their attributes
from their classic predecessors, although more immediately allied to the
barbarian conquerors. We allude to the fairies, which, as received into
the popular creed, and as described by the poets who have made use of
them as machinery, are certainly among the most pleasing legacies of
fancy.

Dr. Leyden, who exhausted on this subject, as upon most others, a
profusion of learning, found the first idea of the elfin people in the
Northern opinions concerning the duergar, or dwarfs.[23] These were,
however, it must be owned, spirits of a coarser sort, more laborious
vocation, and more malignant temper, and in all respects less propitious
to humanity, than the fairies (properly so called), which were the
invention of the Celtic people, and displayed that superiority of taste
and fancy which, with the love of music and poetry, has been generally
ascribed to their race, through its various classes and modifications.

[Footnote 23: See the essay on the Fairy Superstition, in the
"Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," of which many of the materials were
contributed by Dr. Leyden, and the whole brought into its present form
by the author.]

In fact, there seems reason to conclude that these duergar were
originally nothing else than the diminutive natives of the Lappish,
Lettish, and Finnish nations, who, flying before the conquering weapons
of the Asae, sought the most retired regions of the North, and there
endeavoured to hide themselves from their Eastern invaders. They were a
little, diminutive race, but possessed of some skill probably in mining
or smelting minerals, with which the country abounds. Perhaps also they
might, from their acquaintance with the changes of the clouds, or
meteorological phenomena, be judges of weather, and so enjoy another
title to supernatural skill. At any rate, it has been plausibly supposed
that these poor people, who sought caverns and hiding-places from the
persecution of the Asae, were in some respects compensated for
inferiority in strength and stature by the art and power with which the
superstition of the enemy invested them. These oppressed yet dreaded
fugitives obtained, naturally enough, the character of the German
spirits called Kobold, from which the English goblin and the Scottish
bogle, by some inversion and alteration of pronunciation, are evidently
derived.

The Kobolds were a species of gnomes, who haunted the dark and solitary
places, and were often seen in the