Research source

In the popular creed there is some strange connexion between the Elves and the trees

Date of account: Nineteenth-century comparative survey
Source: The Fairy Mythology Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries
Reference: The Fairy Mythology Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries · selected passage 124
Rights: public_domain
Language: English with translated traditional material
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

In the popular creed there is some strange connexion between the Elves and the trees. They not only frequent them, but they make an interchange of form with them. In the church-yard of Store Heddinge,[147] in Zealand, there are the remains of an oak wood. These, say the common people, are the Elle-king's soldiers; by day they are trees, by night valiant warriors. In the wood of Rugaard, in the same island, is a tree which by night becomes a whole Elle-people, and goes about all alive. It has no leaves upon it, yet it would be very unsafe to go to break or fell it, for the underground-people frequently hold their meetings under its branches. There is, in another place, an elder-tree growing in a farm-yard, which frequently takes a walk in the twilight about the yard, and peeps in through the window at the children when they are alone.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

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