Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/290

258 who reigned not long ago," and More gravely wonders whether the dark rings on the grass are made by the dances of witches or fairies. The Fairy Queen, like the fairy woman of modern Ireland, is not distinguishable at first sight from an ordinary woman. When Bessie Dunlop was ill, a stout woman came to her cottage and sat down and asked for a drink ; this was the Queen of Elfhame. Andro Man as a little boy first saw "the Devil thy master in the likeness and shape of a woman, whom thou callest the Queen of Elphen," who was delivered of a child in Andro's mother's house. When grown-up, Andro again met "that devilish sprite, the Queen of Elphin, on whom thou begat divers bairns, whom thou has seen sinsyne." Marion Grant of the same covine saw her as "a fine woman, clad in a white walicot." Isobel Gowdie said that "the Queen of Fearrie is brawly clothed in white linens, and in white and brown clothes." Jean Weir sister of Major Weir, "took employment from a Woman to speak in her behalf to the Queen of ffearie, meaning the Devil." Holinshed also says that the witches of Macbeth were fairies.

If, as many authorities contend, the fairies are really the aboriginal inhabitants of these islands, there is nothing surprising in their ritual and beliefs being adopted by the invading race. And in that case I am right in my conjecture that the rites of the witches are the remains of the ancient and primitive cult of Great Britain.