Fairy Legends and Traditions by Thomas Crofton Croker [1825]

:
ON THE NATURE OF THE ELVES. 61
the Heldenbuch; partly from a passage in the
German translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (B.
v. chap. 9), where the expression the Elben and
Elbinnen occurs.
Wikram probably met with it
in the work of Albrecht of Halberstadt, which he
paraphrased. In the legend of Brandan (Brans,
p. 195), we meet with the following
" to liant Team de duvel allenthalven
lopen mit gloenden alven *."
Here, therefore, the fiery spirits
are called Elves
of hell.
At present, only the superstitious belief of the
pressing
and suffocation by the Alp continues in
Germany with the old name :
all other stories of
spirits are ascribed to dwarfs, wights, and not
to Elves (Elben), though this expression is occasionally
even met with in the later trials of
witches \. We should have avoided the term
Elfen, which is not high German, and was never
current among the people, had it not been introduced
by the poets of the last century in translations
from the English, without regard to the
* " The devil came running every where with fiery
dives"
Vide Pomarius Colleg. Synopt. Phys. disp. 13. sent. 23,
f
24. 26, and Praetorius's Geography, i. 181, 182.