CHAPTER VI. Plants of the Fairies and Naiades.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Folkard, Richard
Her skin, like the Maple-rind, is hard,
Brown and ridgy, and furrowed and scarred;
And each feature flat, like the bark we see,
Where a bough has been lopped from the bole of a tree,
When the newer bark has crept healingly round,
And laps o’er the edge of the open wound;
Her knotty, root-like feet are bare,
And her height is an ell from heel to hair.”
The Moss- or Wood-Folk also lived in some parts of Scandinavia. Thus, we are told that, in the churchyard of Store Hedding, in Zealand, there are the remains of an Oak wood which were trees by day and warriors by night.
The Black Dwarfs were a race of Scandinavian Elves, inhabiting coast-hills and caves; the favourite place of their feasts and carousings, however, was under the spreading branches of the Elder-tree, the strong perfume of its large moon-like clusters of flowers being very grateful to them. As has been before pointed out, an unexplained connection of a mysterious character has always existed between this tree and the denizens of Fairy-land.
The Still-Folk of Central Germany were another tribe of the Fairy Kingdom: they inhabited the interior of hills, in which they had their spacious halls and strong rooms filled with gold, silver, and precious stones—the entrance to which was only obtained by mortals by means of the Luck-flower, or the Key-flower (Schlüsselblume). They held communication with the outer world, like the Trolls of Scandinavia, through certain springs or wells, which possessed great virtues: not only did they give extraordinary growth and fruitfulness to all trees and shrubs that grew near them, whose roots could drink of their waters, or whose leaves be sprinkled with the dews condensed from their vapours, but for certain human diseases they formed a sovereign remedy.
In Monmouthshire, in years gone by, there existed a good Fairy, or Procca, who was wont to appear to Welshmen in the guise of a handful of loose dried grass, rolling and gambolling before the wind.