'Throb-thrush has got a new coat and new hood,
And he'll never do no more good.'
Readers of the Brothers Grimm and lovers of George Cruikshank will not need to be reminded how the grateful shoemaker deprived himself of the assistance of the elves. In the German story, however, as in Breton ones, although the elves depart, prosperity continues to bless the labours of the people whose practical gratitude has driven the little beings away.
The Hob which, according to Harrison Ainsworth, haunted the Gorge of Cliviger, does not appear to have been at all domesticated, the novelist, in the only allusion he makes to it, characterising it as 'a frightful hirsute demon, yclept Hobthrust.' In the Fylde country, however, the lubber fiends seem to have been as industrious as was that of our legend. Tradition tells of one at Rayscar which not only housed the grain but also got the horses ready for the journey to the distant market. At Hackensall Hall one took the Celtic form of a great horse, and required only a pie in reward for its toil.
The Hobs of the neighbouring county of Yorkshire are credited with greater powers than those required for the rapid performance of household duties. One of these beings is still said to haunt a cave in the vicinity of the old-world hamlet of Runswick. To this place anxious and superstitious mothers brought their ailing little ones, and as they stood at the mouth of the cavity, cried, 'Hob, my bairn's gettent kinkcough (whooping-cough?), takkt off, takkt off!' In the same district there is a haunted tumulus called 'Obtrash Roque,' rendered by Walcott 'the Heap of Hob-o'-the-Hurst.' Of the bogle denizen of this mound a story similar to that told by Mr. Crofton Croker, in Roby's Traditions (Clegg Hall Boggart), is current in the district. A farmer who was bothered by the spirit, determined to remove to a quieter locality, and as the carts were leaving with the goods and implements a neighbour cried out, 'It's flittin yo' are,' when the Hob at once replied, from a churn, 'Ay, we're flitting;' upon which the farmer thought he might as well remain where he was. Similar flitting stories, however, are told of the Scandinavian Nis, the Irish Cluricaun, the Welsh Bwbach, and the Polish Ickrzycki.
5.
Why the expression of a wish like this should have offended Puck is not very evident. There is in Sweden a lubber fiend named the Tomte, and of this being the peasantry believe that only by unrewarded toil can it work out its salvation. Can the Lancashire King of the Fairies have been one of the same order, and have considered the utterance of a good wish as a reward, or even as a sarcastic allusion to his 'lost condition'?
The belief is by no means uncommon that the fairies are the angels who were neutral during the Satanic rebellion. In Brittany, however (Chants Populaires de la Bretagne, par Th. Hersart de la Villemarqué), they are the Princesses who, in the days of the Apostles, would not embrace Christianity.
The traditions of most countries agree, however, in attributing to the fairies extreme sensitiveness on the subject of their condition. Mr. Campbell has recorded that when the elves, who had grown weary of crossing the Dornoch Frith in cockle-shells, were engaged in building a bridge of gold across its mouth, a passer-by lifted his hands and blessed the tiny workmen, who immediately vanished, the bridge sinking with them beneath the waves, and its place being at once taken by quicksands. Almost every district haunted by 'greenies' or 'hill folk' has its story of a piteous appeal on the subject of their future state made by visible or invisible fairies. In a Highland story it is an old man reading the Bible who is accosted, the inquirer screaming and plunging into the sea upon being answered that the sacred pages did not contain any allusion to the salvation of any but the sons of Adam. My friend, Mr. Kennedy, in his valuable Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, gives a charming traditionary story of a priest who was benighted and lost upon a moor, and who was similarly accosted, and implored to declare that at the last day the lot of the fairies would not be with Satan. After the appeal had been somewhat ambiguously answered, 'a weak light was shed around where he stood, and he distinguished the path and an opening in the fence.'
In Cornwall they are supposed to be the spirits of the people who inhabited the country long before the birth of Christ, and who, although not good enough to partake of the joys of Heaven, yet are too good for Hell. In Wales there is a somewhat similar belief, but it is said that their probation will end at the day of judgment, when they will be admitted to Paradise. It is commonly believed by the Cornish peasants that they are gradually growing smaller, and that at length they will change into ants. Few people in Cornwall, therefore, are sufficiently venturesome to destroy a colony of those insects.