certain women, who by certain kinds of food, act on human minds so that they believe themselves to be what they are not." These ideas were probably produced firstly by suggestion or hypnotism, and secondly by administering certain poisons, such as stramonium which causes strange delusions. Fulgosus, indeed, suggests that these are delusions, and that probably the turning men into pigs by Circe, and the Egyptian girl who believed herself to be a mare and was cured by Hilarion, were all cakes baked from the same meal. In which the reader will no doubt agree with him.

The street-boys and canaille, who are as cruel in Italy as in other countries, have a very easy method for ascertaining whether an old woman is a witch. Should you see one in the street, you must follow her, making the sign of the castagna, and cry out many times aloud at her, "Witch,witch, witch! Fico!' (a fig, meaning the sign of the castagna). And if she turns round and answers: "Zident!" (Romagnola, in Italian, Accidente!) "Bad luck to you!" you may be sure she is a witch. But she must reply with this word, and not with any other.

The witch is not so much identified in Italy with the broom as a steed, as in Northern Europe. She generally rides a goat. But she is kept away or exorcised with a broom, which is of very old Latin origin. The broom was anciently a symbol of purification–lhence a magic protection against evil spirits who love dirt. Thus VARRO relates that when a child wasborn, the threshold was touched with a broom, a hatchet, and a pestle, to keep away spirits, which is quite like the Romagnola custom of laying abroom across the door to prevent the entrance of witches. In fact, in every one of the instances which I have collected the only allusion to thebroom as regards witches is as a thing which they utterly dread. What Silvanus (regarded as a mischief-making spirit) chiefly dreaded was the broom, the hatchet, and the pestle, or the three principal symbols of culture, cleanliness, and fertility.

Since writing the foregoing I have learned the following, which proves that the whole of the ancient rite as described by VARRO is still observed.

"When a babe is born, to free it from witches one should take a hatchet, a pestle, and a broom, and all these are to be put in a cross on the threshold of the door, and the one who does this must say:–

The pestle, for some reason, is regarded as being very effective in magic.

Witches in Italy as in the Danubian provinces love to dance and rock and fly in wild mazes, chasing one another on the summits of waving branches,and when these move much in but little wind you may be sure that they orthe fairies are there

Hast thou entered into the treasures of the Snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the Hail?"–Job. xxxviii. 22.

Fleeting cloud–sailors of the air!"–SCHILLER.

I think it is WASHINGTON IRVING who describes a man who wished that he were superstitious because he fancied that such a person must live in a kind of fairy-land. WALTER SCOTT, too, was always wanting to believe what his strong Scotch common sense, fortified by education, rejected. And if the faith of the Middle Ages had not taught men that every supernatural conception whatever not included in the teachings of the Church was hellish, and fairies and elves, devils, men might certainly in the old days of belief have been much happier, and surrounded themselves with ever-varying, many-wreathing, golden-starred canopies, recognising a spirit-artist'shand in the dew, decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass, seeing eyesof light in rain-drops, and hearing love-whispers in the breeze. It is worth considering that though CHAUCER wrote that in his time–

Yet that the instant the curse, or ban, of the Church was removed from poetry by the Reformation, Fairy-land revived and flourished in the works of SHAKESPEARE, and indeed in those of hundreds if not thousands of other writers. In truth, although its first causes were dying out, it received such a great development that its real power was greater than ever, like a strawberry-vine, which, dying in one place, sends out its tendrils to another, and from being barren at first, becomes in a few removes fertile, bearing abundant ivory blossoms and coral golden-spotted fruit. Which indeed holds well, because the strawberry is par eminence the fairy-fruit–Jerome Bosch in a picture gives it the power of changing

men into strange beings. This has been little considered. The Elf, who had been a literal and yet very limited, or almost commonplace being to the peasant, became apotheosised to the refined and cultivated minds of the golden age of English literature into an Ariel. And in sober truth, there is no such exquisite worship of Elfiand as is to be found in the works of SHAKESPEARE, HERRICK, DRAYTON, and in innumerable ballads and legends which this fairy Renaissance called to life. Bishop CORBET was quite wrong when he said that the fairies

or Catholic. They were all devils damned under the Church, and only became delightful little deities to the Protestants.

