Folk Lore | Page 8

the people,--how
they yet clung to the notion that many of the phenomena of nature and
life were under the control of supernatural agents, although they did not
regard these agents, as what in olden times they were considered to
be--divinities, but believed them to be a class of beings living upon or
within the earth, and endowed by the devil with supernatural powers.
In the northern sagas, and in the old ballads and saintly legends of the
Middle Ages--supernatural agents who played a prominent part--there
are giants of enormous size and little dwarfs who can make themselves
invisible, and do all sorts of good to their favourites, and harm to their
enemies. We are also introduced there to dragons and other monsters

which have human understandings, and, guided by a wicked spirit,
could do great mischief. Such beings took the place of the ancient
divinities, and in many cases when the hero or saint is in great straits, in
combat with these evil spirits or fiends, Jesus Christ comes to their
assistance. One instance will exemplify this:
"O'er him stood the foul fiends, And with their clubs of steel, Struck
him o'er the helmit That in deadly swound he fell. But God his sorrow
saw, To the fiends his Son he sent; From the earth they vanished With
howling and lament. The Christian hero thanked his God, From the
ground he rose with speed, Joyfully he sheathed his sword, And
mounted on his steed."
_Illustrations of "Northern Antiquities."_
By the beginning of this century these ideas of the personel of
supernatural agencies had become slightly modified in this country at
least, giants and dragons having given way to fairies, brownies, elves,
witches, etc. The Rev. Mr. Kirk, of Aberfeldy, published a work
descriptive of these supernatural beings. He says they are a kind of
astral spirits between angels and humanity, being like men and women
in appearance, and similar in many of their habits; some of them,
however, are double. They marry and have children, for which they
keep nurses; have deaths and burials amongst them, and they can make
themselves visible or invisible at pleasure. They live in subterranean
habitations, and in an invisible condition attend very constantly on men.
They are very fond of human children and pretty women, both of which
they will steal if not protected by some superior influence. Women in
childbed stand in danger of being taken, but if a piece of cold iron be
kept in the bed in which they lie, the spirits won't come near. Children
are in greater danger of being stolen before baptism than after. They
sometimes, to supply their own needs, spirit away the milk from cows,
but more frequently they transfer the milk to the cows of some person
who stands high in their favour. This they do by making themselves
invisible, and silently milking and removing the milk in invisible
vessels. When people offend them they shoot flint-tipped arrows, and
by this means kill either the persons who have offended them or their
cattle. They cause these arrows to strike the most vital part, but the
stroke does not visibly break the skin, only a blae mark is the result
visible on the body after death. These flint arrow-heads are

occasionally found, and the possession of one of these will protect the
possessor against the power of these astral beings, and at the same time
enable him or her to cure disease in cattle and women. These flints
were often sewed into the dresses of children to protect them from the
Evil-eye. There were many other means of protection against the power
of these beings, which we shall have occasion to refer to again. There is
one method, however, which may be mentioned now. If, when a calf is
born, its mouth be smeared with a balsam of dung, before it is allowed
to suck, the fairies cannot milk that cow. Those taken to fairyland lose
the power of calculating the lapse of time, although they are not
unconscious of what is going on around them. Those spirited away to
fairyland may be recovered by their friends or relatives, by performing
certain formula, or--and this was often the method resorted to--by
out-witting the fairies, getting possession of their stolen friends, and
then doing or saying something which fairies cannot bear, upon which
they are forced to depart, leaving the recovered party behind them.
The following information concerning the government, &c., of
fairyland, is taken from Aytoun:--The queen of fairyland was a kind of
feudatory sovereign under Satan, to whom she was obliged to pay
_kave_, or tithe in kind; and, as her own fairy subjects strongly
objected to transfer their allegiance, the quota was usually made up in
children who had been stolen before the rite of