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The night speeds on; the stars that rose in the east are sinking behind the western hills; a faint tinge of dawn lights the eastern sky; loud and shrill rings out the awakening shout of chanticleer; the grey dawn comes on apace; a hundred birds salute the cheerful morn, and the night-world hurries to its gloomy dens and hiding-places, like the sprites and fairy elves of our nursery days.
They both testify to the reality of the Roman foundation of our insular society, and show that even the stories that seem prehistoric are seldom pre-Roman. When England is Elfland, the elves are not the Angles. All the phrases that can be used as clues through that tangle of traditions are more or less Latin phrases. And in all our speech there was no word more Roman than "romance."
"Oh yes; most of our hardest workers are elves of mischief and it is only by keeping them thus constantly employed that we prevent disorder. You have no idea what pranks they play." "And what is your authority among them?" asked Leo. "I am one of our King's cabinet; my title is Master Professor.
Gazing at her, Randalin's admiration mounted to wistfulness. "Were I like that, I should be sure of his feeling toward me," she sighed. Certainly, as she looked to-day sitting under the towering trees, it was easy to understand why the King's wife had been named "the gift of the elves."
Imagination sometimes gives human outlines to shadows among the moon-lit trees, so that elves and pixies, nymphs and fairies, become established in the world as the primitive man conceives it. Larger tasks are discharged by more important spirits, and everything natural thus becomes animated by supernatural beings.
He passed by all the tents, the last whereof were of the House of the Steer, and came to a place where was a great rock rising straight up from the plain like sheaves of black staves standing close together; and it was called Staff-stone, and tales of the elves had been told concerning it, so that Stone-face had beheld it gladly the day before.
"Edwin, don't you believe those stories any longer," Mr. Hahn answered. "Your uncle bought from a store in the city of M all those presents that he gave to his children. The stories that he told you about the elves visiting the homes to discover who were bad are untrue.
The dwarf read the letter, and said to Marianna, "Little Marianna, the Emperor of the Elves has bidden me come to the great assembly of the dwarfs which is to be held next year on the Golden Mountain. Alas, what are we to do? I can not take you with me, dear child, for it is forbidden on pain of death to bring mortals to the assembly, nor can I leave you here in this lonely wood."
To fetch the gold Odin sent Loki down to the abodes of the Black Elves; there in a stream he caught Andvari the Dwarf, and made him give up all the gold which he had hoarded up in the stony rock. In vain the Dwarf begged and prayed that he might keep one ring, for it was the source of all his wealth, and ring after ring dropped from it. 'No; not a penny should he have' said Loki.
Opposite my writing-table hangs a quaint German picture, illustrating Goethe's ballad of the Erlking, in which the whole wild pathos of the story is compressed into one supreme moment; we see the fearful, half-gliding rush of the Erlking, his long, spectral arms outstretched to grasp the child, the frantic gallop of the horse, the alarmed father clasping his darling to his bosom in convulsive embrace, the siren-like elves hovering overhead, to lure the little soul with their weird harps.
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