Then up and spoke a brownie,

With a long beard on his chin,
"And I have spun the tow," said he,
"And I want some more to spin.

"I've spun a piece of hempen cloth,
And I want to spin another;
A little sheet for Mary's bed.
And an apron for her mother."

And with that I could not help but laugh,
And I laughed out loud and free,
And then, on the top of the Calden-Low
There was no one left but me.

And all on the top of the Calden-Low
The mists were cold and grey,

And nothing I saw but the mossy stones,
That round about me lay.

This deponent saith, that coming down from the Low, she saw all their benevolent intentions already realized. It is to be hoped that such visits may be again paid to Calden-Low, but we have our doubts.

The Pixies may possibly still haunt those caves and dells in Devonshire where Coleridge and Carrington saw them; but with those exceptions-and they received on the faith of poets, who take license -we believe they have all emigrated. In the lays of Shakspeare and Milton, they are made immortal denizens of our soil; and we shall never see moonlight, or come upon the VER-RINGS that still mark our plains and downs, without feeling and poetically believing that the fairies have been there. In Wales, however, the common people still declare that they abide. Scotland may have given up the brownies, and kelpies, and urisks; and we may no longer have hobthrushes dwelling amongst our rocks, or Robin Goodfellow, alias Puck, alias Hobgoblin, playing his pranks, as in this confession.

When e'er night-wanderers I meet,

As from their night-sports they trudge home,
With counterfeiting voice I greete,

And call them on with me to roame,

Through woods, through lakes,

Through bogs, through brakes;

Or else unseen with them I go,
All in the nicke,

To play some tricke,

And frolicke it with ho, ho, ho!

Sometimes I meet them like a man;

Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound;

And to a horse I turn me can ;

To trip and trot about them round.

But if to ride

My backe they stride,

More swift than wind away I go,
O'er hedge and londs,

Through pools and ponds

I whinny laughing ho, ho, ho!

He may not come to play those pranks, nor as Milton has described his visits to the farm:

To earn the cream-bowl duly set.

The thrashing-machine has thrown the lubber-fiend out of employment; but the Welsh still declare themselves honoured by the continuance of these nightwanderers. They have still the corpse-candles; and hear Gabriel's hounds hunting over the hills by night, and stoutly avow that the fairies are as numerous there as ever. There is a water-fall at Aberpergum, called the Fairies' Water-fall, where they are, almost any night to be heard singing; and I have heard a very grave Friend declare that he has seen them dancing in a green meadow, as he rode home at night. How long, indeed, this may continue, one cannot tell; for old Morgan Lewis, who for fifty years has acted as

guide to the beautiful water-falls of Neath Valley, and is a most firm believer in all the Fairy faith, especially of their luring children away by assuming the forms of their deceased relatives, and offering them fairy-bread to eat, which changes their natures, and they are compelled to join the Elfin troop-declares that they are now gone from that neighbourhood; that "the spirit of man is become too strong for them." A fair friend has sketched for me, the old man in the attitude of describing to a party the exact spot on which his father saw their very last appearance. Behind him rises the Dînas Rock, from time immemorial the sanctum sanctorum of Welsh fairyland; and old Morgan is exclaiming, "They are gone! they are gone! and we'll never see them more!"

228

CHAPTER VIII.

THE VILLAGE INN.

THERE is nothing more characteristic in rural life than a village ale-house, or inn. It is the centre of information, and the regular, or occasional rendezvous of almost every-body in the neighbourhood. You there see all sorts of characters, or you hear of them. The where-about of every-body all around is there perfectly understood. I do not mean the low pothouse-the new beer-shop of the new Beer-bill, with LICENSED TO BE DRUNK ON THE PREMISES blazoned over the door in staring characters-the Tom-andJerry of the midland counties-the Kidley-Wink of the west of England. No, I mean the good oldfashioned country ale-house; the substantial, well-todo old country ale-house-situated on a village green, or by the road-side, with a comfortable sweep out of the road itself, for carriages or carts to come round to the door, and stand out of all harm's-way. The nice old-fashioned house, in a quiet, rural, out-of-the-way,

The very house which Gold

old-fashioned district.
smith in his day described-

Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retired,
Where village statesmen talked with looks profound,
And news much older than their ale went round.

It is a low, white-washed, or slap-dashed, or stuccoed, or timber-framed house, with its various roof, and steep gables; its casement windows above, bright and clean, peeping out from amongst vines or jasmines, where the inn-keeper's neat daughter, who acts the parts of chamber-maid, bar-maid, and waiter, may be seen looking abroad; and its broad bay-windows below, where parties may do the same, and where, as you pass, you may occasionally see such parties—a pleasant-looking family, or a group of young, gay people, with merry, and often very sweet faces amongst them;—their post-chaise, travelling-carriage, barouche, or spring-cart, according to their several styles and dignities, standing at the door, under the great spreading tree. Ay, there is the old spreading tree, that is as old and probably older than the inn itself. It is an elm, with a knotty mass of root swelled out around the base of its sturdy stem into a prodigious heap-into a seat, in fact, on holiday oc casions, for a score of rustic revellers, or resters. some cases, where the root has not been so accommodating, a good stout bench runs round it; or where the root is at all endangered by scratching dogs, picking and hewing children, or rooting pigs of the village, it has heaped up a good mound of earth round it; or it is protected by a circle of wattled fence.

In

You see the tree is a tree of mark and consequence;