FOOTNOTES:
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Keightley, Thomas
[337] This is, we apprehend, an egg at Easter or on Good Friday. Housle is the Anglo-Saxon huel; Goth. hunsl, sacrifice or offering, and thence the Eucharist.
[338] Terrors of the Night, 1594.
[339] Hutchinson, History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 269.
[340] As quoted by Thoms in his Essay on Popular Songs, in the Athenæum for 1847.
[341] Morgan, Phœnix Britannicus, Lond. 1732.
[342] Pandemonium, p. 207. Lond. 1684.
[343] Aubrey, Natural History of Surrey, iii 366, ap. Ritson, Fairy Tales, p. 166.
[344] The Local Historian's Table-Book, by M. A. Richardson, iii. 239. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1846.
[345] Bourne, Antiquitates Vulgares, 1725.
[346] Quoted by Brand in his Popular Antiquities, an enlarged edition of Bourne's work.
[347] This word Pixy, is evidently Pucksy, the endearing diminutive sy being added to Puck, like Betsy, Nancy, Dixie. So Mrs. Trimmer in her Fabulous Histories—which we read with wonderful pleasure in our childhood, and would recommend to our young readers—calls her hen-robins Pecksy and Flapsy. Pisgy is only Pixy transposed. Mrs. Bray derives Pixy from Pygmy. At Truro, in Cornwall, as Mr. Thoms informs us, the moths, which some regard as departed souls, others as fairies, are called Pisgies. He observes the curious, but surely casual, resemblance between this and the Greek ψυχη, which is both soul and moth. Grimm (p. 430) tells us from an old glossary, that the caterpillar was named in Germany, Alba, i. e. Elbe, and that the Alp often takes the form of a butterfly.
[348]Whip says he, as Mrs. Bray conjectures.
[349] Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 513. Bohn's edit.
[350] Given in the Literary Gazette for 1825. No. 430.
[351] Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 503. Bohn's edit.
[352] The Elfbore of Scotland, where it is likewise ascribed to the fairies, Jamieson, s. v. The same opinion prevails in Denmark, where it is said that any one who looks through it will see things he would not otherwise have known: see Thiele, ii. 18.
[353] The Anglo-Saxon lǽan, laécan, to play.
[354] We have abridged this legend from a well-written letter in the Literary Gazette, No. 430 (1825), the writer of which says, he knew the house in which it was said to have occurred. He also says he remembered an old tailor, who said the horn was often pitched at the head of himself and his apprentice, when in the North-country fashion they went to work at the farm-house. Its identity with other legends will be at once perceived.
[355] And true no doubt it is, i. e. the impression made on her imagination was as strong as if the objects had been actually before her. The narrator is the same person who told the preceding Boggart story.
[356] Fairy Tales, pp. 24, 56.
[357] In Northumberland the common people call a certain fungous excrescence, sometimes found about the roots of old trees, Fairy-butter. After great rains and in a certain degree of putrefaction, it is reduced to a consistency, which, together with its colour, makes it not unlike butter, and hence the name. Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 492, Bohn's edit.
The Menyn Tylna Têg or Fairy-butter of Wales, we are told in the same place, is a substance found at a great depth in cavities of limestone-rocks when sinking for lead-ore.
[358] Comp. Milton, L'Allegro, 105 seq.
[359] Richardson, Table-Book, iii. 45; see above, p. 297.
[360] This word, as we may see, is spelt faries in the following legends; so we may suppose that fairy is pronounced farry in the North, which has a curious coincidence with Peri: see above, p. 15.
[361] Probably pronounced Poke, as still in Worcestershire. Our ancestors frequently used ou, or oo for the long o while they expressed the sound of oo by o followed by e, as rote root, coke cook, more moor, pole pool.
[362] Passus xvii. v. 11,323 seq. ed. 1842. Comp. vv. 8363, 9300, 10,902.
[363] Mr. Todd is right, in reading pouke for ponke, an evident typographic error: wrong in saying, "He is the Fairy, Robin Good-fellow, known by the name of Puck." Robin is the "hob-goblin" mentioned two lines after.
[364] We know nothing of the Oriental origin of Puck, and cannot give our full assent to the character of our ancestry, as expressed in the remaining part of Mr. Gifford's note: "but a fiend engendered in the moody minds, and rude and gloomy fancies of the barbarous invaders of the North." It is full time to have done with describing the old Gothic race as savages.
[365]Der Putz würde uns über berg und thäler tragen. To frighten children they say Der Butz kommt! see Grimm, Deut. Mythol. p. 474.
[366] The former made by adding the Anglo-Saxon and English el, le; the latter by adding the English art: see p. 318.
[367] By Sir F. Palgrave, from whose article in the Quarterly Review, we have derived many of the terms named above. He adds that the Anglo-Saxon pæcan is to deceive, seduce; the Low-Saxon picken to gambol; pickeln to play the fool; pukra in Icelandic to make a murmuring noise, to steal secretly; and pukke in Danish to scold. He further adds the Swedish poika boy, the Anglo-Saxon and Swedish piga and Danish pige girl. If, however, Pouke is connected with the Sclavonic Bog, these at the most can be only derivations from it. By the way boy itself seems to be one of these terms; the Anglo-Saxon piga was probably pronounced piya, and a is a masculine termination in that language.
[368] See above, p. 291. In Low German, however, the Kobold is called Bullmann, Bullermann, Bullerkater, from bullen, bullern, to knock: see Grimm, ut sup. p. 473.
[369] Essay on the Ignis Fatuus, quoted by Thoms.
[370]
And you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms.—Tempest, v. 1.
[371] Jack-o'-the-lanthorn, Will-o'-the-wisp. In Worcestershire they call it Hob-and-his-lanthorn, and Hobany's- or Hobredy's-lanthorn. Allies, ut sup.
[372] Knight of the Burning Pestle: see above, p. 309.
[373]Ard is the German hart, and is, like it, depreciatory. It is not an Anglo-Saxon termination, but from the Anglo-Saxon oll, dull, we have dullard. May not haggard be hawk-ard, and the French hagard be derived from it, and not the reverse?
[374] For in Anglo-Saxon áttorcoppe (Poison-head?) is spider, and from áttorcoppe-web, by the usual aphœresis of the two first syllables we put coppe-web, cobweb. May not the same have been the case with lob? and may not the nasty bug be in a similar manner connected with Puck? As dvergsnat is in Swedish a cobweb, one might be tempted to suppose that this last, for which no good etymon has been offered, was lob-web; but the true etymon is cop-web, from its usual site.