![]() ![]() A day when she requires it arrives, but, alas! when she opens the cabinet to take it out she finds nothing but a small heap of withered leaves. The housewife receives gold from a fairy for services rendered, and carefully places it in a drawer. A simple youth sells something on market day to a fairy, and later on turning over in his pocket the money he has received he finds that it has been transformed into beans. We all recall stories of fairy gold and its perishable nature. That they should have possessed a fixed festival at such a period, full of religious significance for most primitive peoples, would seem to show that they must at one time have been held in considerable esteem.īut although the nains while away their time in such simple fashion as dancing to the repetition of the names of the days of the week, they have a less innocent side to their characters, for they are forgers of false money, which they fabricate in the recesses of caverns. Wednesday was the nains' high-day, or rather night, and their great nuit festale was the first Wednesday in May. Bad luck attached itself to the human who chanced to behold the midnight revels of the nains, and if he entered the charmed circle and danced along with them his death was certain to ensue before the year was out. Deities, credited andĭiscredited, have often a connexion with the calendar, and we may have here some calendric reference, or again the chant may be merely a nonsense rhyme. But wherefore? It would indeed be difficult to say. We all remember that in the old tale of Tom Thumb the elves among whom the hero fell sang such a refrain. Saturday and Sunday they dare not mention as being days sacred from fairy influence. They haunt the ancient dolmens built by a vanished race, and at night, by the pale star-light, they dance around these ruined tombs to the music of a primitive refrain: Their dark elflocks, small, gleaming eyes, red as carbuncles, and harsh, cracked voices are all dilated upon with fear by those who have met them upon lonely heaths or unfrequented roads. Black and menacing of countenance, these demon-folk are armed with feline claws, and their feet end in hoofs like those of a satyr. The nain is a figure fearsomely Celtic in its hideousness, resembling the gargoyles which peer down upon the traveller from the carven 'top-hamper' of so many Breton churches. But we shall not find these Breton devils so very different from the fiends of other lands. Wherever, in fact, a primitive and illiterate peasantry is found the demon is its inevitable accompaniment. ![]() THE idea of the evil spirit, malicious and revengeful, is common to all primitive peoples, and Brittany has its full share of demonology. 96 CHAPTER IV: SPRITES AND DEMONS OF BRITTANY ![]() Sacred Texts Legends and Sagas Celtic Index Previous Next Legends and Romances of Brittany: Chapter VI: Sprites and Demons of Brittany ![]()
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