learning had referred, by name, and work, and book and chapter, to those ancient authors from whom he derived his information upon the Roman penates, &c.
What idea our Saxon ancestors had of the Fairy, which they called ælp, a word explained by Lye as equivalent to "lamia, larva, incubus, ephialtes;" we are utterly at a loss to conceive.
The nymphs, the satyrs, and the fawns, are frequently noticed by the old traditional historians of the north: particularly Saxo-grammaticus, who has a curious story of three nymphs of the forest and Hother king of Sweden and Denmark, being apparently the originals of the weird, or wizard, sisters of Macbeth.[1] Others are preserved by Olaus Magnus, who says they had so deeply impressed into the earth, that the place they have been used to, having been (apparently) eaten up, in a circular form, with flagrant heat, never brings forth fresh grass from the dry turf. This nocturnal sport of monsters, he adds, the natives call The dance of the elves.[2]
