Translated by Iryna Stavynska
CHAPTER I.
OF THE SUBTERRANEAN INHABITANTS.
These Siths, or Fairies, they call Sleagh Maith, or the Good People, it would seem, to prevent the impact of their ill attempts, (for the Irish use to bless all they fear harm of;) and are said to be of a middle nature betwixt man and angel, as were daemons thought to be of old; of intelligent studious spirits, and light changeable bodies (like those called astral), somewhat of the nature of a condensed cloud, and best seen in twilight. These bodies are so pliable through the subtlety of the spirits that agitate them, that they can make them appear and disappear at pleasure. Some have bodies or vehicles so porous, thin, and defecate, that they are fed by only sucking into some fine spirituous liquors, that pierce like pure
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air and oil: others feed more gross on the abundance of substance of grains and liquids, or grain itself that grows on the surface of the earth, which these fairies steal away, partly invisible, partly preying on the grain, as do crows and mice; therefore in this same age, they are sometimes heard to bake bread, strike hammers, and do suchlike services within the little hillocks they most haunt: some of old, before the gospel dispelled paganism, and in some barbarous places as yet, enter houses after all are at rest, and set the kitchens in order, cleansing all the vessels. Such magical beings go under the name of brownies. When we have plenty, they have scarcity at their homes; and on the contrary (for they are empowered to catch as much prey everywhere as they please), their robberies notwithstanding oftentimes occasion great ricks of corn not to bleed so well (as they call it), or prove so copious by very far as was expected by the owner.
Their bodies of congealed air are sometimes carried aloft, other times grovel in different shapes, and enter into any cranny or cleft of
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the earth where air enters, to their ordinary dwellings; the earth being full of cavities and cells, and there being no place nor creature but is supposed [is thought] to have other animals (greater or lesser) living in or upon it as inhabitants; and no such things as a pure wilderness in the whole universe.
2. We then (the more terrestrial kind have now so numerously planted all countries,) do labor for that hidden people, as well as for ourselves. Albeit, when several countries were unhabitated by us, these had their easy tillage above ground, as we now. The print of those furrows do yet remain to be seen on the shoulders of very high hills, which was done when the open ground was wood and forest.
They remove to other lodgings at the beginning of each quarter of the year, so traversing till doomsday, being imputent and impotent of staying in one place, and finding some ease by so journeying and changing habitations. Their chameleon-like bodies swim in the air near the earth with bag and baggage; and at such revolution of time, seers, or men of
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the second sight (females being seldom so qualified), have very terrifying encounters with them, even on high ways, who therefore usually avoid traveling outdoors at these four seasons of the year, and thereby have made it a custom to this day among the Scottish-Irish to keep the Church duly every fifth Sunday of the quarter to sene (?) or hallow themselves, their corns and cattle from the shots and stealth of these wandering tribes; and many of these superstitious people will not be seen in Church again till the next quarter begin, as if not duty were to be learned or done by them, but all the use of worship and sermons were to save them from these arrows that fly in the Dark.*1
They are distributed in tribes and orders, and have children, nurses, marriages, deaths, and burials, in appearance, even as we (unless they do for a mock-show, or to foretell some such things among us).
3. They are clearly seen by these men of the second sight to eat at funerals [and] banquets; hence many of the Scottish-Irish will not taste
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meat at these meetings, lest they have communion with, or be poisoned by, them.
