found open. He who was bold enough to enter was led by a secret passage to a small island, otherwise invisible, in the middle of the lake. This was a fairy island, a garden of enchanting beauty, inhabited by the Tylwyth Teg (or Fair Family), and stored with fruits and flowers. The inhabitants treated their visitors with lavish hospitality, but permitted nothing to be carried away. One day this prohibition was violated by a visitor, who put into his pocket a flower with which he had been presented. The Fair Family showed no outward resentment. Their guests were dismissed with the accustomed courtesy; but the moment he who had broken their behest "touched unhallowed ground" the flower disappeared, and he lost his senses. Nor has the mysterious door ever been found again.[1]
In both these cases the thief is unsuccessful, and the punishment of his crime is the loss of fairy intercourse; perhaps the mildest form which punishment could take. But sometimes the chevalier d'industrie is lucky enough to secure his spoils. It is related that certain white ghosts were in the habit of playing by night at skittles on a level grass-plot on the Lüningsberg, near Aerzen, in North Germany. A journeyman weaver, who was in love with a miller's daughter, but lacked the means to marry her, thought there could be no harm in robbing the ghosts of one of the golden balls with which they used to play. He accordingly concealed himself one evening; and when the harmless spectres came out he seized one of their balls, and scampered away with it,
- ↑ Davies, "Mythology," p. 155. Mr. Wirt Sikes quotes this story without acknowledgment, stating that the legend, "varying but little in phraseology, is current in the neighbourhood of a dozen different mountain lakes." As if he had collected it himself! (Sikes, p. 45). Compare an Eskimo story of a girl who, having acquired angakok power, visited the ingnersuit, or underground folk, "and received presents from them; but while carrying them homewards the gifts were wafted out of her hands and flew back to their first owners" (Rink, p. 460).