This view may be new to many of my readers, but it is worth seriously considering how very valuable a highly cultivated sense of art, or aninstinct for the beautiful, preserves men from evil and revolting influences. The peasantry in Italy to this day do not quite identify witches with the horrible hags of Germany and England, who meet simply to worship the devil. Their chief is not the dirty vulgar Devil but beautiful lady-like Diana. Herein we have the result of a certain refinement of art which even the monks could never quite extinguish.

Not only is it true that a man who believes–like a Red Indian–that every tree and stone has its indwelling spirit, is always in a kind of fairy-land, but what is also worth envying, he is never alone. When he sits in woodland wild 'neath green or russet tree, he knows the presence of the Elves, or sees by many a sign where they have passed. Every relic of the olden time, arrow-heads, pottery, and hollow flints, have been touched by fairy hands, much more those older relics of an older time, rocks, rivers, and forests.

There is to the truly refined or cultivated mind an infinite field for this feeling, if its possessor is very familiar with such lore, for with itwe too can live in Fairy land, and–

I do not think that SHAKESPEARE or HERRICK really "believed" in the existence of fairies, but I am very sure that no peasant of the tenth century ever peopled the forests and fields with more beautifrul fairies and associations than they did. And after all, who knows how much life andmystery and fairydom and spirithood really lies hidden in nature–what elements and senses and laws underlying laws not as yet known to us? Sleep on, and dream–it

is not yet time for man to be quite aroused from his rest–you may lie a little longer!

Read, master, and inwardly digest, oh reader, all this folk-lore of the olden time. It will do you no harm though your mind were as full of fairy fancies as ever that of Don Quixote's was of the dreams of chivalry. Forwhile the childlike charm or poetry is none the less, the historical value and the lessons which it teaches are of very great value. You will have read this book to little purpose if it has not induced you to reflect on the fact that by studying the stupendous errors of the past we learn how much of them still remain, and how few of us realise it.

There is, however, a distinct charm in knowledge of what man has really believed, whether it be true or false. I love to look at the knurls or knots in trees, and remember that they are caused by the heads of witches buried near them, and forcing themselves again to life; or to peer througha flint with a hole in it to help my sight, and perhaps see Elves. Or watch the clouds like ships–"sailors of the air"–and think of the "treasures of hail" stored in them!

And this recalls one of the strangest and most daintily beautiful conceptions of the olden time–that there is afar in Cloudland a mysterious city called Magonia, where the hail is manufactured, and whence it is carried in ships which look to us like "clouds sailing along in golden sunset green."

The monks who bedevilled, belittled, and dirtied everything, added to this fancy that these ships were loaded and manned by witches and devils in order to destroy crops, and that for return cargo they were freighted with the fruit thus injured or destroyed. On which subject the tenth-century Archbishop AGOBARD of Lyons delivered himself as follows ¹ :–

"Most people are so stupid and unintelligent that they believe and declare that there is a land called Magonia, from which come ships sailing through the air, which receive on board all the fruit which is destroyed by hail and storms. And that the sorcerers who cause the storms are in connection with the ship-people, and are paid by them."

The same bishop relates that he himself once saved the lives of four human beings, three men and a woman, whom the populace wished to stone to death because they believed that they were people from Magonia, who had fallen from a cloud-vessel, having been "shipwrecked" during a thunder-storm. It is to be

¹ Des Deutschen Mittelalters Volksglauben und Heroensagen, von F. L. F. von DOBENECK. Preface by JEAN PAUL RICHTER, Berlin, 1815. This Bishop Agobard was a noble-minded man, a miracle for his age, quite free from vulgar superstition, and determinedly opposed to that kind of Christianity which believes that there are a million of devils tempting man where one angel comes to his aid, and that the devil is far superior to God in power, since he gains more souls than are saved. For such views thebishop was greatly persecuted by the Orthodox believers, and died in misery (vide HORST, Dæmonomagia).

deeply regretted that the bishop did not give us some account of this quartette– how they looked, and what language they spoke. I fancy myself that they would have proved to be gypsies!

