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Delaney's bedroom faced east, and the following morning, at a very early hour, he began to have most unpleasant dreams. He thought a hobgoblin was seated on his chest, and several brownies were pulling him where he did not wish to go, and finally that a gnome of enormous dimensions was dragging him into a dark cavern, where he could never again behold the daylight.
"Listen to me, you are a clever boy, and can understand when one speaks; so I will tell you the whole history of the Brownies, as it has been handed down in our family from my grandmother's great-grandmother, who lived in the Druid's Oak, and was intimate with the fairies. And when I have done you shall tell me what you think they are, if they are not children.
I have only seen him once before and then I wasn't really introduced, his first name, or rather his nickname, is Chuck, and that's all I know, except," she added provokingly, "that he doesn't believe in brownies." And that was all she would say on the subject, though the girls did their best to make her explain.
He took Phyllis's outstretched hand and trotted along beside her. "Losted?" she inquired in astonishment. "Yes, for quite a while, you see, Nannie talks and talks, and to-day she were talking when the brownie came, and so I ran away. Nannie doesn't know about brownies; just angels and devils." Phyllis, in spite of herself, laughed. "But if Nannie has lost you, won't she be worried?" she asked.
For the most part, it will be seen, my Brownies are somewhat fantastic, like their stories hot and hot, full of passion and the picturesque, alive with animating incident; and they have no prejudice against the supernatural. But who would have supposed that a Brownie of mine should invent a tale for Mr. Howells?
With neat dexterity he extracted the stopper; but here the difficulty did not end, for the neck of the bottle was too narrow by far to admit the head of a rat; and the position of the flask, in a wooden box, rendered it impossible to alter its position so as to pour out its contents. "Mighty little use that flask is to us!" exclaimed one of the Brownies, impatiently.
To the vivid imagination, it is easy to see a witch's broom swaying in the wind; a group of curious and distorted stems will suggest a row of large but painfully thin brownies, holding hands as they dance. Every moment, two or three figures of gaunt and lanky witches in spreading skirts will alarm you as they suddenly appear round a corner.
The last lesson we would attempt to gather from the 'Kalevala' is this: that a comparison of the thoroughly popular beliefs of all countries, the beliefs cherished by the non-literary classes whose ballads and fairy tales have only recently been collected, would probably reveal a general identity, concealed by diversity of name, among the 'lesser people of the skies, the elves, fairies, Cyclopes, giants, nereids, brownies, lamiae.
Some fairies are Brownies and some are Greenies, and of all that really and truly dance in the moonlight right here in America, Luna Greenie seems the most wonderful; and this is her history: Once upon a time there was a seed pearl that dropped from the robe of a green fairy.
And there they are yet; many a time have I found the umbrella, and dug under it to find the cucumber. It is delicious eating; everything that Brownies like is. You can find it, and try it. It is one of the things that Monapini taught Ruth Pilgrim to eat. Of course, the Brownies do not like you to dig up their treasure or good-to-eats, but there are plenty more, far more than they ever need.
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