vented in the West, and then conveyed via Syria to Persia. But I must stop, lest weariness should creep over my readers, and they should begin to think my prattle tedious. Courteous reader! We are now about to part: after having been companions for some time, along the same road. To beguile the tediousness of the way, I have been giving you, as it were, a Personal Narrative of a voyage which I once made to the land of Fiction, and of the discoveries I chanced to make while there. I have, therefore, had occasion to speak now and then of my own impressions and adventures, and if they have not amused, I hope they have not displeased you. We are arrived, I find, at the point where my road separates from yours: you will, probably, continue on the present one, and I trust will soon fall in with some more agreeable companion than I have been: that to the right, which I own looks rather thorny and rugged, is mine. Adieu! I wish you a most pleasant journey. APPENDIX. THE popular legends of Germany, and some other countries, having been collected and published within the present century, a rich harvest of legendary lore lay ready. I had the good fortune to be the first to gather it1; and my Fairy Mythology will therefore probably remain for some time a kind of text-book on the subject. As the present may be said to be a companion to that Work, I venture here to make some additions to it; but I put them in such a form as to be independent. It was only by degrees that I arrived at what I believe to be the true origin of the word Fairy; and my notions of it are scattered through the Fairy Mythology. I will, therefore, now give my perfect theory. There can be no doubt that our word Fairy is the French féerie, which originally signified illusion, and is derived from fée. I therefore reject, 1 A selection of stories from the Kinder- und Hausmärchen of MM. Grimm, with illustrative, critical, and antiquarian notes, appeared in 1825, under the title of German Popular Stories. The translator was, I believe, Mr. Edgar Taylor. There is a wide difference, I must observe, between popular legends, and stories; the former are objects of actual belief, the latter are only regarded as sources of amusement. with full conviction, all the etymons (such as that from Peri) which go on the supposition of fairy being the original name. The Italian fata, Provençal fada, French faé, faée, fée, are, beyond question, the words first used to designate the being whom we call Fairy. Of these words, I regard the Latin fatum as the root. In a coin of Diocletian the Destinies are, I know, named Fatæ, and this might seem to give a ready origin of the Italian and Provençal names; but there is so little resemblance between the Parcæ and the Fairies of romance, that I cannot adopt it. My opinion is, that, as from the Latin gratus came the Italian verb aggradare, and the French agréer, so from fatum came affatare, fatare, (Ital.) and faer, féer, (Fr.), signifying to enchant; and that fato, fata, faé, faée, fée, are participles of these verbs. I believe there is not a single passage in the old French romances, in which these last words occur, where they may not be taken participially; such are, les chevaliers faés, les dames faées, and the continually recurring phrase elle sembloit (or ressembloit) fée. La fée is, therefore, la femme fée, and une fée is une femme fée. The Italian fata is, in the romantic poems, always employed as a substantive; but it is well known that a number of substantives in all languages are in reality adjectives or participles, and in the Pentamerone fata and fatata are evidently employed as equivalents. I therefore regard fata as nothing more than fatata, contracted after the |