87G 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1809. 



race which fiction represents as of 

 diminutive size, and as principally 

 engaged in the domestic concerns 

 of tlie cottage. No instances are 

 related of their dances on the green 

 by moonlight, of their watching 

 over secreted treasures, of their 

 misleading travellers by delusive 

 lights, and of their conducting 

 them into habitations excavated in 

 the rocks and mountains. 



Were we even to wave the ob- 

 jections arising from hence, which 

 appear to be completely subversive 

 of the eastern origin ascribed to 

 our superstitions ; exceptions, not 

 less fatal to the pretensions of the 

 Orientalists, appear capable of be- 

 ing suggested, from the general 

 and implicit credulity with which 

 those fancies have been received 

 in England and Scandinavia. How- 

 ever competent the reasoning may 

 be thought, which is employed in 

 favour of the Saracen origin of 

 our fairy machinery ; however ade- 

 quate to account for the construc- 

 tion of a system of poetical ima- 

 gery ; it seems wholly insufficient to 

 account for theproduction of abody 

 of popular superstitions. The poet, 

 or fabulist, might have acquired 

 such notions, through the channels 

 of verbal intercourse or literary 

 communication ; but he must have 

 wanted influence, to diffuse them 

 so widely, and to impress them so 

 forcibly, as to procure them the 

 religious veneration of the natlVes 

 of those countries in which they 

 were propagated ; and l©t it be 

 remembered, that without these 

 qualifications, they must have 

 wanted the essentials necessary to 

 render them superstitions and to 



gain them popularity. That the 

 power of the poet never extended 

 to this height, is fully attested by 

 experience. As far as those ro- 

 mantic notions employed in our 

 machinery are mere poetical fan- 

 cies, they seem never to have been 

 believed by the Goths or English ; 

 as far as they are superstitious 

 tenets, they appear never admitted 

 by the Arabians or Saracens. 



While the reasons deducihlefrom 

 these circumstances operate so de- 

 cidedly against the cause of the 

 Orientalists, they are no less deci- 

 sive in strengthening that of the 

 Northerns. The coincidences exist- 

 ing between the mythological sys- 

 tem of the latter, and our preter- 

 natural imagery, are not only of the 

 closest kind, but extend to every 

 particular in v.hich a resemblance 

 may be expected. The nation from 

 whom, according to the present 

 theory,they were spread throughout 

 Europe, possessed every influence 

 necessary to gain them credence and 

 to give them publicity: or, to state 

 this circumstance more truly, as well 

 as more favourably to the Scandina- 

 vian cause, carried them into those 

 regions which they conquered and 

 colonized. At a very early period, 

 the emigrants from Scandinavia ac- 

 quired considerable territories on 

 the borders of the Euxinc Sea, and 

 there formed themselves into two 

 kingdoms, under the title of Wisi- 

 goths and Ostrogoths. From these 

 settlements they extended their 

 conquests over the southern pro- 

 vinces of the Roman empire, and 

 finally occupied, besides Denmark 

 and Germany, France, Spain, 

 England and Italy.* Into all 



these 



^ • They seized on Spain in 409, over-ran Italy and took Rome in 410 ; invaded 

 France in 412, and entered England, at the solititation of V'ortigern, m 447. 



