-up nation who lived under it, that, every time, were the "brownies and bogles." Where the land wasrocky and grim, and subject to wild storms and sudden darknesses, the fairies were grim and wild too, and full of wicked tricks. Where the landscape was level and green, and the crops grew peacefully, they were tame, as in central England, and inclined to be sentimental.
And they copied the distinguishing traits of the race among whom they dwelt. A frugal Breton fairy spoke the Breton dialect; the Neapolitan had a tooth for fruits and macaroni; the Chinese was ceremonious and stern; a true Provençal fée was as vain as a peacock, flirting a mirror before her, and an Irish elf, bless his little red feathered caubeen! was never the man to run away from a fight.
If you look on the map, and see a section of coast-line like that of Cornwall or Norway, a sunshiny, perilous, foamy place, make up your mind that the fairies thereabouts were fellows worth knowing; that you would have needed all your wit and pluck to get the better of them, and that they would have made live, hearty playmates, too, while in good humor, for any brave boy or girl.
We do not know nearly so much about the genuine fairies as we should like. They must have been, at one time or another, in every European country. Most of the Oriental spirits were taller, and of another brood; they figured either as demons, or as what we should now call angels. But in the Germanic colonies, from very old days, fairy-lore was finely developed, and we count up tribe on tribe of necks, nixies, stromkarls and mermaids, who were water-sprites; of bergmännchen (little men of the mountain), and lovely wild-women in hilly places; of trolls around the woods and rocks; of elves in the air, and gnomes or duergars in caverns or mines. Yet from Portugal, and Russia, and Hungary, and from our own North American Indians, we learn so little that it is not worth counting.
If the good dear peasants who were acquainted with the fairies had made more rhymes about them, and handed them down more attentively; if it had occurred to the knowing scholar-monks to keep diaries of elfin doings, as it would have done had they but known how soon their little friends wereto be extinct, like the glyptodon and the dodo, how wise should we not be!
THE NEAPOLITAN FAIRY.
But again, though there were hosts of supernatural beings in the beliefs of every old land, we have no business with any but the wee ones. And as these were settled most thickly in the Teutonic, Celtic and Cymric countries, we willturn our curiosity thither, without farther grumbling, and be glad to get so much authentic news of them as we may.
Fairies, as a whole, seem at bottom rather weak and disconsolate. For all of their magic and cunning, for all of their high station, and its feasting and glory, they could not keep from seeking human sympathy. They did, indeed, hurt men, resent intrusions, foretell the future, and call down disease and storm, but they stood in awe of the weakest mortal because of his superior strength and size; they came to him to borrow food and medicine, and even to ask the loan of his house for their revels. They rendered themselves invisible, but he had always at his feet the fern-seed, the talisman of four-leaved clover (or, as in Scotland, the leaf of the ash or rowan-tree), with which he could defeat their design, and protect himself against the attacks of any witch, imp, or fairy whatsoever.
Their government was a happy-go-lucky affair. The various tribes of fairies had no common interests which would make them sigh for post-offices, or cables, or general synods. Each set of themgot along, independent of the rest. Once in a while a mine-man would live alone with his wife, pegging away at his daily work, without any idea of hurrahing for his King or, more likely, his Queen; or even of hunting up his own cousins in the next county.
If we had elves in the United States nowadays, they would no doubt be American enough to elect a President and have him as honest, and steady, and sound-hearted as needs be. But dwelling as they did in feudal days, they set up thrones and sceptres all over Fairydom.
According to the poets, Mab and Oberon are the crowned rulers of the little people. In reality, they had no supreme head. Among many parties and factions, each small agreeing community had its own chief, the tallest of his race, who was no chief at all, mind you, to thefairyneighbors a mile east. The delicate yellow Chinese fairy-mother was Si Wang Mu; and in the Netherlands, the elf-queen, who was also queen of the witches, was called Wanne Thekla.
We snatch an item here and there of the royalhistories. We find that the sweet-natured Elberich in the Niebelungen is the same as Oberon. In Germany was a dwarf-king named Goldemar, who lived with a knight, shared his bed, played at dice with him, gave him good advice, called him Brother-in-law very fondly, and comforted him with the music of his harp. But Goldemar, though the knight loved him and could touch and feel him, was unseen. He was like a wreath of blue smoke, or a fragment of moonlight, and you could run a sword through him, and never change his kind smile. His royal hands were lean, and soft, and cold as a frog's. After three years, perhaps when Brother-in-law was dead, or when he was married, and needed him no longer, the gentle dwarf-king disappeared.
