in ancient traditions and romances, signifies a sort of deity, or imaginary genius, conversant on the earth, and distinguished by a variety of fantastic actions either good or bad.

They were most usually imagined to be women of an order superior to human nature, yet subject to wants, passions, accidents, and even death; sprightly and benevolent while young and handsome; morose, peevish, and malignant, if ugly, or in the decline of their beauty; fond of appearing in white, whence they are often called the white ladies.

Concerning these imaginary beings, no less a person than Jervaise of Tilleberry, marshal of the kingdom of Arles, who lived in the beginning of the 13th century, writes thus in a work inscribed to the emperor Otho IV. "It has been asserted by persons of unexceptionable credit, that fairies used to choose themselves gallants from among men, and rewarded their attachment with an affluence of worldly goods; but if they married, or boasted of a fairy's favours, they as severely smirched for such indiscretion." The like tales still go current in Languedoc; and throughout the whole province, there is not a village without some ancient seat or cavern which had the honour of being a fairy's residence, or at least some spring where a fairy used to bathe. This idea of fairies has a near affinity with that of the Greeks and Romans, concerning the nymphs of the woods, mountains, and springs; and an ancient scholiast on Theocritus says, "The nymphs are demons which appear on the mountains in the figure of women;" and what is more surprising, the Arabs and other orientals have their ginn and peri, of whom they entertain the like notions.

But fairies have been likewise described as of either sex, and generally as of minute stature, though capable of assuming various forms and dimensions. The most charming representation imaginable of these children of romantic fancy, is in the Midsummer Night's Dream of Shakespeare; in referring to which, we no doubt have been anticipated by the recollection of almost every reader.

Spenser's Faery Queene is an epic poem, under the persons and characters of fairies. This sort of poetry raises a pleasing kind of horror in the mind of the reader, and amuses his imagination with the strangeness and novelty of the persons who are represented in it; but, as a vehicle of instruction, the judicious object to it, as not having probability enough to make any moral impression.

The belief of fairies still subsists in many parts of our own country. The

"Swart fairy of the mine"

(of German extraction), has scarce yet quitted our subterranean works; (vid. next article). Puck, or Robin Good-Fellow, still haunts many of our villages. And in many parts of Scotland, new born children are watched till the christening is over, lest they should be stolen or changed by some of these fantastic existences.

FAIRY of the Mine; an imaginary being, an inhabitant of mines. The Germans believed in two species; one fierce and malevolent; the other a gentle race, appearing like little old men dressed like the miners, and not much above two feet high. These wander about the drifts and chambers of the works; seem perpetually employed, employed, yet do nothing; some seem to cut the ore, or fling what is cut into vessels, or turn the windlais: but never do any harm to the miners, unless provoked; as the sensible Agricola, in this point credulous, relates in his book de Animalibus Subterraneis.

**FAIRY Circle or Ring**, a phenomenon pretty frequent in the fields, &c., supposed by the vulgar to be traced by the fairies in their dances. There are two kinds of it; one of about seven yards in diameter, containing a round bare path, a foot broad, with green grass in the middle of it. The other is of different sizes, encompassed with a circumference of grass. Messrs. Jeffery and Walker, in the Philosophical Transactions, ascribe them to lightning; which is thought to be confirmed by their being most frequently produced after storms of that kind, as well as by the colour and brittleness of the grass roots when first observed. Lightning, like all other fires, moves round, and burns more in the extremity than in the middle: the second circle arises from the first, the grass burnt up growing very plentifully afterwards. Others maintain that these circles are made by ants, which are frequently found in great numbers therein.—Mr. Cavallo, in his treatise on electricity, does not think that lightning is at all concerned in the formation of them: "They are not (says he) always of a circular figure; and, as I am informed, they seem to be rather beds of mushrooms than the effects of lightning.

We have frequently observed beds of mushrooms arranged in a circular form like what are called fairy rings; but it will be difficult to account for the mushroom seed being disposed in this manner. It is probable that the seed is dispersed over the whole field, and remains dormant till it is acted on by some stimulus to excite its vegetating powers. Perhaps this stimulus is atmospheric electricity, which acting on particular spots only, produces on them an abundant crop of mushrooms, while none appear in other places.