They had become Alps or Alfs, better known afterwards under their Eastern designation of Sylphs.
It happened occasionally that a belated traveller, a peasant or a charcoal burner, returning homeward from a wedding towards the beginning of night, would be fortunate enough to meet at a clearing in the woods or on the banks of a brook with a band of little goblins, who were making merry in the dim twilight.
These were Sylphs, a little people flying in swarms through the air, making their nest in a flower or building one with a few bits of grass at the foot of a broom-sedge, and going out only in the evening to pay visits and as good neighbors to perform their social duties.
If the traveller, the peasant, or the charcoal burner had walked softly on the fine sand of the brook or on a grass-grown path on which his steps could not be heard, and if he had then stopped in time so as to be able to see without being seen, he might witness their gambols and ascertain the secrets of their private life, without running any risk.
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Have you, dear reader, have you heard Mercutio, in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” relate how Queen Mab came, and say:—
“Oh, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.....
Her wagon spokes made of long spinners’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner, a small, gray-coated gnat!”