nate; but, retaining the unamiable qualities, and
diminutive size of the Gothic elves, they only exchanged that term for
the more popular appellation of Fairies.

[Footnote A: Upon this, or some similar tradition, was founded the
notion, which the inveteracy of national prejudice, so easily diffused
in Scotland, that the ancestor of the English monarchs, Geoffrey
Plantagenet, had actually married a daemon. Bowmaker, in order to
explain the cruelty and ambition of Edward I., dedicates a chapter to
shew "how the kings of England are descended from the devil, by the
mother's side."--_Fordun, Chron._ lib. 9, cap. 6. The lord of a certain
castle, called Espervel, was unfortunate enough to have a wife of the
same class. Having observed, for several years, that she always left the
chapel before the mass was concluded, the baron, in a fit of obstinacy
or curiosity, ordered his guard to detain her by force; of which the
consequence was, that, unable to support the elevation of the host, she
retreated through the air, carrying with her one side of the chapel, and
several of the congregation.]

II. Indeed, so singularly unlucky were the British Fairies that, as has
already been hinted, amid the wreck of the Gothic mythology, consequent
upon the introduction of Christianity, they seem to have preserved, with
difficulty, their own distinct characteristics, while, at the same time,
they engrossed the mischievous attributes of several other classes of
subordinate spirits, acknowledged by the nations of the north. The
abstraction of children, for example, the well known practice of the
modern Fairy, seems, by the ancient Gothic nations, to have rather been
ascribed to a species of night-mare, or hag, than to the _berg-elfen_,
or _duergar_. In the ancient legend of _St Margaret_, of which there is
a Saxo-Norman copy, in _Hickes' Thesaurus Linguar. Septen._ and one,
more modern, in the Auchinleck MSS., that lady encounters a fiend, whose
profession it was, among other malicious tricks, to injure new-born
children and their mothers; a practice afterwards imputed to the
Fairies. Gervase of Tilbury, in the _Otia Imperialia_, mentions certain
hags, or _Lamiae_, who entered into houses in the night-time, to oppress
the inhabitants, while asleep, injure their persons and property, and
carry off their children. He likewise mentions the _Dracae_, a sort of
water spirits, who inveigle women and children into the recesses which
they inhabit, bene