ON FAIRIES.
59
peare straunge shapes and spirites, who are apparelled like unto other laborers in the pit. These wander up and down in caves and underminings, and seeme to bestuire themselves in all kinde of labour, as to digge after the veine, to carrie togither oare, to put it in baskets, and to turne the winding-whele to drawe it up, when, in very deede, they do nothing lesse. They very seldome hurte the laborers (as they say) except they provoke them by laughing and rayling at them: for then they threw gravel stones at them, or hurt them by some other means. These are especially haunting in pittes where mettall moste aboundeth."[1]
This is our great Miltons
"Swart faëry of the mine."[2]
- ↑ Of ghostes, &c. London, 1572, 4to. p. 73. He has this from Sebastian Munster: see Olaus Magnus, L. 6, c. 10. George Agricola, however, is the original author,—whose words are "Utut jocamur genus certè dæmonum in fodinis nonnullis versari compertum est; quorum quidem nihil damni metallicis inferunt, sed in puteis vagant, videntur se exercere: nunc cavando venam, nunc ingerendo in modulos id quod effossum est, nunc machinam versando tractoriam, nunc irritando operarios, idque potissimum faciunt in his specubus è quibus multum argenti effoditur, vel magna ejus inveniendi spes est." (Bermannus, 432.) He calls this demon metallicus, in German, "Das bergmelin."
- ↑ Comus.
