would have conclusively proved this identity of character.

[Footnote 1:  Fairy Mythology of Shakspere, Hazlitt, p. 83.]

[Footnote 2:  Daemonologie, p. 69.  An instance of a fairy incubus is given in the “Life of Robin Goodfellow,” Hazlitt’s Fairy Mythology, p. 176.]

[Footnote 3:  Pitcairn, iii. p. 162.]

[Footnote 4:  Ibid. i. p. 162, and many other places.]

[Footnote 5:  Fairy has been altered to “fury,” but compare Peele, Battle of Alcazar:  “Fiends, fairies, hags that fight in beds of steel.”]

113.  The real distinction between these two classes of spirits depends on the condition of national thought upon the subject of supernaturalism in its largest sense.  A belief which has little or no foundation upon indisputable phenomena must be continually passing through varying phases, and these phases will be regulated by the nature of the subjects upon which the attention of the mass of the people is most firmly concentrated.  Hence, when a nation has but one religious creed, and one that has for centuries been accepted by them, almost without question or doubt, faith becomes stereotyped, and the mind assumes an attitude of passive receptivity, undisturbed by doubts or questionings.  Under such conditions, a belief in evil spirits ever ready and watching to tempt a man into heresy of belief or sinful act, and thus to destroy both body and soul, although it may exist as a theoretic portion of the accepted creed, cannot possibly become a vital doctrine to be believed by the general public.  It may exist as a subject for learned dispute to while away the leisure hours of divines, but cannot by any possibility obtain an influence over the thoughts and lives of their charges.  Mental disturbance on questions of doctrinal importance being, for these reasons, out of the question, the attention of the people is almost entirely riveted upon questions of material ease and advantage.  The little lets and hindrances of every-day life in agricultural and domestic matters are the tribulations that appeal most incessantly to the ineradicable sense of an invisible power adverse to the interests of mankind, and consequently the class of evil spirits believed in at such a time will be fairies rather than devils—­malicious little spirits, who blight the growing corn; stop the butter from forming in the churn; pinch the sluttish housemaid black and blue; and whose worst act is the exchange of the baby from its cot for a fairy changeling;—­beings of a nature most exasperating to thrifty housewife and hard-handed farmer, but nevertheless not irrevocably prejudiced against humanity, and easily to be pacified and reduced into a state of fawning friendship by such little attentions as could be rendered without difficulty by the poorest cotter.  The whole fairy mythology is perfumed with an honest, healthy, careless joy in life, and a freedom from mental doubt.  “I love true lovers, honest men, good fellowes, good huswives, good meate, good drinke, and all things that good is, but nothing that is ill,” declares Robin Goodfellow;[1] and this jovial materialism only reflects the state of mind of the folk who were not unwilling to believe that this lively little spirit might be seen of nights busying himself in their houses by the dying embers of the deserted fire.