tably
endowed, as is our custom when we discover a mortal child. Now what
will you give him?"

"I will give him," said one, "beauty and grace."

"I endow him," said a second, "with generosity."

[Illustration: THE FAIRIES OF BROCELIANDE FIND THE LITTLE BRUNO]

"And I," said a third, "with such valour that he will overthrow all
his enemies at tourney and on the battlefield."

The Queen listened to these promises. "Surely you have little sense,"
she said. "For my part, I wish that in his youth he may love one who
will be utterly insensible to him, and although he will be as you
desire, noble, generous, beautiful, and valorous, he will yet, for his
good, suffer keenly from the anguish of love."

"O Queen," said one of the fairies, "what a cruel fate you have
ordained for this unfortunate child! But I myself shall watch over him
and nurse him until he comes to such an age as he may love, when I
myself will try to engage his affections."

"For all that," said the Queen, "I will not alter my design. You shall
not nurse this infant."

The fairies then disappeared. Shortly afterward Bruyant returned, and
carried the child back to the castle of La Montagne, where presently a
fairy presented herself as nurse.

Unfortunately the manuscript from which this tale is taken breaks off
at this point, and we do not know how the Fairy Queen succeeded with
her plans for the amorous education of the little Bruno. But the
fragment, although tantalizing in the extreme, gives us some insight
into the nature of the fairies who inhabit the green fastnesses of
Broceliande.

_Fairies in Folk-lore_

Nearly all fairy-folk have in time grown to mortal height. Whether
fairies be the decayed poor relations of more successful deities, gods
whose cult has been forgotten and neglected (as the Irish _Sidhe_, or
fairy-folk), or diminutive animistic spirits, originating in the
belief that every object, small or great, possessed a personality, it
is noticeable that Celtic fairies are of human height, while those of
the Teutonic peoples are usually dwarfish. Titania may come originally
from the loins of Titans or she may be Diana come down in the world,
and Oberon may hail from a very different and more dwarfish source,
but in Shakespeare's England they have grown sufficiently to permit
them to tread the boards of the Globe Theatre with normal humans.
Scores of fairies mate with mortal men, and men, as a rule, do not
care for dwarf-wives. Amon