’"Brown Dwarf, that o’er the muirland strays,
      Thy name to Keeldar tell!”—­
     “The Brown Man of the Muirs, who stays
      Beneath the heather-bell.

    ’"’T is sweet beneath the heather-bell
       To live in autumn brown;
    And sweet to hear the lav’rock’s swell,
       Far, far from tower and town.

    ’"But woe betide the shrilling horn,
      The chase’s surly cheer! 
    And ever that hunter is forlorn
      Whom first at morn I hear."’

“The poetical picture here given of the Duergar corresponds exactly with the following Northumberland legend, with which I was lately favored by my learned and kind friend, Mr. Surtees of Mainsforth, who has bestowed indefatigable labor upon the antiquities of the English Border counties.  The subject is in itself so curious, that the length of the note will, I hope, be pardoned: 

’I have only one record to offer of the appearance of our Northumbrian Duergar.  My narratrix is Elizabeth Cockburn, and old wife of Offerton, in this country, whose credit, in a case of this kind, will not, I hope, be much impeached when I add that she is by her dull neighbors supposed to be occasionally insane, but by herself to be at those times endowed with a faculty of seeing visions and spectral appearances which shun the common ken.

’In the year before the great rebellion, two young men from Newcastle were sporting on the high moors above Eldson, and after pursuing their game several hours, sat down to dine in a green glen near one of the mountain streams.  After their repast, the younger lad ran to the brook for water, and after stooping to drink, was surprised, on lifting his head again, by the appearance of a brown dwarf, who stood on a crag covered with brackens, across the burn.  This extraordinary personage did not appear to be above half the stature of a common man, but was uncommonly stout and broad-built, having the appearance of vast strength.  His dress was entirely brown, the color of the brackens, and his head covered with frizzled red hair.  His countenance was expressive of the most savage ferocity, and his eyes glared like a bull.  It seems he addressed the young man first, threatening him with his vengeance for having trespassed on his demesnes, and asking him if he knew in whose presence he stood?  The youth replied that he now supposed him to be the lord of the moors; that he offended through ignorance; and offered to bring him the game he had killed.  The dwarf was a little mollified by this submission, but remarked that nothing could be more offensive to him than such an offer, as he considered the wild animals as his subjects, and never failed to avenge their destruction.  He condescended further to inform him that he was, like himself, mortal, though of years far exceeding the lot of common humanity, and (what I should not have had an idea of) that he hoped for salvation.  He never, he added, fed on anything that had life,