] Geo. Agricola, de Mineral. Subterran. p. 504.

[279] Olaus Mag. lib. iii. Hist. 5, 9-14.

[280] Olaus Mag. lib. vi. c. 9.

[281] Le Loyer, p. 474.

[282] Ibid. liv. ii. p. 258.

[283] Ibid, p. 550.

CHAPTER XXX.

SOME OTHER EXAMPLES OF ELVES.

On the 25th of August, 1746, I received a letter from a very worthy
man, the cure of the parish of Walsche, a village situated in the
mountains of Vosges, in the county of Dabo, or Dasburg, in Lower
Alsatia, Diocese of Metz. In this letter, he tells me that the 10th of
June, 1740, at eight o'clock in the morning, he being in his kitchen,
with his niece and the servant, he saw on a sudden an iron pot that
was placed on the ground turn round three or four times, without its
being set in motion by any one. A moment after, a stone, weighing
about a pound, was thrown from the next room into the same kitchen, in
presence of the same persons, without their seeing the hand which
threw it. The next day, at nine o'clock in the morning, some panes of
glass were broken, and through these panes were thrown some stones,
with what appeared to them supernatural dexterity. The spirit never
hurt anybody, and never did anything in the night time, but always
during the day. The cure employed the prayers marked out in the ritual
to bless his house, and thenceforth the genius broke no more panes of
glass; but he continued to throw stones at the cure's people, without
hurting them, however. If they fetched water from the fountain, he
threw stones into the bucket; and afterwards he began to serve in the
kitchen. One day, as the servant was planting some cabbages in the
garden, he pulled them up as fast as she planted them, and laid them
in a heap. It was in vain that she stormed, threatened, and swore in
the German style; the genius continued to play his tricks.

One day, when a bed in the garden had been dug and prepared, the spade
was found thrust two feet deep into the ground, without any trace
being seen of him who had thus stuck it in; but they observed that on
the spade was a riband, and by the spade were two pieces of two soles,
which the girl had locked up the evening before in a little box.
Sometimes he took pleasure in displacing the earthenware and pewter,
and putting it either all round the kitchen, or in the porch, or even
in the cemetery, and always in broad daylight. One day he filled an
iron pot with wild herbs, bran, and leaves of trees, and, having put
some water i