“Albert received the gift with a softened heart. He begged Maud’s forgiveness of his fault; she granted it willingly, and before four weeks had passed by, the lovers were man and wife.
“Of her adventure on Whitsun-eve, Maud never spoke. So much the more had her godmother Helen to say about it; for it was not difficult to guess that the fairies had had their prospering hand in the marriage of her godchild. The stone-mason now gave up his laborious calling. Albert became the master of a moderate property, which he diligently cultivated with his beloved Maud; and, as fair child after child was born to them, the happy mother laid upon the breast of each a shriveled leaf from the elfin chain, for so had her little guide counseled her, when she once, in a doubtful hour, had summoned him to her aid. Albert and Matilda reached a good old age; their children throve, and carefully preserved, like their parents, the gifts received from the subterranean folk, who continued their favour to them and to all their posterity.”
[A] Midsummer Night’s Dream.
[B] Dolmen; literally, stone table. Remarkable structures, learnedly ascribed to the Druids; unlearnedly, to the dwarfs and fairies; and numerous throughout Western Britanny. One or more large and massive flat stones, overlaying great slabs planted edgeways in the ground, form a rude and sometimes very capacious chamber, or grotto. The superstition which cleaves to these relics of a forgotten antiquity, stamps itself in the names given to many of them by the peasantry:—Grotte aux fées, Roche aux fées, &c.
[C] Weirds. The French has—Lots. “Elles jettent des sorts.” For justifying the translation, see the fine old Scottish ballad of Kempion; or Kemp Owayne, at the beginning:—
“Come here, come here, ye freely fede, (i. e. nobly born,)
And lay your head low on my knee,
A heavier weird I shall ye read
Than ever was read to gay ladye.
“I weird ye to a fiery beast:
And released shall ye never be,
Till Kempion the kinges son
Come to the crag and thrice kiss thee!”
[D] From the preface to the exceedingly interesting collection by M. Th. de la Villemarqué, of the transmitted songs that are current amongst his Bas Breton countrymen.
[E] Essay on The Fairies of Popular Superstition, in “The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.”
[F] Deutsche Mythologie, von Jacob Grimm. Chap. xiii. Ed. 1. 1835, and xvii. Ed. 2. 1843.