carefully preserved, while its meaning has quite
passed out of memory. In a future chapter we shall examine the attitude
of mythical beings in folklore to metals, and especially to iron; in the
meantime we may content ourselves with noting this addition to the
examples we have already met with of the horror with which they regarded
it.

So far from its being always deemed wise to neglect or injure the
changeling, it was not infrequently supposed to be necessary to take the
greatest care of it, thereby and by other means to propitiate its elvish
tribe. This was the course pursued with the best results by a Devonshire
mother; and a woman at Strassberg, in North Germany, was counselled by
all her gossips to act lovingly, and above all not to beat the imp, lest
her own little one be beaten in turn by the underground folk. So in a
Hessian tale mentioned by Grimm, a _wichtel-wife_ caught almost in the
act of kidnapping refused to give up the babe until the woman had placed
the changed one to her breast, and "nourished it for once with the
generous milk of human kind." In Ireland, even when the child is placed
on a dunghill, the charm recited under the direction of the "fairy-man"
promises kindly entertainment in future for the "gambolling crew," if
they will only undo what they have done. A method in favour in the north
of Scotland is to take the suspected elf to some known haunt of its
race, generally, we are told, some spot where peculiar soughing sounds
are heard, or to some barrow, or stone circle, and lay it down,
repeating certain incantations the while. What the words of these
incantations are we are not informed, but we learn that an offering of
bread, butter, milk, cheese, eggs, and flesh of fowl must accompany the
child. The parents then retire for an hour or two, or until after
midnight; and if on returning these things have disappeared, they
conclude that the offering is accepted and their own child returned.[98]

Neither ill-usage nor kindness, neither neglect nor propitiation, was
sometimes prescribed and acted upon, but--harder than either--a journey
to Fairyland to fetch back the captive. A man on the island of Ruegen,
whose carelessness had occasioned the loss of his child, watched until
the underground dwellers sallied forth on another raid, when he hastened
to the mouth of the hole that led into their realm, and went boldly
down. There in the Underworld he found the child, and thus the robbers
were forced