"Like ships far off and out at sea!" Reader, is there not a charm in this conception; and will you not sometimes recall it when you sit atevening and look at the rosy, golden sunset–it may be at the trysting-tree–and see the cloudlets steering in the fiery sea, and wish that you two could take passage therein for the beautiful, far-away, forgotten city–for Magonia, whose walls are of aerial amethyst, and citadels of vapoury emerald?

Floating away, away, and ever on: gleaming in glory on the heavenly plane–blending in darkness, glittering in rain, or in hail-diamonds seeking earth again, mingling and changing like all things for ever! Thou hast been there many a time and oft in very truth, and there thou wiltbe many time, thou Child of the Mist, or ever Eternity shall end!

Sic vita. But I learn from PRÆTORIUS, in his Anthropodemus Plutonicus, that these Graupenmenschen, or Hail-men of Magonia, are rare elfin-artists, and that now and then they fashion their warein strange forms, and even enter into their work themselves, or else by magic might cause small fairies to appear in it, in order to mystically forebode strange things.

"Very memorable is that which happened in the year of Christ 1395, when there fell, like a rain of pebbles, wonderful hailstones on which were human faces, both male and female. The former had beards like those of men. The female bore long hair and veils, which were seen by a very credible man, who also had them in his hands, as CRANZIUS declares in Wandallib. 9, c. 3.

"And in Cremona, in the year 1240, in the cloister of Saint Gabriel, there fell a hailstone on which could be seen, as if most carefully engraved,the form of a cross, with the face of the Lord Christ, and the letters JESUS NAZARENUS. And one of the drops of water from it wetting the eyes of a blind man caused him to see. As appears by the writer VINSICH, Histor. lib. 30, c. 138, and from him MAJOLUS, p. 15. d. tom. ; also NAUCLERUS, Gener. 41."

Which well-authenticated fact should of itself show that the inhabitants of Magonia were good Christians–"and wider."

"M. HEINRICH GOBALD in Breviar. Histor., p.473, declares that in 1650, on the 18th of June, as announced from Presburg, there was a terrible hailstorm, such as no one had ever beheld. The stones were of very varied forms, and some of them were like Turk's heads."

From which soon came wars, famines, revelations and revolutions, adulterers and harlots struck dead, and from this it was deduced that–

"A Child of Midnight will ere long reign, and his rule will be hard as iron and full of grief; when pestilence, hunger, and war will take the upper hand. Yet first will he govern Moscow with much peace, and become a mighty monarch."

Which is followed by forty pages of grim and wild prophesying as to what will take place in the year 1666, as foreboded by the hailstones.

I, and it may be you also, oh reader, have seen a great and a small hailstone stuck together, so as to much resemble a Turk's head with a turban; but truly it never occurred to us that there was a volume of political presage therein. We did not even think of the Child of Midnight which, by the way, is a fine term, and might serve for the title of a novel or poem. Yet when you see the cloud-ships far sailing in the sky, you may perchance recall the mysterious city of Magonia, and when hit by a hailstone regard it as done in sport by the fairy artisans of that famed town.

