ey can make themselves
visible or invisible at pleasure. They live in subterranean habitations,
and in an invisible condition attend very constantly on men. They are
very fond of human children and pretty women, both of which they will
steal if not protected by some superior influence. Women in childbed
stand in danger of being taken, but if a piece of cold iron be kept in
the bed in which they lie, the spirits won't come near. Children are in
greater danger of being stolen before baptism than after. They
sometimes, to supply their own needs, spirit away the milk from cows,
but more frequently they transfer the milk to the cows of some person
who stands high in their favour. This they do by making themselves
invisible, and silently milking and removing the milk in invisible
vessels. When people offend them they shoot flint-tipped arrows, and by
this means kill either the persons who have offended them or their
cattle. They cause these arrows to strike the most vital part, but the
stroke does not visibly break the skin, only a _blae_ mark is the result
visible on the body after death. These flint arrow-heads are
occasionally found, and the possession of one of these will protect the
possessor against the power of these astral beings, and at the same time
enable him or her to cure disease in cattle and women. These flints were
often sewed into the dresses of children to protect them from the
Evil-eye. There were many other means of protection against the power of
these beings, which we shall have occasion to refer to again. There is
one method, however, which may be mentioned now. If, when a calf is
born, its mouth be smeared with a balsam of dung, before it is allowed
to suck, the fairies cannot milk that cow. Those taken to fairyland lose
the power of calculating the lapse of time, although they are not
unconscious of what is going on around them. Those spirited away to
fairyland may be recovered by their friends or relatives, by performing
certain formula, or--and this was often the method resorted to--by
out-witting the fairies, getting possession of their stolen friends, and
then doing or saying something which fairies cannot bear, upon which
they are forced to depart, leaving the recovered party behind them.

The following information concerning the government, &c., of fairyland,
is taken from Aytoun:--The queen of fairyland was a kind of feudatory
sovereign under Satan, to whom she was obliged to pay _kave_, or tith