Welsh Fairy - Tales, and other Stories. Collected and edited by P.
H. Emerson. (Nutt.)— Most of these tales were either collected by the author in Anglesea, or are extracted from William's " Observations on the Snowdon Mountains," a book published in 1802. They deal chiefly with familiar subjects of Celtic folk- lore ; the witch who changes herself into a hare, the fairies who are the enemies of the witches and demons, and who make gifts of money to their favourites, but change the money into cockle-. shells, if its source is hinted at, and so on. The account of the origin of the Welsh, which an old seaman heard related on his way home from Calcutta,_ and the genuineness of which the author reasonably doubts, contains an allusion to a great bird, met with on the.borders of rersia, called the Bob. This is evidently the Arabian Rukh ; but we never remember to have seen it described as incapable of flight before. The last six tales are from Ireland, Scotland, Jersey, Shetland, and France ; the story of the Fishermen of Shetland is interesting, as we find a merman shut up in a copper vessel in the form of smoke, and becoming hopeless of release, threatening to kill his deliverer. Our author thinks this story genuine ; it was related to him by a yachting hand who heard it from a Shetlander comrade ; but this incident, at least, is too like an interpretation from " The Arabian Nights" not to awaken suspicion respecting its source.
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