Research source

I, casting my eyes thither, perceived a little white hand and arm from the elbow down, but presently it…

Date of account: Written 1691; later edited edition
Source: The secret commonwealth of elves, fauns & fairies
Reference: The secret commonwealth of elves, fauns & fairies · selected passage 25
Rights: public_domain
Language: English/Scots historical text
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

I, casting my eyes thither, perceived a little white hand and arm from the elbow down, but presently it evanished.” “There was never anything seen except that hand I saw,” and an apparition of a boy in grey clothes. Sometimes the stoning went on in the open air.[25] There were plenty of touchings, grippings, and scratchings. “The door-bar” (a long, heavy piece of squared wood) “would go thorow the house as if a person were carrying it in their hand, yet nothing seen doing it.” Here we compare, in _Proc. S. P. R._, February 1892, the story of a carpenter’s shop at Swanland, in Yorkshire, where pieces of wood were “levitated” into abnormal flight.

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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