An old woman assured our fair friend, that she one time, many years before, saw the fairies to the number of some hundreds. They were very small, were mounted on little white horses, not bigger than dogs, and rode four a-breast. It was almost dusk at the time, and they were not a quarter[Pg 415] of a mile from her. Another old woman said that her father had often seen the fairies riding in the air on little white horses, but he never saw them come down on the ground. He also used to hear their music in the air.

She had heard, too, of a man who had been five-and-twenty years with the fairies, and thought he had been away only five minutes.