witte wiven, who inhabited a subterraneous cavern, formed in a wonderful manner, without human art, on the top of a lofty mountain.  These were accustomed to surprise benighted travellers, shepherds watching their herds and flocks, and women newly delivered, with their children; and convey them into their caverns, from which subterranean murmurs, the cries of children, the groans and lamentations of men, and sometimes imperfect words, and all kinds of musical sounds, were heard to proceed.”  The same superstition is detailed by Bekker, in his World Bewitch’d, p. 196, of the English translation.  As the different classes of spirits were gradually confounded, the abstraction of children seems to have been chiefly ascribed to the elves, or Fairies; yet not so entirely, as to exclude hags and witches from the occasional exertion of their ancient privilege.—­In Germany, the same confusion of classes has not taken place.  In the beautiful ballads of the Erl King, the Water King, and the Mer-Maid, we still recognize the ancient traditions of the Goths, concerning the wald-elven, and the dracae.

A similar superstition, concerning abstraction by daemons, seems, in the time of Gervase of Tilbury, to have pervaded the greatest part of Europe.  “In Catalonia,” says that author, “there is a lofty mountain, named Cavagum, at the foot of which runs a river with golden sands, in the vicinity of which there are likewise mines of silver.  This mountain is steep, and almost inaccessible.  On its top, which is always covered with ice and snow, is a black and bottomless lake, into which if a stone be thrown, a tempest suddenly rises; and near this lake, though invisible to men, is the porch of the palace of daemons.  In a town adjacent to this mountain, named Junchera, lived one Peter de Cabinam.  Being one day teazed with the fretfulness of his young daughter, he, in his impatience, suddenly wished that the devil might take her; when she was immediately borne away by the spirits.  About seven years afterwards, an inhabitant of the same city, passing by the mountain, met a man, who complained bitterly of the burthen he was constantly forced to bear.  Upon enquiring the cause of his complaining, as he did not seem to carry any load, the man related, that he had been unwarily devoted to the spirits by an execration, and that they now employed him constantly as a vehicle of burthen.  As a proof of his assertion, he added, that the daughter of his fellow-citizen was detained by the spirits, but that they were willing to restore her, if her father would come and demand her on the mountain.  Peter de Cabinam, on being informed of this, ascended the mountain to the lake, and, in the name of God, demanded his daughter; when, a tall, thin, withered figure, with wandering eyes, and almost bereft of understanding, was wafted to him in a blast of wind.  After some time, the person, who had been employed as the vehicle of the spirits, also