new all about the fairies, had
often heard them making butter, and had seen the butter smeared all
over the gate by a little green man with a queer cap who had been seen
slipping under a culvert? Canon Atkinson told us of this lady who knew
all these strange things, and of the Hart Hall "Hob" who worked so hard
with his flail, and of many other curious folk who frequented the
Yorkshire moors in olden days. The last witch had just died before he
went to Danby, but he found the whole atmosphere of the folklore
firmament so surcharged with the being and work of the witch, that he
seemed able to trace her presence and her activity in almost every nook
and corner of the neighbourhood.

The wells all over England were haunted by fairies, and is it not
confidently asserted that "the good people" (as the fairies are called)
live in wilds and forests, and shun great cities because of the
wickedness which exists therein? Have they never appeared to the lonely
traveller, clothed in green, with long hair floating over their
shoulders, and with faces more blooming than the blush of a summer
morning? Then there were the fairy rings formed by the dancing of their
merry feet.

"Some say the screech-owl, at each midnight hour,
Awakes the fairies in yon ancient tower.
Their nightly dancing ring I always dread,
Nor let my sheep within that circle tread;
When round and round all night, in moonlight fair,
They dance to some strange music in the air."

Then there were brownies; and knockers, who worked in mines, and showed
rich veins of silver; and elves--all of whom were included in old
village superstitions, and many were the tales told of the good deeds
they did, and the luck they brought. Nor must we forget the story of
the invisible smith who inhabited Wayland Smith's Cave, in Berkshire.
Whenever a farmer tied up his horse in the cave, and left the money on
a particular stone, on his return he found his horse shod by the kind
efforts of the invisible smith. There is also the old Berkshire story
of the old witch who lived in a cave by the roadside, and who, by the
power of her "evil eye," could stop the strongest team of horses, so
that, however much the carters lashed and swore at them, the animals
would not budge an inch until she permitted them to go. Here are a few
of the common superstitions current in Berkshire. If a corpse be kept
over a Sunday another death will occur before the week is out; should a
big bumble-b