Pechs, to whom they ascribe various supernatural attributes.]

Similar to the traditions of the Icelanders, are those current among the
Laplanders of Finland, concerning a subterranean people, gifted with'
supernatural qualities, and inhabiting the recesses of the earth.
Resembling men in their general appearance, the manner of their
existence, and their habits of life, they far excel the miserable
Laplanders in perfection of nature, felicity of situation, and skill in
mechanical arts. From all these advantages, however, after the partial
conversion of the Laplanders, the subterranean people have derived no
farther credit, than to be confounded with the devils and magicians of
the dark ages of Christianity; a degradation which, as will shortly be
demonstrated, has been also suffered by the harmless Fairies of Albion,
and indeed by the whole host of deities of learned Greece and mighty
Rome. The ancient opinions are yet so firmly rooted, that the Laps of
Finland, at this day, boast of an intercourse with these beings, in
banquets, dances, and magical ceremonies, and even in the more intimate
commerce of gallantry. They talk, with triumph, of the feasts which
they have shared in the elfin caverns, where wine and tobacco, the
productions of the Fairy region, went round in abundance, and whence
the mortal guest, after receiving the kindest treatment and the most
salutary counsel, has been conducted to his tent by an escort of his
supernatural entertainers.--_Jessens, de Lapponibus._

The superstitions of the islands of Feroe, concerning their
_Froddenskemen_, or under-ground people, are derived from the _duergar_
of Scandinavia. These beings are supposed to inhabit the interior
recesses of mountains, which they enter by invisible passages. Like the
Fairies, they are supposed to steal human beings. "It happened," says
Debes, p. 354, "a good while since, when the burghers of Bergen had