CHAPTER IX.
FAIRIES, OR WANDERING SPIRITS.
Fairies, says a certain author, are a sort of intermediate beings, between men and women, having bodies, yet with the power of rendering them invisible, and of passing through all sorts of enclosures. They are remarkably small of stature, with fair complexions, whence they derive their name, fairies. Both male and female are generally clothed in green, and frequent mountains, the sunny side of hills, groves, and green meadows, where they amuse themselves with dancing, hand in hand, in a circle, by moonlight. The traces of their feet are said to be visible, next morning, on the grass, and are commonly called fairy rings, or circles.
Fairies have all the passions and wants of men, and are great lovers of cleanliness and propriety; for the observance of which, they frequently reward servants, by dropping money in their shoes. They likewise punish sluts and slovens by pinching them black and blue. They often change their weak and starveling elves, or children, for the more robust offspring of men. But this can only be done before baptism; for which reason it is still the custom, in the Highlands, to watch by the cradle of infants till they are christened. The word changeling, now applied to one almost an idiot, attests the current belief of these superstitious mutations.
Some fairies dwell in mines, and in Wales nothing is more common than these subterranean spirits, called knockers, who very good naturedly point out where there is a rich vein of lead or silver. In Scotland there was a sort of domestic fairies, from their sun-burnt complexions, called brownies. These were extremely useful, performing all sorts of domestic drudgery.
In the Life of Dr. Adam Clarke, we have the following account of a circumstance that took place in the town of Freshford, county of Kilkenny, Ireland, showing the superstition prevailing in that country concerning the influence of these fairy beings: "A farmer built himself a house of three apartments, the kitchen in the middle, and a room for sleeping, &c., on either end. Some time after it was finished, a cow of his died—then a horse; to these succeeded other smaller animals, and last of all his wife died. Full of alarm and distress, supposing himself to be an object of fairy indignation, he went to the fairy man, that is, one who pretends to know fairy customs, haunts, pathways, antipathies, caprices, benevolences, &c., and he asked his advice and counsel on the subject of his losses. The wise man, after having considered all things, and cast his eye upon the house, said, 'The fairies, in their night walks from Knockshegowny Hill, in county Tipperary, to the county of Kilkenny, were accustomed to pass over the very spot where one of your rooms is now built; you have blocked up their way, and they were very angry with you, and have slain your cattle, and killed your wife, and, if not appeased, may yet do worse harm to you.' The poor fellow, sadly alarmed, went, and with his own hands, deliberately pulled down the timbers, demolished the walls, and left not one stone upon another, but razed the very foundation, and left the path of these capricious gentry as open and as clear as it was before. How strong must have been this man's belief in the existence of these demi-natural and semi-supernatural beings, to have induced him thus to destroy the work of his own hands!"
In Spenser's epic poem, called the Fairy Queen, the imagination of the reader is entertained with the characters of fairies, witches, magicians, demons, and departed spirits. A kind of pleasing horror is raised in the mind, and one is amused with the strangeness and novelty of the persons who are represented in it; but to be affected by such poetry requires an odd turn of thought, a peculiar cast of fancy, with an imagination naturally fruitful and superstitious.
The Gypsies are a class of strolling beggars, cheats, and fortune tellers. They have been quite numerous in all the older countries, and are so still in some of them; but in the United States there are but few, some one or two tribes in the west, and a small party of them in New York state. They are probably called Gypsies from the ancient Egyptians, who had the character of great cheats, whence the name might afterwards pass proverbially into other languages, as it did into the Greek and Latin; or else the ancient Egyptians being much versed in astronomy, or rather astrology, the name was afterwards assumed by these modern fortune tellers. In Latin they are called Egyptii; the Italians called them Cinari, or Cingani; the Russians, Zigani; the Turks and Persians, Zingarri; the Germans, Ziguenor; the Spaniards, Gitános; the French, Bohemians, from the circumstance that Bohemia was the first civilized country where they made their appearance.
In most countries they live in the woods and forests; but in England, where every inch of land is cultivated, the covered cart and little tent are their houses, and they seldom remain more than three days in the same place.
Dabbling in sorcery is in some degree the province of the female Gypsy. She affects to tell the future, and to prepare philters, by means of which love can be awakened in any individual towards any particular object; and such is the credulity of the human race, even in the most enlightened countries, that the profits arising from these practices are great. The following is a case in point: Two females, neighbors and friends, were tried, some years since, for the murder of their husbands. It appeared that they were in love for the same individual, and had conjointly, at various times, paid sums of money to a Gypsy woman to work charms to captivate his affections. Whatever little effect the charms might produce, they were successful in their principal object, for the person in question carried on for some time a criminal intercourse with both. The matter came to the knowledge of the husbands, who, taking means to break off this connection, were both poisoned by their wives. Till the moment of conviction, these wretched females betrayed neither emotion nor fear; but at this juncture their consternation was indescribable. They afterwards confessed that the Gypsy, who had visited them in prison, had promised to shield them from conviction by means of her art. It is therefore not surprising that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when a belief in sorcery was supported by the laws of all Europe, these people were regarded as practisers of sorcery, and punished as such, when, even in the nineteenth, they still find people weak enough to place confidence in their claims to supernatural power.
In telling fortunes, the first demand of the Gypsy, in England, is invariably a sixpence, in order that she may cross her hands with silver; and here the same promises are made, and as easily believed, as in other countries, leading to the conclusion that mental illumination, amongst the generality of mankind, has made no progress whatever; as we observe in the nineteenth century the same gross credulity manifested as in the seventeenth, and the inhabitants of one of the countries most celebrated for the arts of civilization imposed upon by the same stale tricks which served to deceive, two centuries before, in Spain, a country whose name has long and justly been considered as synonymous with every species of ignorance and barbarity.