temperance, they are not observed
so subject to those irregularities, as to envy, spite, hypocrisy, lying,
and dissimulation.

As our religion obliges us not to make a peremptory and curious search
into these abstrusenesses, so the histories of all ages give as many
plain examples of extraordinary occurrences as make a modest inquiry not
contemptible. How much is written of pigmies, fairies, nymphs, syrens,
apparitions, which though not the tenth part true, yet could not spring
of nothing; even English authors relate [of] Barry Island, in
Glamorganshire, that laying your ear into a cleft of the rocks, blowing
of bellows, striking of hammers, clashing of armour, filing of iron, will
be heard distinctly ever since Merlin enchanted those subterranean wights
to a solid manual forging of arms to Aurelius Ambrosius and his Britons,
till he returned; which Merlin being killed in a battle, and not coming
to loose the knot, these active vulcans are there tied to a perpetual
labour.

THE FAIRY BOY OF LEITH.

"About fifteen years since, having business that detained me for some
time at Leith, which is near Edinburgh, in the kingdom of Scotland, I
often met some of my acquaintance at a certain house there, where we used
to drink a glass of wine for our refection. The woman which kept the
house was of honest reputation among the neighbours, which made me give
the more attention to what she told me one day about a fairy boy (as they
called him) who lived about that town. She had given me so strange an
account of him, that I desired her I might see him the first opportunity,
which she promised; and not long after, passing that way, she told me
there was the fairy boy, but a little before I came by; and, casting her
eye into the street, said, 'Look you, sir, yonder he is, at play with
those other boys'; and pointing him out to me, I went, and by smooth
words, and a piece of money, got him to come into the house with me;
where, in the presence of divers people, I demanded of him several
astrological questions, which he answered with great subtlety; and,
through all his discourse, carried it with a cunning much above his
years, which seemed not to exceed ten or eleven.

"He seemed to make a motion like drumming upon the table with his
fingers, upon which I asked him whether he could beat a drum? To which
he replied, 'Yes, sir, as well as any man in Scotland; for every Thursday
night I beat all points to a sort of people t