harity, and without
the gratitude. The Nereids of the Kimoliote caves are of a grimmer
humour than the kindly-natured underground folk of Celtic and Teutonic
lands, or than the heroine of Palermo. The payment to their human help
is no subject of jest to them. A woman whom they once called in was
roundly told: "If it be a boy you shall be happy; but if it be a girl we
will tear you in four parts, and hang you in this cave." The unhappy
midwife of course determined that it should be a boy; and when a girl
arrived she made believe it was a boy, swaddled it up tightly, and went
home. When, eight days afterwards, the child was unpacked, the Nereids'
rage and disappointment were great; and they sent one of their number to
knock at her door in the hope that she would answer the first summons.
Now to answer the first summons of a Nereid meant madness. Of this the
woman was fully aware; and her cunning cheated them even of their
revenge.[30]

Sometimes these supernatural beings bestow gifts of a more distinctly
divine character than any of the foregoing. A midwife in Strathspey, on
one such occasion, was desired to ask what she would, and it should be
granted if in the power of the fairies. She asked that success might
attend herself and her posterity in all similar operations. The gift was
conferred; and her great-grandson still continued to exercise it when
Mr. Stewart was collecting the materials for his work on the
superstitions of the Highlanders, published in 1823. In like manner the
Mohel, to whose adventure I have already referred, and who was
originally an avaricious man, received the grace of benevolence to the
poor, which caused him to live a long and happy life with his family, a
pattern unto the whole world. The gift was symbolized by the
restoration to him of his own bunch of keys, which he found with many
others in the possession of his uncanny conductor. This personage had
held the keys by virtue of his being lord over the hearts of those who
never at any time do good: in other words, he was the demon of
covetousness. Here we have an instance, more or less conscious, of the
tendency, so marked in Jewish literature, to parable. But the form of
the parable bears striking testimony to its origin in a myth common to
many races. The keys in particular probably indicate that the recompense
at one time took the shape of a palladium. This is not at all uncommon
in the tales. The Countess Von Ranzau was once summoned from