OTHER FOWINGTON]

[Sidenote: THE PHARISEES]

Mark Antony Lower's _Contributions to Literature_, 1845, contains a
pleasant essay on the South Downs which I overlooked when I was writing
this book, but from which I now gladly take a few passages. It gives me,
for example, a pendent to William Blake's description of a fairy's
funeral on page 64, in the shape of a description of a fairy's revenge,
from the lips of Master Fowington, a friend of Mr. Lower, who was one
that believed in Pharisees (as Sussex calls fairies) as readily and
unreservedly as we believe in wireless telegraphy. Mas' Fowington had,
indeed, two very good reasons for his credulity. One was that the
Pharisees are mentioned in the Bible and therefore must exist; the other
was that his grandmother, "who was a very truthful woman," had seen them
with her own eyes "time and often." "They was liddle folks not more
than a foot high, and used to be uncommon fond of dancing. They jound[4]
hands and formed a circle, and danced upon it till the grass came three
times as green there as it was anywhere else. That's how these here
rings come upon the hills. Leastways so they say; but I don't know
nothing about it, in tye,[5] for I never seen none an 'em; though to be
sure it's very hard to say how them rings do come, if it is'nt the
Pharisees that makes 'em. Besides there's our old song that we always
sing at harvest supper, where it comes in--'We'll drink and dance like
Pharisees.' Now I should like to know why it's put like that 'ere in the
song, if it a'nt true."

[Sidenote: MAS' MEPPOM'S ADVENTURE]

Master Fowington's story of the fairy's revenge runs thus:--

"An ol' brother of my wife's gurt gran'mother _see_ some Pharisees once,
and 'twould a been a power better if so be he hadn't never seen 'em, or
leastways never offended 'em. I'll tell ye how it happened. Jeems
Meppom--dat was his nauem--Jeems was a liddle farmer, and used to thresh
his own corn. His barn stood in a very _elenge_ lonesome place, a
goodish bit from de house, and de Pharisees used to come dere a nights
and thresh out some wheat and wuts for him, so dat de hep o' threshed
corn was ginnerly bigger in de morning dan what he left it overnight.
Well, ye see, Mas' Meppom thought dis a liddle odd, and didn't know
rightly what to make ant. So bein' an out-and-out bold chep, dat didn't
fear man nor devil, as de saying is, he made up his mind dat he'd goo
over some night to see how 'twas managed. We