dies and Fairies of Scotland, with many of the Melanesian Vuis,
forest-haunting spirits, are all of the same class, are fairy beings
informing the streams and wilds. To these good folk were ascribed gifts
of prophecy, commonly exercised beside the cradle of infancy, _deabus
illis quae fata nascentibus canunt, et dicuntur Carmentes_[25]. As Maury
shows[26], the local Fairies of Roman Gaul were propitiated with altars:

FATIS
DERVONIBUS
V. S. L. M. M. RVFNVS
SEVERVS.

Just as the Scotch Fairies are euphemistically styled 'The Good Folks,'
'The People of Peace,' the 'Good Ladies,' so it befell the daughter of
Faunus. She was styled 'The Good Goddess,' and her real name was
tabooed[27].

It was natural that when Christianity reached Gaul, where the native
spirits of woods and wells had acquired the name of _Fata_, these minor
goddesses should survive the official heathen religion. The temples of
the high gods were overthrown, or turned into churches, but who could
destroy all the woodland fanes of the Fata, who could uproot the dread
of them from the hearts of peasants? Saints and Councils denounced the
rural offerings to fountains and the roots of trees, but the secret
shame-faced worship lasted deep into the middle ages[28]. It is
conjectured by Maury, as by Walckenaer (_Lettres sur les Contes de
Fees_; Paris, 1826), that the functions of prophetic Gaulish Maidens and
Druidesses were confused with those of the Fairies. Certainly
superstitious ideas of many kinds came under the general head of belief
in _Fata_, _Faes_, _Fadae_, and the _Fees_ of the forest of Broceliande.
The _Fees_ answered, as in the _Sleeping Beauty_, to Greek _Moirai_ or
Egyptian _Hathors_[29]. They nursed women in labour: they foretold the
fate of children. It is said that when a Breton lady was giving birth to
a child, a banquet for the _Fees_ was set in the neighbouring
chamber[30]. But, in popular superstition, if not in Perrault's tales,
the _Fees_ had many other attributes. They certainly inherited much from
the pre-Christian idea of Hades. In the old MS. _Prophesia Thomae de
Erseldoun_[31] the subterranean fairy-world is the under-world of pagan
belief. In the mediaeval form of Orpheus and Eurydice (_Orfeo and
Heurodis_), it is not the King of the Dead, but the king of Fairy that
carries off the minstrel's bride. Fairyland, when Orpheus visits it, is
like Homer's Hades.

'_And sum thurch the bodi hadde wounde
Wives th