egeagle. Before the constable
appeared to apprehend her, she was visited by the Fairies, who informed
her what was intended, and advised her to go with him. When this account
was given, on May 1, 1696, she was still alive; but refused to relate
any particulars of her connection with the Fairies, or the occasion on
which they deserted her, lest she should again fall under the cognizance
of the magistrates.

Anne Jefferies' Fairies were not altogether singular in maintaining
their good character, in opposition to the received opinion of the
church. Aubrey and Lily, unquestionably judges in such matters, had
a high opinion of these beings, if we may judge from the following
succinct and business-like memorandum of a ghost-seer. "Anno 1670. Not
far from Cirencester was an apparition. Being demanded whether a good
spirit or a bad, returned no answer, but disappeared with a curious
perfume, and most melodious twang. M.W. Lilly believes it was a Fairie.
So Propertius,

Omnia finierat; tenues secessit in auras,
Mansit odor possis scire fuisse Deam!"
AUBREY'S _Miscellanies,_ p. 80.

A rustic, also, whom Jackson taxed with magical practices, about 1620,
obstinately denied that the good King of the Fairies had any connection
with the devil; and some of the Highland seers, even in our day,
have boasted of their intimacy with the elves, as an innocent and
advantageous connection. One Maccoan, in Appin, the last person
eminently gifted with the second sight, professed to my learned and
excellent friend, Mr Ramsay, of Ochtertyre, that he owed his prophetic
visions to their intervention.

VI. There remains yet another cause to be noticed, which seems to have
induced a considerable alteration into the popular creed of England,
respecting Fairies. Many poets of the sixteenth century, and, above all,
our immortal Shakespeare, deserting the hackneyed fictions of Greece and
Rome, sought for machinery in the superstitions of their native country.
"The fays, which nightly dance upon the wold," were an interesting
subject; and the creative imagination of the bard, improving upon the
vulgar belief, assigned to them many of those fanciful attributes and
occupations, which posterity have since associated with the name
of Fairy. In such employments, as rearing the drooping flower, and
arranging the disordered chamber, the Fairies of South Britain gradually
lost the harsher character of the dwarfs, or elves. Their choral dances
were