[Footnote A:  Upon this, or some similar tradition, was founded the notion, which the inveteracy of national prejudice, so easily diffused in Scotland, that the ancestor of the English monarchs, Geoffrey Plantagenet, had actually married a daemon.  Bowmaker, in order to explain the cruelty and ambition of Edward I., dedicates a chapter to shew “how the kings of England are descended from the devil, by the mother’s side.”—­Fordun, Chron. lib. 9, cap. 6.  The lord of a certain castle, called Espervel, was unfortunate enough to have a wife of the same class.  Having observed, for several years, that she always left the chapel before the mass was concluded, the baron, in a fit of obstinacy or curiosity, ordered his guard to detain her by force; of which the consequence was, that, unable to support the elevation of the host, she retreated through the air, carrying with her one side of the chapel, and several of the congregation.]

II.  Indeed, so singularly unlucky were the British Fairies that, as has already been hinted, amid the wreck of the Gothic mythology, consequent upon the introduction of Christianity, they seem to have preserved, with difficulty, their own distinct characteristics, while, at the same time, they engrossed the mischievous attributes of several other classes of subordinate spirits, acknowledged by the nations of the north.  The abstraction of children, for example, the well known practice of the modern Fairy, seems, by the ancient Gothic nations, to have rather been ascribed to a species of night-mare, or hag, than to the berg-elfen, or duergar.  In the ancient legend of St Margaret, of which there is a Saxo-Norman copy, in Hickes’ Thesaurus Linguar.  Septen. and one, more modern, in the Auchinleck MSS., that lady encounters a fiend, whose profession it was, among other malicious tricks, to injure new-born children and their mothers; a practice afterwards imputed to the Fairies.  Gervase of Tilbury, in the Otia Imperialia, mentions certain hags, or Lamiae, who entered into houses in the night-time, to oppress the inhabitants, while asleep, injure their persons and property, and carry off their children.  He likewise mentions the Dracae, a sort of water spirits, who inveigle women and children into the recesses which they inhabit, beneath lakes and rivers, by floating past them, on the surface of the water, in the shape of gold rings, or cups.  The women, thus seized, are employed as nurses, and, after seven years, are permitted to revisit earth.  Gervase mentions one woman, in particular, who had been allured by observing a wooden dish, or cup, float by her, while washing clothes in a river.  Being seized as soon as she reached the depths, she was conducted into one of these subterranean recesses, which she described as very magnificent, and employed as nurse to one of the brood of the hag who had allured her.  During her residence in this capacity, having accidentally