h a shriveled leaf from the
elfin chain, for so had her little guide counseled her, when she once,
in a doubtful hour, had summoned him to her aid. Albert and Matilda
reached a good old age; their children throve, and carefully preserved,
like their parents, the gifts received from the subterranean folk, who
continued their favour to them and to all their posterity."

FOOTNOTES:

{A} Midsummer Night's Dream.

{B} DOLMEN; literally, _stone table_. Remarkable structures, learnedly
ascribed to the Druids; unlearnedly, to the dwarfs and fairies; and
numerous throughout Western Britanny. One or more large and massive flat
stones, overlaying great slabs planted edgeways in the ground, form a
rude and sometimes very capacious chamber, or grotto. The superstition
which cleaves to these relics of a forgotten antiquity, stamps itself in
the names given to many of them by the peasantry:--_Grotte aux fees_,
_Roche aux fees_, &c.

{C} WEIRDS. The French has--LOTS. "_Elles jettent des SORTS._" For
justifying the translation, see the fine old Scottish ballad of KEMPION;
or KEMP OWAYNE, at the beginning:--

"Come here, come here, ye _freely fede_, (i. e. _nobly born_,)
And lay your head low on my knee,
A heavier WEIRD I shall ye read
Than ever was read to gay ladye.

"I WEIRD ye to a fiery beast:
And released shall ye never be,
Till Kempion the kinges son
Come to the crag and thrice kiss thee!"

{D} From the preface to the exceedingly interesting collection by M. Th.
de la Villemarque, of the transmitted songs that are current amongst his
Bas Breton countrymen.

{E} Essay on _The Fairies of Popular Superstition_, in "The Minstrelsy
of the Scottish Border."

{F} Deutsche Mythologie, von Jacob Grimm. Chap. xiii. Ed. 1. 1835, and
xvii. Ed. 2. 1843.

{G} "_Ces genies femelles._"

{H} From Walckenaer's Dissertation on the Origin of the Fairy Belief;
last printed, in an abridged form, by Jacob, in his edition of the
_Contes des Fees, par Perrault_, (Paris, 1842.)

{I} "Paradise and groves
Elysian, fortunate fields--like those of old
Sought in the Atlantic main, why should they be
A history only of departed things,
Or a mere fiction of what never was?
For the discerning _Intellect of man,
When wedded to this goodly Universe
In love and holy passion_, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.
I long before the blissful hour