evil spirit. In 'Buttercup', No. xviii, and 'The Cat on the
Dovrefell', we have the Troll proper,--the supernatural dwellers of
the woods and hills, who go to church, and eat men, and porridge, and
sausages indifferently, not from malignity, but because they know no
better, because it is their nature, and because they have always done
so. In one point they all agree--in their place of abode. The wild
pine forest that clothes the spurs of the fells, but more than all,
the interior recesses of the rocky fell itself, is where the Trolls
live. Thither they carry off the children of men, and to them belongs
all the untold riches of the mineral world. There, in caves and
clefts in the steep face of the rock, sits the Troll, as the
representative of the old giants, among heaps of gold and silver and
precious things. They stride off into the dark forest by day, whither
no rays of the sun can pierce; they return home at nightfall, feast
themselves full, and snore out the night. One thing was fatal to
them--the sight of the sun. If they looked him full in the face, his
glory was too great for them, and they burst, as in 'Lord Peter', No.
xlii, and in 'The Old Dame and her Hen', No. iii. This, too, is a
deeply mythic trait. The old religion of the North was a bright and
lively faith; it lived in the light of joy and gladness; its gods
were the 'blithe powers'; opposed to them were the dark powers of
mist and gloom, who could not bear the glorious face of the Sun, of
Baldr's beaming visage, or the bright flash of Thor's levin bolt.

In one aspect, the whole race of Giants and Trolls stands out in
strong historical light. There can be little doubt that, in their
continued existence amongst the woods, and rocks, and hills, we have
a memory of the gradual suppression and extinction of some hostile
race, who gradually retired into the natural fastnesses of the land,
and speedily became mythic. Nor, if we bear in mind their natural