than one in my life. But
as to that I shall have a very curious case to report shortly, where a
man taught his fairy-wife to speak.

The mentioning of that undoubted marriage brings me to the question of
sex. There is, of course, not the slightest doubt about it. Mrs.
Ventris was a fairy wife. Mrs. Ventris was a puzzle to me for a good
many years--in fact until Despoina explained to me many things. For
Mrs. Ventris had a permanent human shape, and spoke as freely as you
or I. I thought at one time that she might be the offspring of a mixed
marriage, like Elsie Marks (whose mother, by the way, was another case
of the sort); but in fact Mrs. Ventris and Mrs. Marks were both fairy
wives, and the wood-girl, Mabilla King, whose case I am going to deal
with was another. But this particular relationship is one which my
explanation of fairy apparitions does not really cover: for marriage
implies a permanent accessibility (to put it so) of two normally
inaccessible natures; and parentage implies very much more. That,
indeed, implies what the Christians call Miracle; but it is quite
beyond dispute. I have a great number of cases ready to my hand, and
shall deal at large with all of them in the course of this essay, in
which fairies have had intercourse with mortals. It is by no means the
fact that the wife is always of the fairy-kind. My own experience at
C---- shall prove that. But I must content myself with mentioning the
well-known case of Mary Wellwood who was wife to a carpenter near
Ashby de la Zouche, and was twice taken by a fairy and twice
recovered. She had children in each of her states of being, and on one
recorded occasion her two families met. It appears to be a law that
the wife takes the nature of the husband, or as much of it as she can,
and it is important to remark that _in all cases_ the children are of
the husband's nature, fairy or mortal as he may happen to be.
"Nature," Despoina told me, "follows the male." So far as fairies are
concerned it seems certain that union with mortals runs in families or
clans, if one may so describe their curious relationships to each
other. There were five sisters of the wood in one of the Western
departments of France (Lot-et-Garonne, I think), who all married men:
two of them married two brothers. Apart they led the decorous lives of
the French middle class, but when they were together it was a sight to
see! A curious one, and to us, with our strong associations of ideas,