Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/219

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A variant of the story relates that the woman herself disappeared, and gives the rhyme as

It is thus obviously a common belief that supernatural beings, without distinction, dislike being watched, and are only willing to be manifested to humanity at their own pleasure and for their own purposes. In the stories of the magical ointment it is not so much the theft as the contravention of the implicit prohibition against prying into fairy business that rouses elfin anger. This will appear more clearly from the fuller consideration of cases like those mentioned in the last paragraph, in which punishment follows directly upon the act of spying. In Northamptonshire, we learn that a man whose house was frequented by fairies, and who had received many favours from them, became smitten with a violent desire to behold his invisible benefactors. Accordingly, he one night stationed himself behind a knot in the door, which divided the living-room of his cottage from the sleeping-apartment. True to their custom, the elves came to disport themselves on his carefully-swept hearth, and to render to the household their usual good offices. But no sooner had the man glanced upon them than he became blind; and so provoked were the fairies at this breach of hospitality that they deserted his dwelling, and never more returned to it. In Southern Germany and Switzerland, a mysterious lady known as Dame Berchta is reputed to be abroad on Twelfth Night. She is doubtless the relic of a heathen goddess, one of whose attributes was to be a leader of the souls of the dead, and as such she is followed by a band of