236 OUR WILD FLOWERS AND 



run this number, but nothing will induce them to venture a tenth 

 run*." 



Fairies are also the small elves "whose pastime is to make midnight 

 mushrooms ; " and they had imposed upon them the more serious 

 duty of bestowing additional excellence on such flowers as were 

 destined for the use of Queen Titania. A fairy — and no doubt a 

 maid of honour — tells us that such was her pretty occupation : 



" The Cowslips tall her pensioners be ; 



In their gold coats spots you see ; 



Those be rubies, fairy favours. 



In those freckles live their savours : 

 I must go seek some dew-drops here. 

 And hang a pearl in every Cowslip's ear." 



There are few, unless they have some botanical knowledge, that will 

 fully appreciate the exact beauty of this description of the Cowslip ; 

 but we can all of us apprehend the pretty vagrancy of the fancy that 

 assigned to these quick entities the delicate task of bespangling the 

 flowerets with their dew-drops. Another poet carries out the fancy 

 a little more in detail. His fairies gather the dew as it falls, and 

 with it they adorn every leaf and spray as if with orient pearls f; and 

 with this nectar are fed the morning zephyrs as these wanton amongst 

 the bean and clover fields |, or linger on the breathing bed of violets, 

 or nestle in the rose, or play over the volutions of the eglantine and 

 woodbine when these clamber round your fair Rosamond's bower. 



* Keightley's Fairy Mythology, p. 310. — The remainder of the paragraph 

 is as follows : " In Northumberland the belief in the Faii-ies is not yet 

 extinct. The writer from whom we derive the following legend tells us 

 that he knew an old man whose dog had pointed a troop of fairies, and 

 though he could not see them he plainly heard their music sounding like a 

 fiddle and a very small pair of pipes. He also tells us, that many years 

 ago a girl who lived near Nether Witton, as she was returning from milking 

 with her pail on her head, saw the fairies playing in the fields, and though 

 she pointed them out to her companions they could not see them. The 

 reason it seemed was her weise or pad for bearing the pad on her head was 

 composed of foiu'-leaved clover, which gives the power of seeing fairies. 

 Spots are pointed out in sequestered places as the favourite haunts of the 

 elves." — See also the Borderers' Table Book, vii. p. 182-184 ; and Hone's 

 Every Day Book, iii. p. 674. — My father's herd — John Henderson — drove 

 the cattle to the water with a roan-tree wand ; and he used to observe that 

 "it coudna do nae harm." — I have often carried a piece in my pocket, in 

 imitation of my elder school-fellows. 



t " 'Twas I that led you thro' the painted meads. 

 Where the hght fairies danced upon the flowers. 

 Ranging on every leaf an orient pearl. 

 Which, struck together with the silken wind 

 Of their loose mantles, made a silver chime." 



Hone's Every Day Book, iii. p. 71- 



X A poor visionary saw, in 1769, the elf spirits " skimming over the tops 

 of the unbending corn, and mingling together like bees going to hive." 

 Sir W. Scott's Demonology, p. 1/1. 



