Robin Goodfellows some, some call them fairies;
In solitarie rooms these uproars keep,

And beat at doors to wake men frem their sleep,
Seeming to force locks, be they ne'er so strong,
And keeping Christinas gambols all night long.

Robin Goodfellow is the most individualised of the fairies, if we except perhaps Queeen Mab, who is immortalised by Shakspere's description of her, with which all our readers must be so familiar, that is unnecessary to quote it. Ben Johnson also enumerates the qualities of Mab, in a passage which is not so well known.

Such is Mab; who

This is Mab, the mistress fairy,
That does nightly rob the dairy;

And she can hurt, or help the churning.
As she please, without discerning.
She that pinches country wenches
If they rub not clean their benches,
And with sharper nail remembers
When they rake not up their embers.
But if so, they chance to feast her,
In a shoe she drops a tester;
This is she that empties cradles,
Takes out children, puts in ladles,
Trains forth midwives in her slumber,
With a sieve the holes to number,
And then leads them from their burrows,
Home, through ponds and water-furrows.
She can start our Franklin's daughters,
In their sleep, with shouts and laughters;
And on sweet St. Anna's night,
Feed them with a promised sight,
Some of husbands, some of lovers,
Which an empty dream discovers.*

Plaits the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elf-locks, in foul clottish hairs,
Which, once entangled, foul misfortune bodes

She may be considered the Queen of those dark spirits, who can only frequent the "glimpses of the moon!" while the fair and gentle Titania reigns over those superior intelligences, to whom day and night are alike—and who, being

Spirits of another sort,

Have with the morning's love full oft made sport,
And like gay foresters the wild groves tread,

Even till the eastern gate all fiery red.

Opening on Neptune, with full-blessed beams.
Turns into yellow gold, his salt green streams+

Robin Goodfellow was a merry sprite, with a spice of devilry in his composition. He delighted in playing tricks-practical jokes-upon travellers and others, whom he would deceive by varions protean transformations; at the same time, he would assist the servants in their household drudgery: but for such services he required to be rewarded. Reginald Scott says" Indeed, your grandam's maids were wont to set a bowl of milk before Incubus and his cousin, Robin Goodfellow, for grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight; and you have also heard, that he would chafe exceedingly, if the maid, or goodwife of the house, having compassion of his nakedness, laid any clothes for him, besides his mess of white bread and milk, which was his standing fee; for in that case, he saith, 'What have we here? Hemlen, hamten; here will I never more tread nor stampen !'"+

Besides the terrestrial fairies, there was another species, supposed to live in mines, where they were often heard to imitate the actions of the workmen; and they had great skill in forging and working metals.

A prevalent belief in the olden time was, that the fairies stole or exchanged children. We have seen what Ben Johnson says of Queen Mab; and Shakspere recognises this article in the popular creed, when he makes Henry IV. wish it could be proved

Hotspur for Harry. Drayton mentions the same propensity in his Nymphidia—

Thus when a child hap to be got,
That after proves an idiot,
When folk perceive it thriveth not,

The fault therein to smother,-
Some silly, doating, brainless calf,
That understands things by the half,
Says that the fairy left this aulf
And took away the other.

Such were some of the superstitions in which our ancestors believed; superstitions that lingered amongst us till a very recent period-even if they are yet entirely extinguished. In the early part of the last century, the winter evening's conversation used often to turn on fairies, which were then seriously believed in and Bourne tells us that people would affirm they had "frequently been seen and heard; nay, that they were some still living who had been stolen away by them, and confined seven years," Mr. Keightly has conversed with a girl from Norfolk, who said she had often seen fairies; and also with a person from Somerset who seemed to have no doubt of their actual existence. We have seen a curious conical stone, found near Shotesham, Norfolk, and were told that similar ones are often found there. The people call them "Fairy-loves," and say, while they keep one in their honse, they will never want bread. We have also heard the people in the remote parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire talk of the "Boggart," a domestic sprite of the Robin Goodfellow species. In Hampshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, they believe, to this day, in the traditions of the "Pixies ;" but generally, the march of science has destroyed the dream of imagination in which our ancestors loved to revel: we have reality instead of romance -the useful instead of the ideal. Even our poets now seldom call to their aid the "Fairy Mythology" of our ancestors. Hood however, has done so in his Plea for the Midsummer's Fairies; and Southey, in his Joan of Arc, has the following beautiful passage :

There is a fountain in the forest called
The Fountain of the Fairies. When a child,
With most delighted wonder, I have heard
Tales of the elfin tribe, that on its banks
Hold midnight revelry. An ancient oak,
The goodliest of the forest, grows beside;
It ever has been deem'd their fav'rite tree.
They love to lie, and rock upon its leaves,
And bask them in the sunshine. Many a time

Hath the woodman shown his boy where the dark round

On the green sward beneath its boughs bewrays

Their nightly dance, and bid him spare the tree.

Fancy had cast a spell upon the place

And made it holy and the villagers

Would say, that never evil thing approached

Unfurnished there. The strange and fearful pleasure

That filled me by that solitary spring

Ceas'd not in riper years; and now it woke
Deeper delight, and more mysterious awe.

Presentations.

No notices have been received by the present Editor for this number.

Marriages.

