Others _white nymphs_, and those that have them seen,
_Night ladies_ some, of which Habundia queen.
_Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels,_ p. 507.

[Footnote A: Indeed, many of the vulgar account it extremely dangerous
to touch any thing, which they may happen to find, without _saining_
(blessing) it, the snares of the enemy being notorious and well
attested. A poor woman of Tiviotdale, having been fortunate enough, as
she thought herself, to find a wooden beetle, at the very time when
she needed such an implement, seized it without pronouncing the proper
blessing, and, carrying it home, laid it above her bed, to be ready
for employment in the morning. At midnight, the window of her cottage
opened, and a loud voice was heard, calling upon some one within, by a
strange and uncouth name, which I have forgotten. The terrified cottager
ejaculated a prayer, which, we may suppose, insured her personal
safety; while the enchanted implement of housewifery, tumbling from the
bed-stead, departed by the window with no small noise and precipitation.
In a humorous fugitive tract, the late Dr Johnson is introduced as
disputing the authenticity of an apparition, merely because the spirit
assumed the shape of a tea-pot, and of a shoulder of mutton. No doubt,
a case so much in point, as that we have now quoted, would have removed
his incredulity.]

The following Frisian superstition, related by Schott, in his _Physica
Curiosa_, p. 362, on the authority of Cornelius a Kempen, coincides more
accurately with the popular opinions concerning the Fairies, than even
the _dracae_ of Gervase, or the water-spirits of Thomas Heywood.--"In
the time of the emperor Lotharius, in 830," says he, "many spectres
infested Frieseland, particularly the white nymphs of the ancients,
which the moderns denominate _witte wiven_, who inhabited a