[348] _Whip says he_, as Mrs. Bray conjectures.

[349] Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 513. Bohn's edit.

[350] Given in the Literary Gazette for 1825. No. 430.

[351] Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 503. Bohn's edit.

[352] The _Elfbore_ of Scotland, where it is likewise ascribed to the fairies, Jamieson, _s. v._ The same opinion prevails in Denmark, where it is said that any one who looks through it will see things he would not otherwise have known: see Thiele, ii. 18.

[353] The Anglo-Saxon _l?an_, _laecan_, to play.

[354] We have abridged this legend from a well-written letter in the Literary Gazette, No. 430 (1825), the writer of which says, he knew the house in which it was said to have occurred. He also says he remembered an old tailor, who said the horn was often pitched at the head of himself and his apprentice, when in the North-country fashion they went to work at the farm-house. Its identity with other legends will be at once perceived.

[355] And true no doubt it is, _i. e._ the impression made on her imagination was as strong as if the objects had been actually before her. The narrator is the same person who told the preceding Boggart story.

[356] Fairy Tales, pp. 24, 56.

[357] In Northumberland the common people call a certain fungous excrescence, sometimes found about the roots of old trees, Fairy-butter. After great rains and in a certain degree of putrefaction, it is reduced to a consistency, which, together with its colour, makes it not unlike butter, and hence the name. Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 492, Bohn's edit.

The Menyn Tylna Teg or Fairy-butter of Wales, we are told in the same place, is a substance found at a great depth in cavities of limestone-rocks when sinking for lead-ore.

[358] Comp. Milton, L'Allegro, 105 _seq._

[359] Richardson, Table-Book, iii. 45; see above, p. 297.

[360] This word, as we may see, is spelt _faries_ in the following legends; so we may suppose that _fairy_ is pronounced _farry_ in the North, which has a curious coincidence with _Peri_: see above, p. 15.

[361] Probably pronounced _Poke_, as still in Worcestershire. Our ancestors frequently used _ou_, or _oo_ for the long _o_ while they expressed the sound of _oo_ by _o_ followed by _e_, as _rote_ root, _coke_ cook, _more_ moor, _pole_ pool.

[362] Passus xvii. _v._ 11,323 _seq._ ed. 1842. Comp. _vv._ 8363, 9300, 10,902.

[363] Mr. Todd is right, in reading _pouke_ for _ponke_, an evident typographic error: wrong in saying, "He is the Fairy, Robin Good-fellow, known by the name of Puck." Robin is the "hob-goblin"

mentioned two lines after.

[364] We know nothing of the Oriental origin of Puck, and cannot give our full assent to the character of our ancestry, as expressed in the remaining part of Mr. Gifford's note: "but a fiend engendered in the moody minds, and rude and gloomy fancies of the barbarous invaders of the North." It is full time to have done with describing the old Gothic race as savages.

[365] _Der Putz wurde uns uber berg und thaler tragen._ To frighten children they say _Der Butz kommt!_ see Grimm, Deut. Mythol. p. 474.

[366] The former made by adding the Anglo-Saxon and English _el_, _le_; the latter by adding the English _art_: see p. 318.

[367] By Sir F. Palgrave, from whose article in the Quarterly Review, we have derived many of the terms named above. He adds that the Anglo-Saxon _paecan_ is to deceive, seduce; the Low-Saxon _picken_ to gambol; _pickeln_ to play the fool; _pukra_ in Icelandic to make a murmuring noise, to steal secretly; and _pukke_ in Danish to scold. He further adds the Swedish _poika_ boy, the Anglo-Saxon and Swedish _piga_ and Danish _pige_ girl. If, however, Pouke is connected with the Sclavonic Bog, these at the most can be only derivations from it.

By the way _boy_ itself seems to be one of these terms; the Anglo-Saxon _piga_ was probably pronounced _piya_, and _a_ is a masculine termination in that language.

