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48
BOOKS AND MEN.

Aberfoyle, Perthshire, divided his literary labors impartially between a translation of the Psalms into Gaelic verse and an elaborate treatise on the "Subterranean and for the most part Invisible People, heretofore going under the name of Elves, Faunes, and Fairies, or the like," which was printed, with the author's name attached, in 1691. Here, unsullied by any taint of skepticism, we have an array of curious facts that would suggest the closest intimacy between the rector and the "Invisible People," who at any rate concealed nothing from his eyes. He tells us gravely that they marry, have children, die, and are buried, very much like ordinary mortals; that they are inveterate thieves, stealing everything, from the milk in the dairy to the baby lying on its mother's breast; that they can fire their elfin arrow-heads so adroitly that the weapon penetrates to the heart without breaking the skin, and he himself has seen animals wounded in this manner; that iron in any shape or form is a terror to them, not for the same reason that Solomon misliked it, but on account of the proximity of the great iron mines to the place of eternal punishment; and