Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/298

 276 chase, to have driven a hare by mistake into the barn, observing, “How quickly that sheep runs.”

Towards all other persons he appears to have been very spiteful and mischievous, so much so that tradition tells of a Vicar of Beetham in former days going out in his ecclesiastical vestments and saying some prayers or forms of exorcism with intent to “lay” this troublesome sprite in the river Bela. Accordingly the Capelthwaite does not seem to have appeared in later times, except that a man of the neighbourhood who returned home late at night, tipsy, much bruised, and without coat or hat, persistently assured his wife that he had met the Capelthwaite, who threw him over a hedge and deprived him of those articles of dress.

There was also a farm in Yorkshire, not far from the town of Sedbergh, called Capelthwaite farm, and said to be haunted by such a being. Of his reputed doings I can give no account, further than that the stuffed skins of five calves were preserved there, which calves were born at a birth—a fact ascribed to the influence of the Capelthwaite. These particulars were communicated to me by the Rev. W. De Lancey Lawson.

Remarkable as are the points of resemblance between the Folk-Lore of the North and the West of England, the dissimilarity on certain subjects is equally remarkable. How widely do these grotesque and churlish goblins differ from the light and frolicsome Devonshire pixy! The pixy is mischievous too, but graceful and gay in his mischief. I have received from Mr. Baring Gould a very interesting description of a curious oil-painting preserved at Lew Trenchard House, Devon, representing the merrymaking of pixies, or elves perhaps, which may be inserted here:—

“In the background is an elfin city, illumined by the moon. Before the gates is a ring of tiny beings, dancing merrily around what is probably a corpse candle: it is a candle-stump, standing on the ground, and the flame diffuses a pallid white light.

“In the foreground is water, on which floats a pumpkin, with a quarter cut out of it, so as to turn it into a boat with a hood. In this the pixy king and his consort are enthroned, while round