What appears from several authorities is that what seem to us to be "fleeting clouds–sailors of the air," are in reality mysterious barks, orvery often spirits, hastening across the sky, the ships and sailors of "cloud-land gorgeous land" bent on errands far away; of which there is a very strange story told by Meteranus (Niederland Histor., p. 28). Firstly be it remembered that as the Norse heroes of Valhalla meet every day to rehearse their ancient duels, and fight and be killed, and then revived, so the mysterious dwellers in the land of air return to earth on the anniversary of some great battle of the olden time, just as in Americathe battles of Bunker Hill, Concord, Saratoga, and others, even as late as that of Gettysburg, are celebrated by spectral armies, who fight by night the conflict o'er again. So it came to pass that in the land of Angouléme in France, in December, 1608, many small clouds came drifting o'er the sky, looking

like the pebbles on the strand moved by the rising tide. Then, one by one and two by two, they began to fall, softly and gently as snowflakes, toearth–"One by one and two by two, they to a mighty squadron grew"–and as they touched ground they suddenly became warriors. "All as Meteranus declares, "were very tall, straight, handsome men, having blue weapons, flags, and everything else cerulean or sky-blue–and of them all were 12,900. And they divided into two armies, and fought from five o'clock in the afternoon till nine, when they all vanished."

But it is mostly in the silent desert or in lonely mountains, in hidden places far beyond the plain, that we see these beings who are corpore aërea, tempore eterna (airy of form, yet with eternal soul), who go fleeting over the sky on mystic errands bent. Sometimes they pause, however, for a time, either of their own free-will or at a sorcerer's spell, and build up, at a thought, cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces, rosy and golden in the setting sun, pillared domes, pearly citadels, and rows on rows of battlements, repeated like giant stairs until high lost in the air. To those who are "gifted," these appear to be actually humanly built; and no wonder, for they are only made to seem like clouds to deludemankind. For Magonia truly is–

I had written the foregoing in the city of Florence in May, 1891, when I was conversing one day with a woman who came into the house just as a storm was raging without. And she said: "I was going to the post-office, and as I went some one said to me, 'Truly thou art a witch, for the hailstones leap up from beneath thy feet.' "

¹ The Disciples, by Harriet E. H. King.

Then we all laughed, and I asked if witches made hail; and this was the answer, which I wrote down, word for word, in Italian:–

"People say that when the weather becomes bad (quando il tempo si guasta), and thunder and lightning begin, that it is a storm caused by wind, and that the dark clouds are water, and the wind bears along those clouds which shed water. But really it is a very different thing. For up in the sky there are cities made by the witches and wizards who were oncedriven out of paradise or who left this world, and they have made for themselves another world in heaven.

"But even in heaven they keep those evil feelings (tengono sempre i suoi rancori) which they ever had, and so they choose the worst weather, so that they may do much mischief to men. And then they enter a vessel (barca) and load it with hail; and all the clouds which we see arenot clouds of air, but boats. Then their leader takes a hailstone and throws it at a witch, and so they all pelt one another and sing:–

This spell was sung also in Romagnola, and it means:–

Of this Hail-land in heaven I received another history, which is different in a few details, but which, I think, is not less interesting:–

"People when they see clouds in air say it is air (vapour) and a sign of rain, but there is more in them than they suppose. For there is in the sky another world made by wizards and witches who, when they died, were not admitted to heaven, and so they made a world for themselves, which has a sea (lake) in it. And when the weather is dark, and clouds fly before the storm, those clouds are boats full of hail, and in them are wizards and witches, who throw the hail at one another, and so it falls to earth and does great harm. When this happens one should invoke the spiritof thunder (Tituno or Tignia).

"The light, small clouds which pass along in sunlight in fine weather aresmall boats in which are girls and children whom the witches have taken and keep as prisoners. But sometimes when it is pleasant they send them out sailing in the air."

I have, indeed, a third account in MS. devoted to these captives, but after six readings I have been obliged to give it up as unintelligible. It is only additional testimony. There is something to the effect that the witches have mirrors with which they flash out signals to the boats to return, or with which they make lightning.

