The fairies are always represented as very small and very beautiful—­generally, as perfect miniatures of the human form.  The color of their dress is uniformly pure green.  It would seem, according to the accounts of these people, some five or six hundred years ago, that they were kind, amiable, excellent neighbors.  Indeed, one of the names they went by was, “the Good Neighbors,” and another was, “the Men of Peace.”  Still, they used to do some mischief in those days, if we may believe their historians, who tell us that the fairies, once in a while, visited the abodes of men, and carried away captives into their invisible haunts, under ground.  The reason for this kidnapping of human beings was said to be, that the fairies were obliged occasionally to pay a tribute of this kind to their king or queen.

The fairies were not always cunning enough to keep their victims, after they had caught them.  Sometimes people would come back from fairy land, and tell all about what they had seen there.  You might suppose that a great deal would be learned of these strange, invisible creatures, from the men and women who had been with them and escaped.  Well, so there was.  But the worst of it was, the stories did not hang together very well; and there were about as many different and contradictory accounts of fairydom as there were different individuals who pretended to have made a visit to that country.  However, all seemed to agree that fairy land was a very merry country.  The people there were great lovers of fun, according to the general testimony, and used to dance a great deal by moonlight, in the open air.  They are engaged in one of their dances, you see, in the engraving.  Every evening, as soon as the moon rose, they assembled at some convenient place, took hold of each other’s hands, usually in a ring, I think, and then they had a right merry time of it, you may depend.  It did not seem to make any difference, whether the spot selected for the dance was on the land or on the sea.  Indeed, they could dance pretty well in the air, without any thing to stand upon.  The assemblies held in the palaces of the king and queen of the fairies, were, at times, splendid in the extreme.  No poet, in his most lofty flights of fancy, ever dreamed of such beauty and splendor as were exhibited at the fairy court.  They rode on milk-white steeds.  Their dresses were of brilliant green, and were rich beyond conception.  When they mingled in the dance, or moved in procession among the shady groves, or over the delightful meadows, covered with the fairest of flowers, music, such as mortal lips cannot utter, floated on the breeze.

However, these splendors, astonishing as they were, all vanished in a moment, whenever the eye of any one gifted with the power of spiritual communion was turned upon them.  Then their treasures of gold and silver became slate-stones, and their stately halls were turned into damp caverns.  They themselves, instead of being the beautiful creatures they were before, became ugly as a hedge-fence.