The Korrigans of Brittainy, mentioned a while ago, were peculiar in many ways. They had beautiful singing voices and bright eyes, but they never danced. They preferred to sit still at twilight, like mermaids, combing their long golden hair. The tallest of them was nearly two feet high, fair as a lily, and transparent as dew itself, yet able as the rest to seem dark, and humpy, and terrifying. He who passed the night with them, or joined in their sports, was sure to die shortly, since their very breath or touch was fatal. And again, as in the case of Seigneur Nann, about whom a touching Breton ballad was made, they doomed to death any who refused to marry one of them within three days.
Of the American Indian fairies we do not know much. In Mr. Schoolcraft's books of Indian legends there is a beautiful little Bone-dwarf, who may almost be considered a fairy. In the land of the Sioux they tell the pretty story of Antelope and Karkapaha, and how the wee warrior-folk, thronging on the hill, clad in deerskin, and armed with feathered arrow and spear, put the daring heart of a slain enemy into the breast of the timid lover, Karkapaha, and made him worthy both to win and keep his lovely maiden, and to deserve homage for his bravery, from her tribe and his. Some of you will remember one thing against the Puk-Wudjies, which is an Algonquin name meaning "little vanishing folk," to wit: that they killed Hiawatha's friend, "the very strong man Kwasind," as our Longfellow called him. He had excited their envy, and they flung on his head, as he floated in his canoe, the only thing on earth that could kill him, the seed-vessel of the white pine.
The Scotch, Irish and English overground fairies were, as a general thing, very much alike. They had the power of becoming visible or invisible, compressing or enlarging their size, and taking any shape they pleased. When an Irish Shefro was disturbed or angry, and wanted to get a house or a person off her grounds, she put on the strangest appearances: she could crow, spit fire, slap a tail or a hoof about, grin like a dragon, or give a frightful, weird, lion-like roar. Of course the object of her polite attentions thought it best to oblige her. If she and her companions were anxious to enter a house, they lifted the spryest of their number to the keyhole, and pushed him through. He carried a piece of string, which he fastened to the inside knob, and the other end to a chair or stool; and over this perilous bridge the whole giggling tribe marched in one by one. The Irish and Scotch fays were more mischievous than the English, but have not fared so well, having had no memorable verses made about them. The little Scots were sometimes dwarfish wild creatures, wrapped in their plaids, or, oftener, comely and yellow-haired; the ladies in green mantles, inlaid with wild-flowers; and dapper little gentlemen in green trousers, fastened with bobs of silk. They carried arrows, and went on tiny spirited horses, as did the Welsh fairies, "the silver bosses of their bridles jingling in the night-breeze." An old account of Scotland says that they were "clothed in green, with dishevelled hair floating over their shoulders, and faces more blooming than the vermeil blush of a summer morning."
Their Welsh cousins were many. A native poet once sang of them:
——In every hollow,
A hundred wry-mouthed elves.
They were queer little beings, and had notions of what was decorous, for they combed the goats' beards every Friday night, "to make them decent for Sunday!" They were very quarrelsome; you could hear them snarling and jabbering like jays among themselves, so that in some parts of Wales a proverb has arisen: "They can no more agree than the fairies!" The inhabitants believed that the midgets never had courage to go through the gorse, or prickly furze, which is a common shrub in that country. One sick old woman who was bothered by the Tylwyth Teg ("the fair family") souring her milk and spilling her tea, used to choke up her room with the furze, and make such a hedge about the bed, that nothing larger than a needle could be so much as pointed at her. In Breconshire the Tylwyth Teg gave loaves to the peasantry, which, if they were not eaten then and there in the dark, would turn in the morning into toadstools! When Welsh fairies took it into their heads to bestow food and money, very lazy people were often supported in great style, without a stroke of work. And the Tylwyth Teg loved to reward patience and generosity. They played the harp continuously, and, on grand occasions, the bugle; but if a bagpipe was heard among them, that indicated a Scotch visitor from over the border.
King James i. of England mentions in his Dæmonology a "King and Queene of Phairie: sic a jolie courte and traine as they had!" Nothing could have exceeded the state and elegance of their ceremonious little lives. According to a sweet old play, they had houses made all of mother-of-pearl, an ivory tennis-court, a nutmeg parlor, a sapphire dairy-room, a ginger hall; chambers of agate, kitchens of crystal, the jacks of gold, the spits of Spanish needles! They dressed in imported cobweb! with a four-leaved clover, lined with a dog-tooth violet, for overcoat; and they ate (think of eating such a pretty thing!) delicious rainbow-tart, the trout-fly's gilded wing, and
——the broke heart of a nightingale
O'ercome with music.
But we never heard that Chinese or Scandinavian elves could afford such luxury.