CHAPTER VI.
Plants of the Fairies and Naiades.
Centuries before Milton wrote that “Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep,” our Saxon ancestors, whilst yet they inhabited the forests of Germany, believed in the existence of a diminutive race of beings—the “missing link” between men and spirits—to whom they attributed extraordinary actions, far exceeding the capabilities of human art. Moreover, we have it on the authority of the father of English poetry that long, long ago, in those wondrous times when giants and dwarfs still deigned to live in the same countries as ordinary human beings,
“In the olde dayes of King Artour,
Of which the Bretons speken gret honour,
All was this land fulfilled of faerie;
The Elf-quene and hire joly compaynie
Danced full oft in many a grene mede.