fairy world. The little soulless people had been seen by men of good report, their songs had reached wondering ears, their good deeds and their malicious tricks were commonly related; but, almost suddenly, that is to say, in my lifetime, belief in the existence of pixies, elves, gnomes, has melted away; and in its place a door has been opened, disclosing to our astonished eyes a whole bacterial world, swarming with microbes, living, making love, fighting; some beneficial and others noxious—an entirely new world to us now such as America was to wondering Europe in the sixteenth century.
According to Addison, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, "There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it, the churchyards were all haunted, every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it, and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit." It was the same at the opening of the nineteenth century; and now all the spiritual world has vanished out of sight and is lost to the mind. Not a child knows aught now of its occupants. We have cast aside Oberon, Titania, Robin Goodfellow, the Brownie, Wag at the Wa', and the Wild Huntsman with the Gabelrachet. Their place has been usurped by the Bacilli, by Schizophyta, Sphæro bacteria, Micro bacteria, Desmo bacteria and Spiro bacteria. What Shakespeare of the future will think of giving us a Bacteriological Midsummer's Night's Dream?
In the midst of the Tavy valley rises a mass of rock above the brawling and sparkling river, in spring clothed in bluebells, in summer redolent with thyme, and in autumn flushed with heather. Formerly it went by the name of the Pixy Castle, and it was held to be inhabited by the "good people" as the pixies were called. It was said that on Sundays they clustered on the rock, listening to the Mary and Peter Tavy Church bells, trusting that, though Christ had not died for them, nevertheless the bells did bring to them a promise of ultimate salvation.
As a young boy I have sat on the Pixy Castle, and thought of the elfin folk, yearning after that salvation, which is so lightly esteemed by many of us mortals, as they hearkened to the call of the church bells, and endeavoured to detect a promise in their peal. All that is over. No one ever accords these little beings a thought. Not a soul in Peter and Mary Tavy parishes considers