[368] See above, p. 291. In Low German, however, the Kobold is called Bullmann, Bullermann, Bullerkater, from _bullen_, _bullern_, to knock: see Grimm, _ut sup._ p. 473.

[369] Essay on the Ignis Fatuus, quoted by Thoms.

[370]

And you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms.--_Tempest_, v. 1.

[371] Jack-o'-the-lanthorn, Will-o'-the-wisp. In Worcestershire they call it Hob-and-his-lanthorn, and Hobany's- or Hobredy's-lanthorn.

Allies, _ut sup._

[372] Knight of the Burning Pestle: see above, p. 309.

[373] _Ard_ is the German _hart_, and is, like it, depreciatory. It is not an Anglo-Saxon termination, but from the Anglo-Saxon [Old English: doll], _dull_, we have _dullard_. May not _haggard_ be _hawk-ard_, and the French _hagard_ be derived from it, and not the reverse?

[374] For in Anglo-Saxon _attorcoppe_ (_Poison-head?_) is spider, and from _attorcoppe-web_, by the usual aphresis of the two first syllables we put _coppe-web_, cobweb. May not the same have been the case with _lob_? and may not the nasty _bug_ be in a similar manner connected with Puck? As _dvergsnat_ is in Swedish a cobweb, one might be tempted to suppose that this last, for which no good etymon has been offered, was _lob-web_; but the true etymon is _cop-web_, from its usual site.

Upon the _cop_ right of his nose he hedde A wert.--Chaucer, _Cant. Tales_, _v._ 556.

[375] Deut. Mythol. p. 492.

[376] See _France_. _In_ is a mere termination, perhaps, like _on_, a diminutive, as in _Catin_ Kate, _Robin_ Bob. _Lutin_ was also spelt _Luyton_: see p. 42.

[377] The two lines which follow

Fro the nightes mare the wite Paternoster!

Where wonest thou Seint Peter's suster?

are rather perplexing. We would explain them thus. Bergerac, as quoted by Brand (Pop. Antiq. i. 312. Bohn's edit.) makes a magician say "I teach the shepherds the wolf's paternoster," _i. e._ one that keeps off the wolf. _Wite_ may then be _i. q. wight_, and _wight paternoster_ be a safeguard against the wights, and we would read the verse thus: "Fro the nightes mare the wite paternoster" _sc. blisse it_ or _us_. St. Peter's _suster_, _i. e._ wife (see I Cor. ix. 5) may have been canonised in the popular creed, and held to be potent against evil beings. The term _suster_ was used probably to obviate the scandal of supposing the first Pope to have been a married man.

This charm is given at greater length and with some variations by Cartwright in his Ordinary, Act iii. sc. 1.

[378] He derives it from the French _oursin_, but the Ang.-Sax. name of the hedgehog is [Old English: erscen].

[379] Athenaeum, Oct. 9, 1847.

[380] Hist. of England, i. 478, 8vo edit.

[381] Deut. Mythol. p. 419.

[382] Layamon's Brut, etc., by Sir Frederick Madden.

[383] Tales and Popular Fictions, ch. viii. We do not wonder that this should have eluded previous observation, but it is really surprising that we should have been the first to observe the resemblance between Ariosto's tale of Giocondo and the introductory tale of the Thousand and One Nights. It is also strange that no one should have noticed the similarity between Ossian's Carthon and the tale of Soohrab in the Shah-nameh.

[384] Both here and lower down we would take _faerie_ in its first sense.

[385] _Thrope_, _thorpe_, or _dorp_, is a village, the German _dorf_; Dutch _dorp_; we may still find it in the names of places, as Althorpe. _Dorp_ occurs frequently in Drayton's Polyolbion; it is also used by Dryden, Hind and Panther, _v._ 1905.

[386] _Undermeles_ i. e. _undertide_ (p 51), aftermeal, afternoon.

[387] This is the third sense of _Faerie_. In the next passage it is doubtful whether it be the second or third sense; we think the latter.

[388]