f his
followers could understand in the slightest degree what the monstrosity
meant, they let it go, nor is there any further reference to it.

Now, granted that this account is not "faked," and that such a beast
actually did exist, it would naturally suggest to one that vagrarians,
pixies, and other grotesque forms of phantasms are, after all, only the
spirits of similar types of material life, and that, in all
probability, the earth, contemporary with prehistoric, and even
later-day man, fairly swarmed with such creatures. However, this, like
everything else connected with these early times, is merely a matter of
speculation. Another explanatory theory is, that possibly superphysical
phenomena were much more common formerly than now, and that the various
types of sub-human and sub-animal apparitions (which were then
constantly seen by the many, but which are now only visible to the few)
have been handed down to us in the likeness of satyrs and fauns. Anyhow,
I think they may be rightly classified in the category of vagrarians.
The association of spirits with trees is pretty nearly universal. In the
fairy tales of youth we have frequent allusions to them. In the
Caucasus, where the population is not of Slavonic origin, we have
innumerable stories of sacred trees, and in each of these stones the
main idea is the same--namely, that a human life is dependent on the
existence of a tree. In Slavonic mythology, plants as well as trees are
magnets for spirits, and in the sweet-scented pinewoods, in the dark,
lonely pinewoods, dwell "psipolnitza," or female goblins, who plague the
harvesters; and "lieshi," or forest male demons, closely allied to
satyrs. In Iceland there was a pretty superstition to the effect that,
when an innocent person was put to death, a sorb or mountain ash would
spring over their grave. In Teutonic mythology the sorb is supposed to
take the form of a lily or white rose, and, on the chairs of those about
to die, one or other of these flowers is placed by unseen hands. White
lilies, too, are emblematic of innocence, and have a knack of
mysteriously shooting up on the graves of those who have been unjustly
executed. Surely this would be the work of a spirit, as, also, would be
the action of the Eglantine, which is so charmingly illustrated in the
touching story of Tristram and Yseult. Tradition says that from the
grave of Tristram there sprang an eglantine which twined about the
statue of the lovely Yseult