The Magyar fairies
live in castles on lofty mountain peaks. They build them themselves, or
inherit them from giants. Kozma enumerates the names of about twenty-three
castles which belonged to fairies, and which still exist. Although they
have disappeared from earth, they continue to live, even in our days, in
caves under their castles, in which caves their treasures lie hidden. The
iron gates of Zeta Castle, which have subsided into the ground and
disappeared from the surface, open once in every seven years. On one
occasion a man went in there, and met two beautiful fairies whom he
addressed thus, "How long will you still linger here, my little sisters?"
and they replied, "As long as the cows will give warm milk."
Like the interior of some of the mound-dwellings already mentioned, these
fairy caves are splendid habitations. "Their subterranean habitations are
not less splendid and glittering than were their castles of yore on the
mountain peaks. The one at Firtos is a palace resting on solid gold
columns.
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