THE LIGHT ELVES.
Over the beautiful Light Elves of the _Edda_, in old Scandinavia, ruled
the beloved sun-god Frey; and they lived in a summer land called
Alfheim, and it was their office to sport in air or on the leaves of
trees, and to make the earth thrive.
But they changed character as centuries passed; and they came to
resemble the fairies of Great Britain in their extreme waywardness and
fickleness. For though they were fair and benevolent most of the time,
they could be, when it so pleased them, ugly and hurtful; and what they
could be, they very often were; for fairies were not expected to keep a
firm rein on their moods and tempers.
Norwegian peasants described some of their Huldrafolk as tiny bare boys,
with tall hats; and in Sweden, as well, they were slender and delicate.
When a Swedish elf-maid or moon-maid wished to approach the inmates of a
house, she rode on a sunbeam through the keyhole, or between the
openings in a shutter.
The German wild-women were like them, going about alone, and having fine
hair flowing to their feet. They had some odd traits, one of which was
sermonizing! and exhorting stray mortals who had done them a service, to
lead a godly life.
The elle-maid in Denmark and in neighboring countries was always winsome
and graceful, and carried an enchanted harp. She loved moonlight best,
and was a charming dancer. But her evil element was in her very beauty,
with which she entrapped foolish young gentlemen, and waylaid them, and
carried them off who knows whither? She could be detected by the shape
of her back, it being hollow, like a spoon; which was meant to show that
there was something wrong with her, and that she was not what she
seemed, but fit only for the abhorrence of passers-by. The elle-man, her
mate, was old and ill-favored, a disagreeable person; for if any one
came near him while he was bathing in the sun, he opened his mouth and
breathed pestilence upon them.
[Illustration: AN ELLE-MAID, OF DENMARK.]
[Illustration: BERTHA, THE WHITE LADY.]
A common trait of the air-fairies was to assist at a birth and give the
infant, at their will, good and bad gifts. Dame Bertha, the White Lady
of Germany, came to the birth of certain princely babes, and the
Korrigans made it a general practice. Whenever they nursed or tended a
new-born mortal, bestowed presents on him and foretold his destiny, one
of the little people was almost always perverse enough to bestow and
foretell something unfortunate. You all know Grimm's beautiful tale of
Dornroeschen, which in English we call The Sleeping Beauty, where the
jealous thirteenth fairy predicts the poor young lady's spindle-wound.
Around the famous Roche des Fees in the forest of Theil, are those who
believe yet that the elves pass in and out at the chimneys, on errands
to little children.
The modern Greek fairies haunted trees, danced rounds, bathed in cool
water, and carried off whomsoever they coveted. A person offending them
in their own fields was smitten with disease.
The Chinese Shan Sao were a foot high, lived among the mountains, and
were afraid of nothing. They, too, were revengeful; for if they were
attacked or annoyed by mortals, they "caused them to sicken with
alternate heat and cold." Bonfires were burnt to drive them away.
The innocent White Dwarves of the Isle of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea, made
lace-work of silver, too fine for the eye to detect, all winter long;
but came idly out into the woods and fields with returning spring,
leaping and singing, and wild with affectionate joy. They were not
allowed to ramble about in their own shapes; therefore they changed
themselves to doves and butterflies, and winged their way to good
mortals, whom they guarded from all harm.
[Illustration: SOME GREEK FAIRIES.]
The Korrigans of Brittainy, mentioned a while ago, were peculiar in many
ways. They had beautiful singing voices and bright eyes, but they never
danced. They preferred to sit still at twilight, like mermaids, combing
their long golden hair. The tallest of them was nearly two feet high,
fair as a lily, and transparent as dew itself, yet able as the rest to
seem dark, and humpy, and terrifying. He who passed the night with them,
or joined in their sports, was sure to die shortly, since their very
breath or touch was fatal. And again, as in the case of Seigneur Nann,
about whom a touching Breton ballad was made, they doomed to death any
who refused to marry one of them within three days.
Of the American Indian fairies we do not know much. In Mr. Schoolcraft's
books of Indian legends there is a beautiful little Bone-dwarf, who may
almost be considered a fairy. In the land of the Sioux they tell the
pretty story of Antelope and Karkapaha, and how the wee warrior-folk,
thronging on the hill, clad in deerskin, and armed with feathered arrow
and spear, put the daring heart of a slain enemy into the breast of the
timid lover, Karkapaha, and made him worthy both to win and keep his
lovely maiden, and to deserve homage for his bravery, from her tribe
and his. Some of you will remember one thing against the Puk-Wudjies,
which is an Algonquin name meaning "little vanishing folk," to wit: that
they killed Hiawatha's friend, "the very strong man Kwasind," as our
Longfellow called him. He had excited their envy, and they flung on his
head, as he floated in his canoe, the only thing on earth that could
kill him, the seed-vessel of the white pine.