So are they seen to carry the beer or coffin with the corpse among the middle-earth men of that exalted sight (whether by art or nature) have told me they have seen at these meetings a Doubleman, or the shape of some man in two places; that is, a superrterranean and a subterranean inhabitant, perfectly resembling one another in all points, whom he notwithstanding could easily distinguish one from another by some secret tokens and operations, and so go speak to the man his neighbor and familiar, passing by the apparition or resemblance of him. They avouch that every element and different state of being have animals resembling these of another element; as there are fish sometimes at sea resembling monks of late order in all their hoods and dresses; so as the Roman invention of good and bad daemons, and guardian angels particularly assigned, is called by them an ignorant mistake, sprung only from this original. They call this Reflex-man a Co-walker, every way like the man,
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as a twin-brother and companion, haunting him as his shadow, as is often seen and known among men (resembling the original,) both before and after the original is dead; and was also often seen of old to enter a house, by which the people knew that the person of that likeness was to visit them within a few days. This copy, echo, or living picture, goes at last to his own herd. It accompanied that person so long and frequently for ends best known to itself, whether to guard him from the secret assaults of some of its own folks, or only as a sportful ape to counterfeit all his actions. However, the stories of old witches prove beyond contradiction that all sorts of people, spirits which assume light airy bodies, or crazed bodies co-acted by foreign spirits, seem to have some pleasure (at least to assuage from pain or melancholy), by frisking and capering like satyrs, or whistling and screeching (like unlucky birds) in their unhallowed synagogues and sabbaths. If invited and earnestly required, these companions make themselves known and familiar to men; otherwise, being in
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a different state and element, they neither can nor will easily converse with them. They avouch that a Heluo, or Great-eater, has a voracious elf to be his attender, called a Joint-eater or Just-halver, feeding on the pith or quintessence of what the man eats; and that therefore he continues to lean like a hawk or heron, notwithstanding his devouring appetite: yet it would seem that they convey that substance elsewhere, for these subterraneans eat but little in their dwellings; their food being exactly clean and served up by pleasant children like enchanted puppets. What food they extract from us is conveyed to their homes by secret paths, as some skillful women do the pith and milk from their neighbors’ cows into their own cheese storeroom through hair-tedder (comb?), at a great distance, by the art of magic, or by drawing a spigot fastened to a post, which will bring milk as far as a bull will be heard to roar. 1 The cheese made of the remaining milk of a cow thus strained will swim in water like a cork. The method they take to recover their milk is a bitter
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chiding of the suspected enchanters, charging them by a countercharm to give them back their own, in God, or their master’s name. But a little of the mother’s dung stroked on the calves’ mouth before it suck any, does prevent this theft.
4. Their houses are called large and fair, and (unless at some odd occasions) imperceptible by ordinary eyes, like Rachland (?), and other enchanted islands, having for lights, continual lamps, and fires, often seen without fuel to sustain them. Women are yet alive who tell they were taken away when in child-bed to nurse fairy children, a lingering voracious image of them being left in their place, like their reflection in a mirror), which (as if it were some insatiable spirit in an assumed body) made first semblance to devour the meats that it cunningly carried by, and then left the carcass as if it expired and departed from that place by a natural and common death. The child, and fire, with food and other necessities, are set before the nurse as soon as she enters; but she neither perceives any passage out
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nor sees what those people do in their rooms of the lodging. When the child is weaned, the nurse dies, or is conveyed back, or gets it to her choice to stay there. But if any superterraneans be so sneaky, as to practice slights for procuring a privacy to any of their mysteries, (such as making use of their ointments, which as Gygef’s Ring makes them invisible, or nimble, or casts them in a trance, or alters their shape, or makes things appear at a vast distance, and they smite them without pain, as with a puff of wind, and bereave them of both the natural and acquired sights in the twinkling of an eye (both these sights, where once they come, being in the same organ and inseparable), or they strike them dumb. The Tramontains (people across mountains?) to this day put bread, the Bible, or a piece of iron, in women’s beds when traveling, to save them from being thus stolen; and they commonly report, that all uncivilized, unknown creatures are terrified by nothing earthly so much as by cold iron. They deliver the reason to be that hell lying betwixt the chill tempests, and the fire brands of scalding metals,
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and iron of the north (hence the lodestone causes a tendency to that point), by an antipathy to it, these odious farscenting (?) creatures shrug and fright at all that comes to that place relating to so abhorred a place, whence their torment is either begun, or feared to come hereafter.
5. Their apparel and speech is like that of the people of the country under which they live: so are they seen to wear plaids and variegated garments in the Highlands of Scotland, and suanochs therefore in Ireland. They speak but little, and that by way of whistling, clear, not rough. The very devils conjured in any country, do answer in the language of the place; yet sometimes the subterraneans speak more distinctly than at other times. Their women are said to spin very fine, to dye, to weave, and embroider: but whether it is as manual operation of substantial refined stuffs, with apt and solid instruments, or only curious cobwebs, impalpable rainbows, and a fantastic imitation of the actions of more terrestrial mortals, since is transcended all the
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senses of the seer to discern whether, I leave to conjecture as I found it.
6. Their men travel much abroad, either presaging or aping the dismal and tragical actions of some amongst us; and have also many disastrous doings of their own, as convocations, fighting, gashes, wounds, and burials, both in the earth and air. They live much longer then we; yet die at last, or at least vanish from that state. ‘Tis one of their tenets, that nothing perishes, but (as the sun and the year), everything goes in circle. Lesser or greater, and is renewed and refreshed in its revolutions; as ‘tis another, that everybody in the creation moves. But has another animal moving on it; and so on, to the utmost minutest corpuscle that’s capable to be a receptacle of life.
7. They are said to have aristocratic rulers and laws, but no discernible religion, love, or devotion towards God, the blessed maker of all: they disappear whenever they hear his name invoked, or the name of Jesus (at which
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