llustrate
how widespread and venerable is the belief that trees--trees, perhaps,
in particular--are closely associated with the occult.

Pixies! What are pixies? That they are not the dear, delightful, quaint
little people Shakespeare so inimitably portrays in the _Midsummer
Night's Dream_, is, I fear, only too readily acknowledged. I am told
that they may be seen even now, and I know those who say that they have
seen them, but that they are the mere shadows of those dainty creatures
that used to gambol in the moonshine and help the poor and weary in
their household work. The present-day pixies, whom I am loath to imagine
are the descendants of the old-world pixies--though, of course, on the
other hand, they may be merely degenerates, a much more pleasant
alternative--are I think still to be occasionally encountered in lonely,
isolated districts; such, for instance, as the mountains in the West of
Ireland, the Hebrides, and other more or less desolate islands, and on
one or two of the Cornish hills and moors.

Like most phantasms, the modern pixies are silent and elusive. They
appear and disappear with equal abruptness, contenting themselves with
merely gliding along noiselessly from rock to rock, or from bush to
bush. Dainty they are not, pretty they are not, and in stature only do
they resemble the pixie of fairy tales; otherwise they are true
vagrarians, grotesque and often harrowing.

In my _Ghostly Phenomena_ I have given one or two accounts of their
appearance in the West of England, but the nearest approach to pixies
that I have myself seen, were phantasms that appeared to me, in 1903, on
the Wicklow Hills, near Bray. I was out for a walk on the afternoon of
Thursday, May 18; the weather was oppressive, and the grey, lowering sky
threatened rain, a fact which accounted for the paucity of pedestrians.
Leaving my temporary headquarters, at Bray, at half-past one, I arrived
at a pretty village close to the foot of the hills and immediately began
the ascent. Selecting a deviating path that wound its way up gradually,
I, at length, reached the summit of the ridge.

On and on I strolled, careless of time and distance, until a sudden
dryness in my throat reminded me it must be about the hour at which I
generally took tea. I turned round and began to retrace my steps
homeward. The place was absolutely deserted; not a sign of a human being
or animal anywhere, and the deepest silence. I had come to the brink of
a sligh