48 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANATOMICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL 



" From haunted spring and grassy ring 

 Troop goblin, elf, and fairy, 



And the kelpies must flit from their black bog-pit 

 And the brownie must not tarry."* 



For the most part they are described as incredibly numerous, as thick 

 as the grass about us, filling every part of space, sea, and land alike; visible 

 or invisible at will, although naturally invisible to us, able to change their 

 appearance, to seem big or little, to take the form of a human, or of an 

 animal, or of a tree ; able to see everything, to see through solid walls and 

 rocks ; able to change other persons into animals and back again, a cat, a 

 horse, a deer, a toad, a snake, a salmon ; able to cause storms, rain, wind, 

 famine, and the like at will ; able to foretell human events, death, sickness, 

 &c. ; able to interfere with human work or to help it, spinning, weaving, 

 cleaning, threshing, and the rest. 



Their dwelling is in the mounds and the old stone monuments, forests, 

 hills, rocks ; in the mountains ; on the seashore ; favourite places are old 

 round towers, such as that of Dun-Osdale in Skye. For the Welsh, they 

 occupy enchanted islands in the Irish Sea ; and in Brittany, they inhabit 

 the caverns and the grottoes on the hillsides and by the sea. 



One universal characteristic of these tales is the curious lapse of time, 

 or rather the shortness of the time, which a person who has been taken by 

 the fairies imagines himself to spend ; twenty years seem no more than a 

 night or than a few hours. There is a story common to all the Celtic peoples 

 of a man taken on his wedding day, living in fairyland for many generation?, 

 coming back thinking he has only been a few hours away, and finding that 

 all .the people he knew are dead, and that only one old woman in the 

 neighbourhood still lives who remembers the wedding; in one extreme case 

 what seems a few hours dancing, turns out to be an absence of 200 years. 



As to the nature of the fairies, Wentz's reporters held widely different 

 views. In the first place there was the common view that the fairies were 

 spirits of the departed, especially those killed in war or murdered; their 

 appointed time being thus violently anticipated, they must wander about the 

 earth until the day of deliverance comes ; during this period they may 

 occasionally visit their relatives, and do so most frequently when misfortune 



* Quoted by a writer in Wentz. 



