Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/360

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According to popular tradition in Belgium, Northern France, and also I have heard in the Rhine Valley, and faintly through other parts of Europe, there used to be a race of cave-dwellers known in French dialect as "Nutons" or sometimes "Gnutons." The Meuse Valley abounds in great rocky walls of calcareous cliffs, frequently containing caves. Generally there is one called the "Grotte des Nutons." In one place there are the "Grottes du Nuton," the several caves of the one Nuton, but the other way about is more common. They hid themselves away during the daytime, only coming out at night, and were very timid. They would do work for you if you left it at the entrance to the cave in the evening with something in payment. It should be food (especially milk) for preference, or pretty well anything except money. In the morning the gift would have disappeared and the work would be done. Their speciality was boot-mending, also mending pots and pans. According to some people there are still a few left, although most people believe them to be extinct.

Thus far the Walloon tradition as far as I have been able to collect it.

I have heard an old Irish nurse tell children that the fairies lived "in holes in the ground," that most of them were dead, but that a few still lived.

I have heard that they are known in Italy as "cavernicoli," but beyond a faint idea that magicians occasionally lived in caves I have been able to find no traces of them at Genoa.

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A few years ago I had the opportunity of observing the habits and mode of life of various tribes of Mexican Indians, while I was engaged in exploring the little known tropical forests of some of the coastal provinces of Mexico. As these people inhabit the dense primeval forests of the Gulf coast, many of their superstitions naturally deal with the trees, the birds, and animals; some of which