OUR PASTORAL LIFE, 235 



another, looking out from a third, and gambUng and tumbling every- 

 where in the midst of a posy which genius and taste has arranged 

 and put together, and which is full worthy of being the summer-house 

 of their Queen : — 



" a bank where the wild Thyme blows. 



Where Ox-lips and the nodding Violet grows ; 

 Quite over-canopied with luscious Woodbine, 

 With sweet musk-roses, and with Eglantine : 

 There sleeps Titania, some time of the night, 

 LuU'd in these flowers with dances and delight." 



Fairies, you then perceive, have a great deal to do with our subject. 

 They guide the favoured child to good luck when it seeks, in faith, 

 the four-leaved Clover or the even leaf of the Ash-tree ; they hide in 

 the bowl of the acorn, and it forthwith becomes the cup on your 

 child's tea-tray; they "kill cankers in the musk — rose-buds," and 

 these buds are forced in love's hot-bed; they blow adrift the feathery 

 crown of the Dandelion when the herd laddie grows weary of his 

 herding ; they speckle the bells of the stately Foxglove that they 

 may be made worthy of a fairy's finger*; and they plant and nurture 

 the Blue-Bells amidst the purple heather, and imprint the indelible 

 signature on every leal heart of auld Scotland. One such heart thus 

 sighs from Afric's deserts — 



" Oh ! that I were where Blue-Bells grow 

 On Roxburgh's ferny lea, 

 Where Gowans glent and Crow-flowers blow 

 Beneath the trysting tree."t 



Shakespere has most bewitchingly associated some of our common 

 plants with the Fairies. They are the " demy-puppets," that 



" By moonshine do the green-sour i-inglets make. 

 Whereof the ewe not bites ; " 



and you may study these " emerald rings," for they are frequent 

 enough on our sea-banks and in old pastures, and easily discovered 

 by being " more fertile fresh than all the field to see " — you may 

 study them there with all the cool philosophy of advanced years and 

 of acquired science, and yet it will be happy for you should Shake- 

 spere' s theory remain fresh and verdant in your heart and memory. 

 It is yet apparently not entirely disbelieved by our children. In an 

 interesting book, published in 1850, I find it recorded that "a few 

 miles from Alnwick is a fairy-ring, round which if people run more 

 than nine times, some evil will befall them. The children constantly 



* In Wales " the bells of the Digitalis or Fox-glove are called Menyg 

 Ellylon, or the Elves'-gloves ; in Ireland, also, they are connecte »]with the 

 fairies." Keightley's Fairy Mythology, p. 412. 



t Thomas Pringle, the author of the " Autumnal Excursion and other 

 poems collected into a volume by Leigh Hunt. 



