To the kingdom of elf-land few English nursery poems have any reference. Our continental neighbours have preserved a few, but the major number are found in versions of the folk-lore tales belonging to the people dwelling in the hilly districts of remote parts of Europe. Norway, Switzerland, Italy, and even Poland present weird romances, and our own country folk in the "merrie north country," and in the lowlands of "bonnie Scotland," add to the collection. The age to which most of them may be traced is uncertain; at all events, they bear evidences of belonging to a period when nature worship was universal, and the veneration of the mysterious in life common to our ancestors. The Second Stone Age men, it is said, cremated their dead who were worthy of reverence, and worshipped their shades, and the nursery tales of pixies and goblins and elves are but the mythical remains of their once prevailing religion—universal the world over. The inception of this ancestral worship probably took place during that period known as the Neolithic Age, when the moon, stars, and sun no longer remained the mysterious in life to be feared and worshipped. In the dreary process of evolution a gradual development took place, and nature worship and ancestral veneration evolved into the more comprehensive systems of Buddha, Confucius, and the later polytheism of Greece, Ancient Tuscany, and Rome, leaving high and dry, stranded, as it were, in Northern Europe, Ireland, and North Britain, an undisturbed residuum of ante-chronological man's superstitions. Evidences of primitive man's religion are seen in the customs and practices of our rural folk to-day.

In vast forest districts, or in hilly regions far away from the refining influences of social contact, the old-time superstitions lingered, changing little in the theme, and inspiring the succeeding generations, as they unfolded in the long roll-call of life, with the same fears of the mystery of death and of a future life. One of the customs of recent practice is fitly described as follows:—

In Yorkshire and in north-west Irish homesteads, and even far away in the East amongst the Armenian peasantry, a custom was, until late years, in vogue, of providing a feast for the departed relatives on certain fixed dates. All Hallows' Eve being one of the occasions a meal was prepared, and the feast spread as though ordinary living visitants were going to sit round the "gay and festive board." The chain hanging down from the centre of the chimney to the fireplace was removed—a boundary line of the domestic home—but at these times especial care was taken to remove it so that the "pixies and goblins and elves" could have a licence to enter the house. In spite of Christian teaching and other widening influences the belief remained fixed in the minds of the rural classes that elves, goblins, sprites, pixies, and the manes were stern realities.

The Erl King of Goethe, a sprite endowed with more than human passions, elegantly portrays the modern idea of an old theme. How he haunted the regions of the Black Forest in Thuringia, snatching up children rambling in the shades of the leafed wood, to kill them in his terrible shambles. The King of the Wood and the Spirit of the Waters were both early among the terrors of old-time European peasantry's superstitions.

Another surviving custom, carried out with much picturesque ceremony, is common to the peoples of the Balkan States. In time of water-famine, more particularly in Servia, the girls go through the neighbouring villages singing a Dodolo song of—

Precisely as the hawthorn bushes were stripped of their blossoms by Maying parties in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so in Servia the ballet of the leaf-dressed girl, encircled by a party of holiday-makers, proceeds through the hamlets invoking not the Fair Flora, but the Spirit of the Waters; the central figure, the girl in green, being besprinkled by each cottager.

The Greeks, Bulgarians, and Roumanians observe a similar ceremony, but on the confines of Russia so intense is the belief in the superstition of the water goblin that in times of long drought a traveller journeying along the road has often been seized by the ruthless hands of the villagers and ceremoniously flung into a rivulet—a sacrifice to appease the spirit that lay in the waters. In Ireland the fairy-tale of Fior Usga—Princess Spring-water—has a kindred meaning; she, so the legend relates, sank down in a well with her golden pitcher, and the flood-gates opened and swamped the parched and barren countryside near Kinsale.

