Illustrations of the fairy mythology of 'A midsummer night's dream' / edited by J.O. Halliwell.

Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illustrations of the fairy mythology of 'A midsummer night's dream' / edited by J.O. Halliwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    bed, and carried out of the chamber, though she could not see any person touch it; on which she cried out as loud as she could, Nurse ! nurse ! my child ! my child is taken away ! but the old woman was too fast [asleep] to be awakened by the noise she made, and the infant was irretrievably gone. When her husband, and those who had accompanied him, returned, they found her wringing her hands, and uttering the most piteous lamentations for the loss of her child ; on which, said the hus- band, looking into the bed, The woman is mad ; do not you see the child lies by you \ On which she turned, and saw, indeed, something like a child, but far different from her own, which was a very beautiful, fat, well-featured babe; whereas, what was now in the room of it was a poor, lean, withered, deformed creature. It lay quite naked, but the clothes belonging to the child that was exchanged for it lay wrapt up altogether on the bed. This creature lived with them near the space of nine years, in all which time it eat nothing except a few herbs, nor was ever seen to void any other excrement than water : it neither spoke, nor could stand or go, but seemed enervate in every joint; and in all its actions showed itself to be of the same nature. A girl, about ten years old, daughter of a woman who lived about two miles from Ballasalli, in the Isle of Man, being sent over the fields to the town, for a pennyworth of tobacco for her father, was, on the top of a mountain, surrounded by a great number of little men, who would not suffer her to pass any farther. Some of them said she should go with them, and accordingly laid hold of her ; but one, seeming more pitiful, desired they would let her alone ; which they refusing, there ensued a quarrel, and the person who took her part fought bravely in her defence. This so incensed the others, that, to be revenged on her, for being the cause, two or three of them seized her, and, pulling up her clothes, whipped her