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e Oak, Quercus robur, the tree of the Dryads.—Thete is an 
a a tree at Wrexham, England, known as the Fairy-Oak. 
Many oaks were in ancient Greece in high estate as homes of 
Hamada, beings of fairy beauty who lived and died with the 
= the oak was widely believed to hold a mysterious relation 
with the Divine ; the famous Greek oracle of Apollo at Dodona, 
was under a giant oa 
rmans of Tacitus’ description gathered under oak trees 
= 
oa 
T € 
to worship the invisil 
Turned fro a Druid: associations to Christianity, England is 
now dotted with old oaks known as Gospel Oaks, because of 
tradition that under those sacred trees Christianity was first 
preached. 
The oak however still retains much of its pagan lore; the 
German proverb is ‘“‘A Dryad lives in every tree’’; holes found 
in ons are said by Grimm to be esteemed the “ Fairies’ path- 
ways” and in India to be ‘the doors by-which the special dryad 
of the tree age in and out.” 
In shor eka writer says, “the Oaks gathers all 
Pacenie at its ro 
Corn Spirits. Field spirits are widely present in the Russian 
beliefs at the present day, and in Germany, where they are espe- 
cially inhabitants of the grain fields. In Iceland they live in the 
grass surrounding the grain field, and the farmer spares that 
grass lest the elves abiding in it invade his crops. 
In the Odenwald in Germany, near Rudenstein, the ruined 
castle of the Wild Huntsman, is a weird rock called Wildes 
Weibchenstein, “believed to be the haunt of a ie woman who 
comes forth when some one is late in harvesting and cuts the 
corn and binds it into sheaves behind the reapers it astonishing 
speed.” 
Corn spirits once existed in the belief of the English peasantry, 
00. 
Other and daintier fairies, by their dancing in circles on the 
grass, caused the growth of those taller, greener rings of grass, 
known as fairy rings, fairy circles, fairy dances or pixy rings. 
