ters assert that their ancestors did not worship the pigmies as
they did the _genii_ or spirits, also supposed to reside in the rocks."

Bishop Percy, in a letter to the Rev. Evan Evans (_Ieuan Prydydd Hir_),
writes:--

"Nay, I make no doubt but Fairies are derived from the _Duergar_, or
Dwarfs, whose existence was so generally believed among all the
northern nations."

_The Cambro-Briton_, vol. i., p. 331.

And again in Percy's _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_, vol. iii., p. 171, are
these remarks:--

"It is well known that our Saxon ancestors, long before they left their
German forests, believed in the existence of a kind of diminutive demons,
or middle species between men and spirits, whom they called _Duergar_, or
Dwarfs, and to whom they attributed wonderful performances, far exceeding
human art."

Pennant, in his _Tour in Scotland_, 1772, pp. 55-56, when describing the
collieries of Newcastle, describes the Knockers thus:--

"The immense caverns that lay between the pillars exhibited a most gloomy
appearance. I could not help enquiring here after the imaginary
inhabitant, the creation of the labourer's fancy,

The swart Fairy of the mine;

and was seriously answered by a black fellow at my elbow that he really
had never met with any, but that his grandfather had found the little
implements and tools belonging to this diminutive race of subterraneous
spirits. The Germans believed in two species; one fierce and malevolent,
the other a gentle race, appearing like little old men, dressed like the
miners, and not much above two feet high; these wander about the drifts
and chambers of the works, seem perpetually employed, yet do nothing.
Some seem to cut the ore, or fling what is cut into vessels, or turn the
windlass, but never do any harm to the miners, except provoked; as the
sensible Agricola, in this point credulous, relates in his book, _de
Animantibus Subterraneis_."

Jamieson, under the word _Farefolkis_, writes:--"Besides the Fairies,
which are more commonly the subject of popular tradition, it appears that
our forefathers believed in the existence of a class of spirits under
this name that wrought in the mines;" and again, quoting from a work
dated 1658, the author of which says:--

"In northerne kingdomes there are great armies of devils that have their
services which they perform with the inhabitants of these countries, but
they are most frequent in rocks and _mines_, where