Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning; With Some Account of Dwellers in Fairyland

by John Thackray Bunce

The Pixies, or the Devonshire fairies, are just like the northern elves. The popular idea of them is that they are small creatures—pigmies—dressed in green, and are fond of dancing. Some of them live in the mines, where they show the miners the richest veins of metal just like the German dwarfs; others live on the moors, or under the shelter of rocks; others take up their abode in houses, and, like the Danish and Swedish elves, are very cross if the maids do not keep the places clean and tidy others, like the will-o'-the-wisps, lead travellers astray, and then laugh at them. The Pixies are said to be very fond of pure water. There is a story of two servant-maids at Tavistock who used to leave them a bucket of water, into which the Pixies dropped silver pennies. Once it was forgotten, and the Pixies came up into the girls' bedroom, and made a noise about the neglect. One girl got up and went to put the water in its usual place, but the other said she would not stir out of bed to please all the fairies in Devonshire. The girl who filled the water-bucket found a handful of silver pennies in it next morning, and she heard the Pixies debating what to do with the other girl. At last they said they would give her a lame leg for seven years, and that then they would cure her by striking her leg with a herb growing on Dartmoor. So next day Molly found herself lame, and kept so for seven years, when, as she was picking mushrooms on Dartmoor, a strange-looking boy started up, struck her leg with a plant he held in his hand, and sent her home sound again. There is another story of the Pixies which is very beautiful. An old woman near Tavistock had in her garden a fine bed of tulips, of which the Pixies became very fond, and might be heard at midnight singing their babes to rest amongst them; and as the old woman would never let any of the tulips be plucked, the Pixies had them all to themselves, and made them smell like the rose, and bloom more beautifully than any flowers in the place. Well, the old woman died, and the tulip-bed was pulled up and a parsley-bed made in its place. But the Pixies blighted it, and nothing grew in it; but they kept the grave of the old woman quite green, never suffered a weed to grow upon it, and in spring-time they always spangled it with wild-flowers.

All over the country, in the far North as in the South, we find traces of elfin beings like the Pixies—the fairies of the common traditions and of the poets—some such fairies as Shakspeare describes for us in several of his plays, especially in "Midsummer-Night's Dream," "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "The Tempest," and "Romeo and Juliet"—fairies who gambol sportively.

"On hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By paved fountain, or by rushing brook,
Or by the beached margent of the sea,
To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind."

But the Fairy tribe were not the only graceful elves described by the poets. The Germans had their Kobolds, and the Scotch their Brownies, and the English had their Boggarts and Robin Goodfellow and Lubberkin—all of them beings of the same description: house and farm spirits, who liked to live amongst men, and who sometimes did hard, rough work out of good-nature, and sometimes were spiteful and mischievous, especially to those who teased them, or spoke of them disrespectfully, or tried to see them when they did not wish to be seen. To the same family belongs the Danish Nis, a house spirit of whom many curious legends are related. Robin Goodfellow was the original of Shakspeare's Puck: his frolics are related for us in "The Midsummer Night's Dream," where a hairy says to him—

"You are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow. Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern,
And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn;
And sometimes makes the drink to bear no harm,
Misleads night wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hob-Goblin call you, and sweet Puck;
You do their work, and they shall have good luck."

In the "Jests of Robin Goodfellow," first printed in Queen Elizabeth's reign, the tricks which this creature is said to have played are told in plenty. Here is one of them:—Robin went as fiddler to a wedding. When the candles came he blew them out, and giving the men boxes on the ears he set them fighting. He kissed the prettiest girls, and pinched the ugly ones, till he made them scratch one another like cats. When the posset was brought he turned himself into a bear, frightened them all away, and had it all to himself.

The Boggart was another form of Robin Goodfellow. Stories of him are to be found amongst Yorkshire legends, as of a creature—always invisible—who played tricks upon the people in the houses in which he lived: shaking the bed-curtains, rattling the doors, whistling through the keyholes, snatching away the bread-and-butter from the children, playing pranks upon the servants, and doing all kinds of mischief. There is a story of a Yorkshire boggart who teased the family so much that the farmer made up his mind to leave the house. So he packed up his goods and began to move off. Then a neighbour came up, and said, "So, Georgey, you're leaving the old house?" "Yes," said the farmer, "the boggart torments us so that we must go." Then a voice came out of a churn, saying, "Ay, ay, Georgey, we're flitting, ye see." "Oh!" cried the poor farmer, "if thou'rt with us we'll go back again;" and he went back.—Mr. Tennyson puts this story into his poem of "Walking to the Mail."

"His house, they say,
Was haunted with a jolly ghost, that shook
The curtains, whined in lobbies, tapt at doors,
And rummaged like a rat: no servant stayed:
The farmer, vext, packs up his beds and chairs,
And all his household stuff, and with his boy
Betwixt his knees, his wife upon the tilt,
Sets out, and meets a friend who hails him, 'What!
You're flitting!' 'Yes, we're flitting,' says the ghost
(For they had packed the thing among the beds).
'Oh, well,' says he, 'you flitting with us, too;
Jack, turn the horses' heads and home again.'"

The same story is told in Denmark, of a Nis—which is the same as an English boggart, a Scotch brownie, and a German kobold—who troubled a man very much, so that he took away his goods to a new house. All but the last load had gone, and when they came for that, the Nis popped his head out of a tub, and said to the man, "We're moving, you see."

The Brownies, though mischievous, like the Boggarts, were more helpful, for they did a good deal of house-work; and would bake, and brew, and wash, and sweep, but they would never let themselves be seen; or if any one did manage to see them, or tried to do so, they went away. There are stories of this kind about them in English folk-lore, in Scotch, Welsh, in the Isle of Man, and in Germany, where they were called Kobolds. One Kobold, of whom many accounts are given, lived in the castle of Hudemuhler, in Luneberg, and used to talk with the people of the house, and with visitors, and ate and drank at table, just like Leander in the story of "The Invisible Prince;" and he used also to scour the pots and pans, wash the dishes, and clean the tubs, and he was useful, too, in the stable, where he curried the horses, and made them quite fat and smooth. In return for this he had a room to himself, where he made a straw-plaited chair, and had a little round table, and a bed and bedstead, and, where he expected every day to find a dish of sweetened milk, with bread crumbs; and if he did not get served in time, or if anything went wrong, he used to beat the servants with a stick. This Kobold was named Heinzelman, and in Grimm's collection of folklore there is a long history of him drawn up by the minister of the parish. Another Kobold, named Hodeken, who lived with the Bishop of Hildesheim, was usually of a kind and obliging turn of mind, but he revenged himself on those who offended him. A scullion in the bishop's kitchen flung dirt upon him, and Hodeken found him fast asleep and strangled him, and put him in the pot on the fire. Then the head cook scolded Hodeken, who in revenge squeezed toads all over the meat that was being cooked for the bishop, and then took the cook himself and tumbled him over the drawbridge into the moat. Then the bishop got angry, and took bell, and book, and candle, and banished Hodeken by the form of exorcism provided for evil spirits.