to see his face, but he took no notice of her.  Then she asked him several questions; viz., if he was cold or hungry?  If he would have any meat?  Where he came from, and where he was going?  To which he made no answer, but getting up, danced very nimbly, leaping higher than usual, and then ran out of the house as far as the end of the garden, and sometimes into the cowhouse, the servants running after him to see where he would go, but soon lost sight of him; but when they returned, he would be close after them in the house, which he did above a dozen of times.  At last the little girl, seeing her master’s dog coming in, said, ’Now my master is coming he will take a course with this troublesome creature,’ upon which he immediately went away, and troubled them no more till the month of February, 1711.”

This costume is appropriate enough for an Irish spirit; but here may possibly be some connexion with the ragged clothes of the Pixies. (Comp.  “Tatrman,” Deutsche Mythol., p. 470.; and Canciani’s note “De Simulachris de Pannis factis,” Leges Barbar., iii. p. 108.; Indic.  Superst.) The common story of Brownie and his clothes is, I suppose, connected. {515}

In some parts of Devonshire the pixies are called “derricks,” evidently the A.-S. “doeorg.”  In Cornwall it is believed that wherever the pixies are fond of resorting, the depths of the earth are rich in metal.  Very many mines have been discovered by their singing.

R.J.K.

THE POOL OF THE BLACK HOUND.

In the parish of Dean Prior is a narrow wooded valley, watered by a streamlet, that in two or three places falls into cascades of considerable beauty.  At the foot of one of these is a deep hollow called the Hound’s Pool.  Its story is as follows.

There once lived in the hamlet of Dean Combe a weaver of great fame and skill.  After long prosperity he died, and was buried.  But the next day he appeared sitting at the loom in his chamber, working diligently as when he was alive.  His sons applied to the parson, who went accordingly to the foot of the stairs, and heard the noise of the weaver’s shuttle in the room above.  “Knowles!” he said, “come down; this is no place for thee.”  “I will,” said the weaver, “as soon as I have worked out my quill,” (the “quill” is the shuttle full of wool).  “Nay,” said the vicar, “thou hast been long enough at thy work; come down at once!”—­So when the spirit came down, the vicar took a handful of earth from the churchyard, and threw it in its face.  And in a moment it became a black hound.  “Follow me,” said the vicar; and it followed him to the gate of the wood.  And when they came there, it seemed as if all the trees in the wood were “coming together,” so great was the wind.  Then the vicar took a nutshell with a hole in it, and led the hound to the pool below the waterfall.  “Take this shell,” he said; “and when thou shalt have dipped out the pool with it, thou mayst rest—­not before.”  And at mid-day, or at midnight, the hound may still be seen at its work.