Sinnels, Gübich, and Heiling were other dwarf-princes, probably rivals of Goldemar, and ready to have at him till their breath gave out. Their little majesties were quarrelsome as cock-sparrows. The elf-monarch Laurîn was once conquered by Theodoric; and because he had been treacherous in war (which was not "fair" at all, despite theproverb), he got a very sad rebuff to his dignity, in being made fool or buffoon at the court of Bern.
THE ELF-MONARCH WHO WAS MADE COURT-FOOL.
We are told in the Mabinogion how the daughter of Llud Llaw Ereint was "the most splendid maiden in the three islands of the mighty," and how for her Gwyn ap Nudd, the Welsh fairy-king, battles every May-day from dawn until sunset. Gwyn once carried her off from Gwythyr, her true lord; and both lovers were so furious and cruel against each other that blessed King Arthur condemned them to wage bitter fight on each first-of-May till the world's end; and to whomsoever is victorious the greatestnumber of times, the fair lady shall then be given. Let us hope the reward will not fall to thieving Gwyn.
We have said that we should do pretty much as we pleased in ranging the myriad fairy-folk into ranks and species. If, as we prowl about, we see a baby in the house of the Elfsmiths, who has a look of the Elfbrowns, we will immediately kidnap him from his fond parents, and add him to the family he resembles. Now that might make wailing and confusion, and bring down vengeance on our heads, if there were any Queen Mab left to rap us to order; but as things go, we shall find it a very neat way of smoothing difficulties.
THE ISLE OFRÜGENDWARVES THAT GIVE PRESENTS TO CHILDREN.
Of course there are certain pigwidgeons too accomplished, too slippery, too many things in one, to be ticketed and tied down like the rest; such versatile fellows as the Brown Dwarves of the Isle of Rügen, for instance. They lived in what were called the Vine-hills, and were not quite eighteen inches high. They wore little snuff-brown jackets and a brown cap (which made them invisible, and allowed them to pass through the smallest keyhole),with one wee silver bell at its peak, not to be lost for any money. But they did some roguish things; and children who fell into their hands had to serve them for fifty years! With caprice usual to their kin, they will, on other occasions, befriend and protect children, and give them presents; or plague untidy servants, like Brownie, or lead travellers astray by night into bogs andmarshes, like the Ellydan and the Fir-Darrig, and mischievous double-faced Robin Goodfellow himself.
An ancient tradition says that while the grass-blades are sprouting at the root, the earth-elves water and nourish them; and the moment the growth pierces the soil, affectionate air-elves take it in charge. Therefore we borrow a hint from the grass; and after first going down among the swarthy fairies who burrow underground, we shall pass up to companionship with little beings so beautiful that wherever they flock there is starlight and song.
THE BLACK ELVES.
ACCORDING to the very old Scandinavian notion, land-fairies were of two sorts; the Light or Good Elves who dwelt in air, or out-of-doors on the earth, and the Black or Evil Elves who dwelt beneath it.
We will follow the Norse folk. If we were required to group human beings under two headings, we should choose that same Good and Evil, because the division occurs to one naturally, because it saves time, and because everybody comprehends it, and sees that it is based upon law; and so do we deal with our wonder-friends, who have the strange moral sorcery belonging to each of us their masters, to help or to harm.
The evil fairies, then, were the scowling underground tribes, who hid themselves from the frankdaylight, and the open reaches of the fields. Yet just as the good fairies had many a sad failing to offset their grace and charm, the grim, dark-skinned manikins had sudden impulses towards honor and kindness. In fact, as we noted before, they were astonishingly like our fellow-creatures, of whom scarce any is entirely faultless, or entirely warped and ruined.
For instance, the Hill-men, in Switzerland, were very generous-minded; they drove home stray lambs at night, and put berry-bushes in the way of poor children. And the more modern Dwarves of Germany, frequenting the clefts of rocks, were silent, mild, and well-disposed, and apt to bring presents to those who took their fancy. Like others of the elf-kingdom, they loved to borrow from mortals. Once a little bowing Dwarf came to a lady for the loan of her silk gown for a fairy-bride. (You can imagine that, at the ceremony, the groom must have had a pretty hunt among the wilderness of finery to get at her ring-finger!) Of course the lady gave it; but worrying over its tardy return, she went to the Dwarves' hill andasked for it aloud. A messenger with a sorrowful countenance brought it to her at once, spotted over and over with wax. But he told her that had she been less impatient every stain would have been a diamond!
THE DWARF THAT BORROWED THE SILK GOWN.