Witches on earth sometimes pay visits to this Magonia, or Cloud City land, but they run a risk of being caught or killed in the storms of their own raising. Thus Friedrich Panzer tells us in his Bavarian Tales, that during the first half of the last century there was such a tremendous tempest, with hail, in Forchheim in Upper Franconia, that the people feared lest the whole town should be destroyed. Then the Franciscan brothers met in their cloister garden, when, just as the first blessing was pronounced,lo ! a beautiful woman, stark-naked, was thrown headlong from a passing thunderstorm on the grass in their midst; and the holy brothers, greatly amazed at this, doubtless to them, utterly novel sight, drew near, when they recognised in her who had indeed dropped in on them so suddenly, the wife of the town miller, a woman long suspected of witchcraft. Whereupon one of the monks threw a garment over her, and she was brought into the cloister–"By means of which," says the account (somewhat obscurely), "they averted from her the death by fire." Which means, I suppose, that she made so favourable an impression on the Franciscans that they protected their proie inattendue (vide Le Moyen de Parvenir) from being roasted.

The conduct of these sorcerers and witches, unfit for heaven and averse to earth, building for themselves starry palaces and rose-red citadels with all the glory Dream to genius yields, reminds me of what Professor Shairp remarks of Shelley, and that very markedly indeed:–

"The real world-existence as it is to other minds he recoiled from–shrank from the dull, gross earth which we see around us–nor less from the unseen world of Righteous Law and Will which we apprehend. The solid earth he did not care for. Heaven–a moral heaven–there was that in him which he would not tolerate. So, as Mr. Hutton has said, his mind made for itself a dwelling-place midway between heaven and earth, equally remote from both–some interstellar region, some clear, cold place

which he peopled with ideal shapes and abstractions wonderful or weird, beautiful or fantastic, all woven out of his own dreaming phantasy."

Once in a while one of these dwellers in the violet Nifelheim, or Magonia, escapes and comes down to earth, and is born as a Shelley or a Keats–I think that Mr. J. A. Symonds is really one of them–or a Swinburne, or Ruskin, or Heine, or Carlyle, or Victor Hugo, or anybody else who is magnificently illogical, splendidly rhapsodical, sublimely egoistical (or subjective)Ÿmen whose thoughts

are streamed and dashed with startling hues, and who think showers of stars, and who, when they do teach us something new–

So from old days these hardened stories live as if trenched in ice, like mammoths in Siberia, to the world unknown till some discoverer reveals, them, and then there is marvelling here and there that such things could have been so long frozen up. So into time old time returns again, and theancient medals, thus disinterred, are all the more beautiful for their rust. And it went deeply to my heart that after I had read the story of Magonia, and thought it was a tale utterly dead on earth and embalmed in a chronicle, to find a sorceress in whose faith it lives. It was as if an Egyptian mummy, revived, had suddenly spoken to me, and told me a tale of Thebes, or declared that Cloud-Cuckoo land was a reality which he had known when he beheld–

How deeply (or one may say how terribly) impressed the Italian peasantry are by the belief that hail is caused by devils and witches appears from the following from a London newspaper of September, 1891. It is curious as involving the ancient Roman belief in the sacred power of bells as devil-drivers which was in later times turned to such good account by the priests:–

"The schoolmaster is still but very moderately abroad in Italy, as the priest of Montalto in that country has too good reason to know. When a storm comes on there it is the practice to ring frantically one of the church bells, which is supposed to have good effect on the temper of the clerkof the weather. This was duly done by the sexton one day last week, andindeed it is lucky for him that he does not hold office in our climate, or he would scarce have left the belfry this summer. However, the priesthas the misfortune to be far too much ahead of his flock, and stopped the ringing, telling the people to come into church. As soon as the bell ceased the hail began, and no sooner had the priest reached the altar thana peasant named Marca bitterly upbraided him for causing the hail by stopping the bell. Producing a billhook, he attacked the priest, who parried one blow, but presently received a fearful gash, a woman, said to be Marca's mother, meanwhile calling out, 'Give it him!' Marca then fled, andhas not yet been caught. A little more spent by the Italian Government on spelling-books and a little less on ironclads might possibly prevent such unpleasant contingencies."

Truly Marca was much more of a heathen than a Christian. The spirit of old Rome was great in him–he would not yield to feeble modern faith.

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