may be good-humoured and bless his cows with abundance of milk, he
is careful to tie a basket of this fruit
between the cow's horns.
Of the many legendary origins of the fairy tribe, there is a popular
one abroad that mortals have frequently been transformed into these
little beings through "eating of ambrosia or some peculiar kind of
herb."[10]
According to a Cornish tradition, the fern is in some mysterious
manner connected with the fairies; and a tale is told of a young woman
who, when one day listlessly breaking off the fronds of fern as she sat
resting by the wayside, was suddenly confronted by a "fairy widower,"
who was in search of some one to attend to his little son. She accepted his
offer, which was ratified by kissing a fern leaf and repeating this formula:
"For a year and a day
I promise to stay."
Soon she was an inhabitant of fairyland, and was lost to mortal gaze
until she had fulfilled her stipulated engagement.
In Germany we find a race of elves, somewhat like the dwarfs,
popularly known as the Wood or Moss people. They are about the same
size as children, "grey and old-looking, hairy, and clad in moss." Their
lives, like those of the Hamadryads, are attached to the trees; and "if any
one causes by friction the inner bark to loosen a Wood-woman dies."[11]
Their great enemy is the Wild Huntsman, who, driving invisibly through
the air, pursues and kills them. On one occasion a peasant, hearing the
weird baying in a wood, joined in the cry; but on the following morning
he found hanging at his stable door a quarter of a green Moss-woman as
his share of the game. As a spell against the Wild Huntsman, the Moss-
women sit in the middle of those trees upon which the woodcutter has
placed a cross, indicating that they are to be hewn, thereby making sure
of their safety. Then, again, there is the old legend which tells how
Brandan met a man on the sea,[12] who was, "a thumb long, and floated
on a leaf, holding a little bowl in his right hand and a pointer in his left;
the pointer he kept dipping into the sea and letting water drop from it
into the bowl; when the bowl was full, he emptied it out and began
filling it again, his doom consisting in measuring the sea until the
judgment-day." This floating on the leaf is suggestive of ancient Indian
myths, and reminds us of Brahma sitting on a lotus and floating across
the sea. Vishnu, when, after Brahma's death, the waters have covered all
the worlds, sits in the shape of a tiny infant on a leaf of the fig tree, and
floats on the sea of milk sucking the toe of his right foot.[13]
Another tribe of water-fairies are the nixes, who frequently assume
the appearance of beautiful maidens. On fine sunny days they sit on the