The next morning the terrified widower carried a statement of his perplexity to Mr. Matthew Reid, the clergyman. This reverend person, besides being an excellent divine in other respects, was at the same time a man of sagacity, who understood the human passions. He did not attempt to combat the reality of the vision which had thrown his parishioner into this tribulation, but he contended it could be only an illusion of the devil. He explained to the widower, that no created being could have the right or power to imprison or detain the soul of a Christian-conjured him not to believe that his wife was otherwise disposed of than according to God's pleasure-assured him that Protestant doctrine utterly denies the existence of any middle state in the world to come -and explained to him that he, as a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, neither could nor dared authorize opening graves, or using the intervention of prayer to sanction rites of a suspicious character. The poor man, confounded and perplexed by various feelings, asked his pastor what he should do. "I will give you my best advice," said the clergyman. "Get your new bride's consent to be married to-morrow, or to-day, if you can; I will take it on me to dispense with the rest of the bans, or proclaim them three times in one day. You will have a new wife, and if you think of the former, it will be only as of one from whom death has separated you, and for whom you may have thoughts of affection and sorrow, but as a saint in Heaven, and not as a prisoner in Elfland." The advice was taken, and the perplexed widower had no more visitations from his former spouse.

An instance, perhaps the latest which has been made public, of communication with the Restless People (a more proper epithet than that of Daoine Shi, or Men of Peace, as they are called in Gaelic) -came under Pennant's notice, so late as during that observant traveller's tour in 1769. Being per

haps the latest news from the invisible commonwealth, we give the tourist's own words.

“A poor visionary who had been working in his cabbage garden (in Breadalbane), imagined that he was raised suddenly up into the air, and conveyed over a wall into an adjacent corn-field; that he found himself surrounded by a crowd of men and women, many of whom he knew to have been dead for some years, and who appeared to him skimming over the tops of the unbending corn, and mingling together like bees going to hive; that they spoke an unknown language, and with a hollow sound; that they very roughly pushed him to and fro, but on his uttering the name of God, all vanished but a female sprite, who, seizing him by the shoulder, obliged him to promise an assignation, at that very hour that day sevennight; that he then found his hair was all tied in double knots (well known by the name of elf-locks), and that he had almost lost his speech; that he kept his word with the spectre, whom he soon saw floating through the air towards him; that he spoke to her, but she told him she was at that time in too much haste to attend to him, but bid him go away and no harm should befall him, and so the affair rested when I left the country. But it is incredible the mischief of these agri somnia did in the neighbourhood. The friends and neighbours of the deceased, whom the old dreamer had named, were in the utmost anxiety at finding them in such bad company in the other world; the almost extinct belief of the old idle tales began to gain ground, and the good minister will have many a weary discourse and exhortation before he can eradicate the absurd ideas this idle story has revived."* !

It is scarcely necessary to add, that this comparatively recent tale is just the counterpart of the story of Bessie Dunlop, Alison Pearson, and of the Irish

* Pennant's Tour in Scotland, vol. i p. 120

butler, who was so nearly carried off, all of whom found in Elfland some friend formerly of middle earth, who attached themselves to the child of humanity, and who endeavoured to protect a fellowmortal against their less philanthropic companions.

These instances may tend to show how the fairy superstition, which, in its general sense of worshipping the Dii Campestres, was much the older of the two, came to bear upon, and have connexion with, that horrid belief in witchcraft, which cost so many innocent persons, and crazy impostors, their lives, for the supposed commission of impossible crimes. In the next chapter, I propose to trace how the general disbelief in the fairy creed began to take place, and gradually brought into discredit the supposed fears of witchcraft, which afforded pretext for such cruel practical consequences.

LETTER VI.

immediate Effect of Christianity on Articles of Popular SuperstitionChaucer's Account of the Roman Catholic Priests banishing the Fairies-Bishop Corbett imputes the same Effect to the Reformation -His Verses on that Subject-His Iter Septentrionale-Robin Goodfellow, and other Superstitions mentioned by Reginald Scot-Character of the English Fairies-The Tradition had become obsolete in that Author's Time-That of Witches remained in Vigour-But impugned by various Authors after the Reformation, as Wierus, Naudæus, Scot, and others-Demonology defended by Bodinus, Remigius, &c. Their mutual Abuse of each other-Imperfection of Physical Science at this Period, and the Predominance of Mysticism in that Department.

ALTHOUGH the influence of the Christian religion was not introduced to the nations of Europe with such radiance as to dispel at once those clouds of superstition which continued to obscure the understanding of hasty and ill-instructed converts, there can be no doubt that its immediate operation went

to modify the erroneous and extravagant articles of credulity, which lingered behind the old Pagan faith, and which gave way before it in proportion as its light became more pure and refined from the devices of men.

The poet Chaucer, indeed, pays the Church of Rome, with its monks and preaching friars, the compliment of having, at an early period, expelled from the land all spirits of an inferior and less holy character. The verses are curious as well as picturesque, and may go some length to establish the existence of doubts concerning the general belief in fairies among the well instructed in the time of Edward III.

The fairies of whom the bard of Woodstock talks, are, it will be observed, the ancient Celtic breed, and he seems to refer for the authorities of his tale to Bretagne, or Armorica, a genuine Celtic colony.

"In old time of the King Artour,

Of which that Bretons speken great honour,
All was this land fulfilled of faerie;
The Elf queen, with her joly company,
Danced full oft in many a grene mead.
This was the old opinion, as 1 rede-
I speake of many hundred years ago,
But now can no man see no elves mo.

For now the great charity and prayers
Of limitours, and other holy freres,
That searchen every land and every stream,
As thick as motes in the sunne-beam,

Blessing halls, chambers, kitchenes, and boures,
Cities and burghes, castles high and towers,
Thropes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies,
This maketh that there ben no fairies.
For there as wont to walken was an elf,
There walketh now the limitour himself,
In under nichtes and in morwenings,
And saith his mattins and his holy things,
As he goeth in his limitation.
Women may now go safely up and doun;
In every bush, and under every tree,

There is no other incubus than he,

And he ne will don them no dishonour.

Friars limited to beg within a certain district
Wife of Bath's Tale.

When we see the opinion which Chaucer has expressed of the regular clergy of his time, in some of his other tales, we are tempted to suspect some mixture of irony in the compliment, which ascribes the exile of the fairies, with which the land was "fulfilled," in King Arthur's time, to the warmth and zeal of the devotion of the limitary friars. Individual instances of skepticism there might exist among scholars, but a more modern poet, with a vein of humour not unworthy of Geoffrey himself, has with greater probability delayed the final banishment of the fairies from England, that is, from popular faith, till the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and has represented their expulsion as a consequence of the change of religion. Two or three verses of this lively satire may be very well worth the reader's notice, who must, at the same time, be informed, that the author, Dr. Corbett, was nothing less than the Bishop of Oxford and Norwich, in the beginning of the 17th century. The poem is named, "A proper new Ballad, entitled the Fairies' Farewell, to be sung or whistled to the tune of the Meadow Brow, by the learned; by the unlearned, to the tune of For tune."

"Farewell, rewards and fairies,

Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies

Do fare as well as they ;

And though they sweep their hearths no less

Than maids were wont to do,

Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?

"Lament, lament, old abbeys,

The fairies' lost command;
They did but change priests' babies,
But some have changed your land;

And all your children sprung from hence

Are now grown Puritans,

Who live as changelings ever since
For love of your domains.

"At morning and at evening both,

You merry were and glad,