Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/400

 360 Correspondence.

into this rank. . . Paracelsus reckons up many places in Germany, where they do usually walk in little coats some two foot long. A bigger kind there is of them called with us Hob- goblins, and Robin Goodfellozvs.'" This is the " drudging goblin," the " lubbar fiend " of L' Allegro, who

"stretcht out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength."

To this extent we must qualify the contrast drawn by Mr. Nutt (Presidential Address, Folk-Lore, vol. viii.) between the Irish fairies ("fairy and mortal are not thought of as differing in size," p. 39) and our own (" the Shakespearian fairies . . . are exceedingly small," p. 2)3. " Possibly the diminutive size of the fairy race belongs more especially to Teutonic tradition as developed within the last 2,000 years," p. 45). But clearly the Lincoln elf belongs to the order of the diminutive and grotesque.

Grey Hubert Skipwith.

Wall-Burial. (Vol. ix., p. 367.)

There can be no doubt that sometimes eloped nuns (and monks too), if they could be got at, were condemned to the in pace, which may fairly be called being walled up or buried alive. But then there were the inclusce, women living voluntarily in a cell in the church wall, arranged so that the inhabitant might see and hear the service, and never leaving it. And the superstition about strengthening a building or other structure by inclosing a living being {i.e. originally by a sacrifice to the subterranean gods) was very general and very strong. Andersen gives a Copenhagen legend about burying a living child {Am Festungs- wall, Mdrchen), and alludes to burying horses or pigs (which turned into spectres) in Der Elfenhilgel, ib., which shows it to have been very common in Denmark. And as to the strength, it survived itself (so to say) in the punishment inflicted upon destruction. The customary law of the originally Frisian districts in the province of Groningen, codified as late as 1601 {Ommelan-