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[Illustration: THE LITTLE "NECK" IN THE SWEDISH RIVER.]
BROWNIES AND BOGLES
BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
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
COPYRIGHT, 1888,
BY
D. LOTHROP COMPANY.
PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, BOSTON.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID 11
CHAPTER II.
FAIRY RULERS 22
CHAPTER III.
THE BLACK ELVES 33
CHAPTER IV.
THE LIGHT ELVES 46
CHAPTER V.
DEAR BROWNIE 63
CHAPTER VI.
OTHER HOUSE-HELPERS 79
CHAPTER VII.
WATER-FOLK 96
CHAPTER VIII.
MISCHIEF-MAKERS 109
CHAPTER IX.
PUCK; AND POETS' FAIRIES 123
CHAPTER X.
CHANGELINGS 133
CHAPTER XI.
FAIRYLAND 146
CHAPTER XII.
THE PASSING OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE 159
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
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 Ruegen Dwarfs that give presents to children 31
The Dwarf that borrowed the silk gown 35
The Black Dwarfs of Ruegen 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 Pueck 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 Koepenick 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
BROWNIES AND BOGLES.
"BROWNIES AND BOGLES."
CHAPTER I.
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 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.
"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 ever seen, 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!"
[Illustration: "GOD SPEED YOU, GENTLEMEN!"]
Fairies had their followers and votaries from early 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 gardens gave 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 green check 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 Heinzelmaenchen 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 of her
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 theology deals 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 the surface, 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.