The huge, terrible, ogre-like Hindoo Rakshas, the weird Divs and Jinns of Persia, and the ancientdemon-dwarves of the south called Panis, may be considered the foster-parents of our dwindled minims, as the glorious Peris on the other hand gave their name, and some of their qualities, to a little European family of very different ancestry.
The Black Elves will serve as our general name for dwarves and mine-fairies. These are closely connected in all legends, live in the same neighborhoods, and therefore claim a mention together. They have four points in common: dark skin; short, bulky bodies; fickle and irritable natures; and occupations as miners, misers, or metalsmiths. And because of their exceeding industry, on the old maxim's authority, where all work and no play made Jack a dull boy, they are curiously heavy-headed and preposterous jacks; and, waiving their plain faces, not in any wise engaging. Yet perhaps, being largely German, they may be philosophers, and so vastly superior to any little gabbling, somersaulting ragamuffin over in Ireland.
In the Middle Ages, they were described as withered and leering, with small, sharp, snappingblack eyes, bright as gems; with cracked voices, and matted hair, and horns peering from it! and as if that were not enough adornment, they had claws, which must have been filched from the ghosts of mediæval pussy-cats, on their fingers and toes.
The first Duergars belonging to the Gotho-German mythology, were muscular and strong-legged; and when they stood erect, their arms reached to the ground. They were clever and expert handlers of metal, and made of gold, silver and iron, the finest armor in the world. They wrought for Odin his great spear, and for Thor his hammer, and for Frey the wondrous shipSkidbladnir.
Long ago, too, armor-making Elves, black as pitch, lived in Svart-Alfheim, in the bowels of the earth, and were able, by their glance or touch or breath, to cause sickness and death wheresoever they wished.
THE BLACK DWARVES OFRÜGENPLANNING MISCHIEF.
Still uglier were the Black Dwarves of the mysterious Isle of Rügen; nor had they any frolicsome or cordial ways which should bring up our opinion of them. Their pale eyes ran water, andevery midnight they mewed and screeched horribly from their holes. In idle summer-hours they sat under the elder-trees, planning by twosandthrees to wreak mischief on mankind. They, as well, were once useful, if not beautiful; for in the days when heroes wore a panoply of steel, the Black Dwarves wrought fair helmets and corselets of cobwebby mail which no lance could pierce, and swords flexible as silk which could unhorse the mightiest foe. The little blackamoors frequented mining districts, and dug for ore on theirown account. They were said to be very rich, owning unnumbered chests stored underground. The most exciting tales about gnomes of all nations were founded on the efforts of daring mortals to get possession of their wealth.
To the mining division belong the dwarf-Trolls of Denmark and Sweden (for there were giant-Trolls as well), and the whimsical Spriggans of Cornwall. The Trolls burrowed in mounds and hills, and were called also Bjerg-folk or Hill-folk; they lived in societies or families, baking and brewing, marrying and visiting, in the old humdrum way. They made fortunes, and hoarded up heaps of money. But they were often obliging and benevolent; it gave them pleasure to bestow gifts, to lend and borrow, and sometimes, alas! to steal. They played prettily on musical instruments, and were very jolly. People used to see the stumpy little children of the genteel Troll who lived at Kund in Jutland, climbing up the knoll which was the roof of their own house, and rolling down one after the other with shouts of laughter. The Trolls were famous gymnasts, and very plump andround. Our word "droll" is left to us in merry remembrance of them.
THE TROLL'S CHILDREN.
They were tractable creatures, as you may know from the tale of the farmer, who, ploughing an angry Troll's land, agreed, for the sake of peace, to go halves in the crops sown upon it, so that one year the Troll should have what grew above ground, and the next year what grew under. But the sly farmer planted radishes and carrots, andthe Troll took the tops; and the following season he planted corn; and his queer partner gathered up the roots and marched off in triumph. Indeed, it was so easy to outwit the simple Troll that a generous farmer would never have played the game out, and we should have lost our little story. It was mean to take advantage of the sweet fellow's trustfulness. There was an English schoolmaster once, a man wise, firm, and kind, and of vast influence, of whom one of his boys said to another: "It's a shame to tell a lie to Arnold; he always believes it." That was a ray of real chivalry.
The Spriggans were fond of dwelling near walls and loose stones, with which it was unlucky to tamper, and where they slipped in and out with suspicious eyes, guarding their buried treasure. If a house was robbed, or the cattle were carried away, or a hurricane swooped down on a Cornish village, the neighbors attributed their trouble to the Spriggans; whereby you may believe they had fine reputations for meddlesomeness. Their cousins, the Buccas, Bockles or Knockers, weregentlemen who went about thumping and rapping wherever there was a vein of ore for the weary workmen, cheating, occasionally, to break the monotony.