214 



But evidence was not inifrequently obtained from some "belated peasant," as 

 Milton intimates, that the Fairy people were still to be seen at tbeu- dancing 

 pastime if a man was out wandering in the moonshine late in the night, and 

 had the eyes of his imagination sufficiently clkurklized. Such appearances even 

 learned divines professed to have seen, as appears from the following relation 

 in the Miscellaneous Wiltshire Collections of Aubrey, preserved in the Library of 

 the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Aubrey wrote a " Natm-al History of Wilt- 

 shire," and lived in the latter part of the 17th centmy. He says — 



In the year 1633-4, soon after I had entered into my grammar at the Latin School 

 at Yatton Keynel, our curate, Mr. Hart, was annoyd one night by these elves or fayries 

 comming over the downes, it being near darke,. and approaching one of the fairy dances 

 as the common people call them in these parts, viz., the greene circles made by those 

 sprites on the grasse, he all at once sawe an innumerable quantitie of pygmies or very 

 small people dancing rounde and rounde, and singing and making aU inaner of small odd 

 noyses. So being very greatly amaz'd, and yet not being able, as he says, to run away from 

 them, being as he supposes kepte there in a kinde of enchantment. They no sooner 

 perceave him but they surrounde him on all sides, and what betwixt feare and amaze- 

 ment, he fell downe scarcely knowing what he did; and thereupon these Uttle creatures 

 pinch'd him all over, and made a sorte of quick humming noyse all the time ; but at 

 length they left him, and when the sun rose he found himself exactly in the midst of one 

 of these faery dances. This relation I had from him myselfe a few dayes after he was so. 

 tormented ; but when I and my bedfellow Stump wente soon afterwards at night time to 

 the dances on the downes, we sawe none of the elves or fairies. But indeed it is saide 

 they seldom appeare to any persons who go to seeke for them. 



Even in the early part of the present century in the remoter parts of 

 Wales the peasantry if they did not fully believe in the existence of Fairies 

 had a great dread of Fairy Rings, and the writer on the " Popular Superstitions 

 of Wales" in the "Graphic and Historical Illustrator" (1834) quotes a corres- 

 pondent of Mr. Croker, as thus writing to him on the subject : — " Many old per- 

 sons have told me that when they were young, and had occasion to go to the 

 mountains to look after their sheep or to fetch the cows, their parents always 

 cautioned them to avoid treading near the Fairies Rings, or they would be lost." 

 This is alluded to by a modern poet as not yet forgotten : — 



" Some say the screech-owl at the midnight hour 

 Awakes the Fairies in yon antient tow'r ; 

 Their nightly dancing ring I always dread. 

 Nor let my sheep within that circle tread ; 

 Where round and round all night in moonlight fair. 

 They dance to some strange music of the air." 



The same writer on Welsh superstitions asserts that still la Sweden if a peasant 



sees a circle marked out on the morning grass he attributes it to the midnight 



dance of the Fairies. 



Barham might have made a good Ingoldsby Legend out of Aubrey's narra- 

 tion, which I adduce without attempting to account for the curate's bewilder- 

 ment, but only to show at how late a date such a narrative could be received as a 

 veritable fact. 



Aubrey, at a later period of his life, when he wrote his " Natural History 

 of Wiltshire," discarded the fairies, assumed the philosopher, and was, I belieye, 

 the first to suggest a natural cause for the rings, though his supposition of " a 

 fertile subterraneous vapour which comes from a kinde of conical concave," and 

 assumes a circular shape at the surface of the ground, was rather too recondite 

 io be generally received. 



