s on Shakespeare," 1865, pp. 38, 39.

Again, various stories are current in Germany descriptive of the fairy
dwarfs; one of the most noted being that relating to Elberich, who aided
the Emperor Otnit to gain the daughter of the Paynim Soldan of
Syria.[27]

[27] See Keightley's "Fairy Mythology," 1878, p. 208.

The haunt of the fairies on earth are generally supposed to be the most
romantic and rural that can be selected; such a spot being the place of
Titania's repose described by Oberon in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii.
1):[28]

"a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania some time of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in."

[28] See also Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," 1852, vol. iii. p.
32, etc.

Titania also tells how the fairy race meet

"on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea."

In "The Tempest" (v. 1), we have the following beautiful invocation by
Prospero:

"Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back--"

Their haunts, however, varied in different localities, but their
favorite abode was in the interior of conical green hills, on the slopes
of which they danced by moonlight. Milton, in the "Paradise Lost" (book
i.), speaks of

"fairy elves,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course, they, on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."

The Irish fairies occasionally inhabited the ancient burial-places known
as tumuli or barrows, while some of the Scottish fairies took up their
abode under the "door-stane" or threshold of some particular house, to
the inmates of which they administered good offices.[29]

[29] Gunyon's "Illustrations of Scottish History, Life, and
Superstitions," p. 299.

The so-called fairy-rin