ly breaking off the fronds of fern as she sat
resting by the wayside, was suddenly confronted by a "fairy widower,"
who was in search of some one to attend to his little son. She accepted
his offer, which was ratified by kissing a fern leaf and repeating
this formula:

"For a year and a day
I promise to stay."

Soon she was an inhabitant of fairyland, and was lost to mortal gaze
until she had fulfilled her stipulated engagement.

In Germany we find a race of elves, somewhat like the dwarfs, popularly
known as the Wood or Moss people. They are about the same size as
children, "grey and old-looking, hairy, and clad in moss." Their lives,
like those of the Hamadryads, are attached to the trees; and "if any one
causes by friction the inner bark to loosen a Wood-woman dies."[11]
Their great enemy is the Wild Huntsman, who, driving invisibly through
the air, pursues and kills them. On one occasion a peasant, hearing the
weird baying in a wood, joined in the cry; but on the following morning
he found hanging at his stable door a quarter of a green Moss-woman as
his share of the game. As a spell against the Wild Huntsman, the
Moss-women sit in the middle of those trees upon which the woodcutter
has placed a cross, indicating that they are to be hewn, thereby making
sure of their safety. Then, again, there is the old legend which tells
how Brandan met a man on the sea,[12] who was, "a thumb long, and
floated on a leaf, holding a little bowl in his right hand and a pointer
in his left; the pointer he kept dipping into the sea and letting water
drop from it into the bowl; when the bowl was full, he emptied it out
and began filling it again, his doom consisting in measuring the sea
until the judgment-day." This floating on the leaf is suggestive of
ancient Indian myths, and reminds us of Brahma sitting on a lotus and
floating across the sea. Vishnu, when, after Brahma's death, the waters
have covered all the worlds, sits in the shape of a tiny infant on a
leaf of the fig tree, and floats on the sea of milk sucking the toe of
his right foot.[13]

Another tribe of water-fairies are the nixes, who frequently assume the
appearance of beautiful maidens. On fine sunny days they sit on the
banks of rivers or lakes, or on the branches of trees, combing and
arranging their golden locks:

"Know you the Nixes, gay and fair?
Their eyes are black, and green their hair,
They lurk in sedgy shores."

A fairy or water-sprite that