In Germany, when a person is drowned, people recollect the fancies of childhood, and exclaim, "The River Spirit claims its yearly sacrifice." Even the hard-reasoning Scotch, years ago, clung to the same superstitious fancy which oftentimes prevented some of the most selfish of their race from saving their drowning fellows. "He will do you an injury if you save him from the water" was one of their fears. In England, too, the north-country people speak of the River Sprite as Jenny Greenteeth, and children dread the green, slimy-covered rocks on a stream's bank or on the brink of a black pool. "Jenny Greenteeth will have thee if thee goest on't river banks" is the warning of a Lancashire mother to her child.

The Irish fisherman's belief in the Souls' Cages and the Merrow, or Man of the Sea, was once held in general esteem by the men who earned a livelihood on the shores of the Atlantic. This Merrow, or Spirit of the Waters, sometimes took upon himself a half-human form, and many a sailor on the rocky coast of Western Ireland has told the tale of how he saw the Merrow basking in the sun, watching a storm-driven ship. His form is described as that of half man, half fish, a thing with green hair, long green teeth, legs with scales on them, short arms like fins, a fish's tail, and a huge red nose. He wore no clothes, and had a cocked hat like a sugar-loaf, which was carried under the arm—never to be put on the head unless for the purpose of diving into the sea. At such times he caught all the souls of those drowned at sea and put them in cages made like lobster pots.

The child's tale of the German fisherman and his wife tells the same story—

Unless such past credulities as these be considered it would be most difficult to account for many of the sayings of child-days, and the archaic ideas that have drifted into our folk-lore tales. On all hands it is admitted that it is no unusual thing to find a game or practice outliving the serious performance of which it is an imitation. The condition of a people who originally held such mystic and crude ideas is seen to-day in types of aborigines and uncivilised races.

In Halmahero, a large island to the west of New Guinea, a wizard goes through a ceremony somewhat similar to the Servian village maid's. Cutting down branches, he dips them into the water and sprinkles the parched ground.

In Ceram the outer barks of certain trees are cast on the surface of running streams and rivulets and dedicated to the spirits that lie in the waters, that after this offering they may arise from the depths of the deep and clothe the earth with a cloud of mist.

THE CORN SPIRIT.

Another spirit, dreaded by all European peoples, was the Spirit of the Corn. In Russia especially children of the rural class sing songs of a very distant age, mother handing down to child themes unexposed to foreign influence. It is true the Church has altered the application of many by dressing up afresh pagan observances in Christian costumes. There are several, but one of the songs of the Russian serf to his prattling offspring illustrates this statement. Before reading it, it should be borne in mind that Ovsen is the Teutonic Sun God who possessed a boar, and that the antiquity of the song belongs to a time when the Russian peasant's forefathers worshipped the glories of the heavens, deifying the Sun for his fire and lustre.

The translation of this poem of the fire worshippers is taken from Ralston's Songs of the Russian People, and runs as follows. Imagine the crooning voice of the old Slav woman singing it to her nurse child.

Another song asks—

The present singers of songs about Ovsen receive presents in lieu of the old contributions towards a sacrifice to the gods. The habit is to ask in some such words as these—

Pigs' trotters used to be offered as a sacrifice at the beginning of the New Year, and the custom still prevails in Russia of proffering such dishes at this time. The compliments of the season are commemorated by giving away the feet of the "brisk little pig." The first day of the New Year was Ovsen's day, but now consecrated to the memory of St. Basil the Great. The previous evening was called St. Basil's Eve, or Vasily's Eve. In one of the little Russian songs it is said—

meaning on St. Basil's, or New Year's Day, comes the Sun-god, or thunder-bearer, originally Pevan, who, under Christian influences, becomes Elijah, or Ilya.

This supports the inference that the agriculturist was a nature worshipper. But quite apart from sun worshippers, and their songs about corn-growing, the children of the rural classes in many other parts of Europe have fixed ideas, or beliefs, in the "Spirit of the Cornfield"; their sayings are represented by different figures, "a mad dog in the corn," "a wolf in the corn," are found amongst the many shibboleths of the youngsters playing in the fields prior to harvest-time. That they dread the wavy movement of the grain-laden stalks is certain, and the red poppy, the blue cornflower, the yellow dandelion, and the marguerite daisy, although plucked by tiny hands on the fringe of the fields, it is not often tiny feet trample down the golden stalks. At nightfall, in Germany, an old peasant, observing the gentle undulating motion of the ripe crop while seated before his cottage, will exclaim—

In some parts the "corn spirit" was said to be a cow.

