FAIRY PIPES. 1(J5 



period. It is not to these, however, but to the small pipea 

 formerly used in this kingdom for smoking tobacco, and 

 tobacco alone, that I wish to draw attention. Most people, 

 especially in the Midland and Northern counties of England, 

 as well as in Scotland and Ireland, will have beard the name 

 of Fairy Pipes applied to the small, old-fashioned, and some- 

 times oddly-shaped tobacco pipes which are not infrequently 

 turned up in digging and plowing and other operations. To 

 these and the general forms of old English pipes, I purpose 

 confining myself in the present article. Many years ago I 

 collected together a large number of these ' Fairy Pipes' 

 from all parts of the kingdom. Since then, my own researches 

 have, with the aid of inquiries carried on for me, enabled 

 me to bring forward many interesting points, so as to verify 

 dates of manufacture and more fully to carry out their classi- 

 fication. Like their Irish brethren and sisters, English people 

 were formerly apt to ascribe everything unusually small 

 to the fairies, and anything out of the common way to the 

 people of very remote ages. 



" Thus, these small pipes are commonly in England called 

 * fairy pipes,' or * Carl's pipes,' or ' old man's pipes ;' in Ire- 

 land, where they are likewise known as ' fairy pipes,' they 

 are also called ' Dane's pipes ;' and in Scotland, where their 

 common name is ' elf pipes,' or ' elfin pipes,' they are, in like 

 manner, known as ' Celtic pipes.' .They are also sometimes 

 named ' Mab pipes,' or ' Queen's pipes,' from the same fairy 

 majesty, Queen Mab. Thus, while in each country they are 

 ascribed to the elfin race the 'small people' of Cornish 

 folk-lore their secondary names attach to them a popular 

 belief in their extreme antiquity. Anything apparently old 

 is at once, by the Irish, set down to the ' Danes;' by the Scots 

 to the ' Celts ;" and by people in the rural districts of our own 

 country to the 'carls,' or ' old men ' carl being indicative of 

 extreme antiquity. In Ireland, the pipes are believed to 

 have belonged to the cluricaunes a kind of wild, ungovern- 

 able, mischievous fairy-demon who were held in awe by the 

 'pisantry ;' and whenever found, these pipes were, with much 

 superstitious feeling, immediately broken up, so as to destroy 

 and break up the spell their finding might have cast around 

 the finder. But it was not only among the peasantry that 

 this belief in the extreme antiquity of tobacco pipes existed. 



"Serious essays were written to prove their pre-historic 

 origin, and to claim for them a history that in our dny reads 

 as arrant nonsense. In 1784, a short pipe was asserted to 