On the 16th March, 1848, at the Parish Church of Rochdale, Prov. D. G. M. Joseph Barrow, of the Poor Man's Friend Lodge, Rochdale District, to Miss Sarah Thompson, of the same town.

To Correspondents.

All Communications intended to be inserted in the next number, must be sent (if by post pre-paid) in before June 10th, addressed to the Editor, care of the Corresponding Secretary, Odd Fellows' Offices, 5, Cross-street, Manchester,

A new dynasty having been elected to govern the Order, and greater changes than ever yet have been made in the arrangement of its details, having been resolved upon at the A.M.C. at Southampton, in Whitsun-week, it will not be amiss to give here a condensation of the proceedings as far as regards the future management of the Order.

Among the various reports of the committees appointed for different. duties we find that the evils of forming new districts, in which a re butfew lodges is the subject of a recommendation for the exercise of care and the necessity of full statements in support of all applications.

From the Estimate Committee a very important resolution was sent up, which materially affected the interests of the Odd Fellows' Magazine, and the general management of the details of the Order. Up to this time a large amount of money has passed through the hands of the Directors for ornaments, documents, books, &c. This has been supposed to be pro. fitable to the Order hitherto, but it devolved a great deal of additional labour upon the Officer who had the magement of this-the trading department For this, and probably for other reasons which it is unnecessary to state,— the above being the most important,-the Estimate Committee placed the following among their resolutions ;

66

"That this Committee is of opinion that some part of the Trading System of the Order ought to be dispensed with, and recommends the VOL. 10-No. 2-T.

“General Committee to take into consideration the 84th Proposition of "the Liverpool District, for the alteration of the 258th General Law." This resolution mainly contributed to a resolution passed by the General body at the A.M.C. to which we shall presently refer.

In the next report which comes under our notice the conduct of the G.M. and Board of Directors is commented upon and approved. Among other resolutions, one refers to the Magazine, and we therefore insert it:

"14. We consider the G.M. and Board of Directors were perfectly "justifiable in appointing a temporary Editor to the Magazine."

With reference to the future, this Committee strongly recommend the principle of legalization, and conclude in these words:

66

"The Committee believe that if protection can be obtained for our 'funds, and a cordial spirit of union once more animate our Members— "the Manchester Unity will yet be numbered amongst the most glorious “Institutions of our country, and become a blessing to posterity, which shall "know of our dissensions but by name."

By subsequent resolutions of the General body, it was decided that Members of the National Order be allowed to join the Manchester Uuity until the next A.M.C. but that no Member be allowed to be a Member of both bodies at one time. The seat of government to remain at ManchesterThat a levy of three half-pence per Member be made upon each District, according to the January returns. That the stock in the hands of the Directors be sold at cost price, and that the trading system be relinquished, except in the documents which are necessary to the conducting of the Order, (such as Minute Books, Lecture Book and Supplement, P.G. Certificates, Clearances, Travelling Cards, District and Lodge Seals, General Laws, List of Lodges, Emblems, Dispensations, and Charges and Duties. Among other resolutions appears the following:

“THAT THE PUBLICATION OF THE ODD FELLOWS' MAGAZINE BE DISCONTINUED."

The present number being in course of printing was of course excepted from this resolution, but was left in the hands of the Directors. The present number of the Odd Fellows' Magazine is, therefore, the last to appear as a publication emanating from the Directors and circulated through the Order by them.

In reviewing the year through which the Manchester Unity has passed, and considering the dangers which it has experienced, we cannot but be struck with the vitality which it possesses, and which enables it to rise above the most serious difficulties and to surmount the most formidable obstacles.

There appears to have been something revolutionary in the very atmosphere the nations have been breathing, and that the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Manchester Unity, has not escaped from inhaling some of the infection-for no one will deny that the excitement which prevailed in the Order during the last year, and which manifested itself in the meeting at the Corn Exchange, Manchester, almost assumed a revolutionary aspect. The English character, however, has too much stability about it to give way to a momentary excitement, or to be carried away by a passing passion, and hence the Manchester Unity has survived the storm which then appeared to threaten it. Not only so :-its conductors have seen in what matters mistakes have hitherto been committed, and have determined with resolution not merely to reform but to eradicate the abuses which favoured fraud or perpetuated "trade patronage," in an institution to the spirit of which both the one and the other were opposed.

Whether, in the disturbance of feeling and the discussions which have arisen before the A.M.C. took place-whether, we say, in the transition from the settled to the changed state some loss has not accrued to the Order no one is ready to dispute. If "good men and true" have fallen away from their first estate-if brethren, whose names have been long honoured amongst us have assumed an antagonistic position it is more a cause for regret and sorrow than a fit ground of triumph and congratulation. Let us respect those who conscientiously differed-and widely too-from us on some of those subjects which have formed the topics of recent angry discussion, and remember that we must be "unity" by nature as well as by by name, since, according to the Divine injunction, "a house divided against itself cannot stand." There are many wounds to heal and much angry feeling yet to be allayed, and these duties we commend most earnestly to every true and sincere Odd Fellow, Do not let us look upon our Order as a mere selfish pound, shillings and pence matter; let us consider it upon higher grounds as it regards that vast number of persons who are connected with it and their moral and religious welfare.

The principles of the Order are matters of solemn and religious importance. Than FRIENDSHIP, what purer passion upon earth? the GREAT