In one of our home counties—Hertfordshire—it is a "mare," and the custom of "crying the mare" has allusion to the corn spirit, and is spoken of in some villages to-day. There are several rhymes that carry a notice of cornfield games.

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The "Little Boy Blue" rhyme, it has been urged, had only reference to the butcher's boy. The rhyme is very much older than the blue-smocked butcher's boy, and in truth it may be said the butcher boy of a century ago wore white overalls.

The former rhyme, "Ring a Ring a Rosies," is known in Italy and Germany. In the northern counties of England the children use the words, "Hushu! Hushu!" in the third line.

The Spirit of the Cornfield is dreaded by children of all European countries. In Saxon Transylvania the children gather maize leaves and completely cover one of their playmates with them. This game is intended to prefigure death.

"CUCKOOS!"

The people of the Oral and Tula Governments, especially the maidens, christen the cuckoo "gossip darlings!"

In one of the Lithuanian districts the girls sing—

In Love's Labour's Lost a passage occurs where the two seasons, Spring and Winter, vie with each other in extolling the cuckoo and the owl.

Thus is cuckoo gossip perpetuated in rhyme and song; but an old belief in the mysteriously disappearing bird gave an opportunity to children to await its return in the early summer, and then address to it all kinds of ridiculous questions.

"How many years have I to live?" is a favourite query. The other like that of the Lithuanian maid, "Shall I soon be married?" meets with favour amongst single girls.

A German song, entitled "The Shepherd Maiden," indicates this custom. The words being—

After chasing the immortal bird from tree to tree to have her question, "Shall I soon be married?" answered, the song concludes with this taunting refrain—

In our earliest published song, words and music composed by John of Forsete, monk of Reading Abbey, date 1225, and entitled "Sumer is icumen in," the cuckoo is also extolled—

The peasantry of Russia, India, and Germany contribute to the collection of cuckoo-lore. Grimm mentions a Cuckoo Hill in Gauchsberg. The cuckoo and not the hill may have had the mystic sense.

Identical with this Cuckoo Hill, in its solemn significance, there occurs a passage in the game of Hot Cockles, played formerly at Yorkshire funerals.

the friends whine, and the mutes who are in readiness to follow the coffin beat their knees with open hands and reply—

The association of ideas about the prophetic notes of the cuckoo's mocking voice—in matters of marriage and death—are pretty general, and there are still further many points of identity in the tales told by the children of India and Southern Russia. Like the Phoenix idea amongst the people of Egypt, Persia, and India, these traditions allegorise the soul's immortality.

A WORD ON INDIAN LORE.

The old prose editions of the sacred books of India—the law codes of the Aryans—were suitably arranged in verse to enable the contents to be committed to memory by the students. In these rules the ritual of the simplest rites is set forth. New and full moon offerings are given, and regulations minutely describing as to the way salutation shall be made.

Much after the fashion of the grandees or the Red Indian moon worshipper of North America, it is told how a BrÂhmana must salute stretching forth his right hand level with his ear, a Kshalriza holding it level with the breast, a SÛdra holding it low—all caste observances and relics of a sign-language.

"A householder shall worship gods, manes, men, goblins, and rishis," remains of ancestral worship. "Adoration must be given to him who wears the moon on his forehead," the oldest known form of worship, possibly, of the Drift-man's period, "and he shall offer libations of water, oblations of clarified butter, and worship the moon." The butter oblation was practised by the Celts! They have a lunar penance, "he shall fast on the day of the new moon."

These observances belonged to a people who, without doubt, migrated from the West to the East. The manes and goblins are pre-Celtic, and have likewise been preserved by those who travelled, as the journey became possible, towards Asia. Some of our nursery tales, children's games, are likewise known to them. The same legends are extant in the East and West, all of which have a common origin, and that a religious one.

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