The Scotch, Irish and English overground fairies were, as a general
thing, very much alike. They had the power of becoming visible or
invisible, compressing or enlarging their size, and taking any shape
they pleased. When an Irish Shefro was disturbed or angry, and wanted to
get a house or a person off her grounds, she put on the strangest
appearances: she could crow, spit fire, slap a tail or a hoof about,
grin like a dragon, or give a frightful, weird, lion-like roar. Of
course the object of her polite attentions thought it best to oblige
her. If she and her companions were anxious to enter a house, they
lifted the spryest of their number to the keyhole, and pushed him
through. He carried a piece of string, which he fastened to the inside
knob, and the other end to a chair or stool; and over this perilous
bridge the whole giggling tribe marched in one by one. The Irish and
Scotch fays were more mischievous than the English, but have not fared
so well, having had no memorable verses made about them. The little
Scots were sometimes dwarfish wild creatures, wrapped in their plaids,
or, oftener, comely and yellow-haired; the ladies in green mantles,
inlaid with wild-flowers; and dapper little gentlemen in green trousers,
fastened with bobs of silk. They carried arrows, and went on tiny
spirited horses, as did the Welsh fairies, "the silver bosses of their
bridles jingling in the night-breeze." An old account of Scotland says
that they were "clothed in green, with dishevelled hair floating over
their shoulders, and faces more blooming than the vermeil blush of a
summer morning."
Their Welsh cousins were many. A native poet once sang of them:
----In every hollow,
A hundred wry-mouthed elves.
They were queer little beings, and had notions of what was decorous, for
they combed the goats' beards every Friday night, "to make them decent
for Sunday!" They were very quarrelsome; you could hear them snarling
and jabbering like jays among themselves, so that in some parts of Wales
a proverb has arisen: "They can no more agree than the fairies!" The
inhabitants believed that the midgets never had courage to go through
the gorse, or prickly furze, which is a common shrub in that country.
One sick old woman who was bothered by the Tylwyth Teg ("the fair
family") souring her milk and spilling her tea, used to choke up her
room with the furze, and make such a hedge about the bed, that nothing
larger than a needle could be so much as pointed at her. In Breconshire
the Tylwyth Teg gave loaves to the peasantry, which, if they were not
eaten then and there in the dark, would turn in the morning into
toadstools! When Welsh fairies took it into their heads to bestow food
and money, very lazy people were often supported in great style, without
a stroke of work. And the Tylwyth Teg loved to reward patience and
generosity. They played the harp continuously, and, on grand occasions,
the bugle; but if a bagpipe was heard among them, that indicated a
Scotch visitor from over the border.
King James I. of England mentions in his _Daemonology_ a "King and Queene
of Phairie: sic a jolie courte and traine as they had!" Nothing could
have exceeded the state and elegance of their ceremonious little lives.
According to a sweet old play, they had houses made all of
mother-of-pearl, an ivory tennis-court, a nutmeg parlor, a sapphire
dairy-room, a ginger hall; chambers of agate, kitchens of crystal, the
jacks of gold, the spits of Spanish needles! They dressed in imported
cobweb! with a four-leaved clover, lined with a dog-tooth violet, for
overcoat; and they ate (think of eating such a pretty thing!) delicious
rainbow-tart, the trout-fly's gilded wing, and
----the broke heart of a nightingale
O'ercome with music.
But we never heard that Chinese or Scandinavian elves could afford such
luxury.
Their English dwellings were often in the bubble-castles of sunny
brooks; and the bright-jacketed hobgoblins took their pleasure sitting
under toadstools, or paddling about in egg-shell boats, playing
jew's-harps large as themselves. Beside the freehold of blossomy
hillocks and dingles, they had dells of their own, and palaces, with
everything lovely in them; and whatever they longed for was to be had
for the wishing. They had fair gardens in clefts of the Cornish rocks,
where vari-colored flowers, only seen by moonlight, grew; in these
gardens they loved to walk, tossing a posy to some mortal passing by;
but if he ever gave it away they were angry with him forever after. They
liked to fish; and the crews put out to sea in funny uniforms of green,
with red caps. They travelled on a fern, a rush, a bit of weed, or even
boldly bestrode the bee and the dragon-fly; and they went to the chase,
as in the Isle of Man, on full-sized horses whenever they could get
them! and when it came to time of war, their armies laid-to like
Alexander's own, with mushroom-shield and bearded grass-blades for
mighty spears, and honeysuckle trumpets braying furiously! There are
traditions of battles so vehement and long that the cavalry trampled
down the dews of the mountain-side, and sent many a peerless fellow, at
every charge, to the fairy hospitals and cemeteries.
[Illustration: AN ELF-TRAVELLER.]
Their chief and all but universal amusement, sacred to moonlight and
music, was dancing hand-in-hand; and what was called a fairy-ring was
the swirl of grasses in a field taller and deeper green than the rest,
which was supposed to mark their circling path. Inside these rings it
was considered very dangerous to sleep, especially after sundown. If
you put your foot within them, with a companion's foot upon your own,
the elfin tribe became visible to you, and you heard their tinkling
laughter; and if, again, you wished a charm to defy all their anger,
for they hated to be overlooked by mortal eyes, you had merely to turn
your coat inside out. But a house built where the wee folks had danced
was made prosperous.
Hear how deftly old John Lyly, nearly four hundred years ago, put the
dancing in his lines:
Round about, round about, in a fine ring-a,
Thus we dance, thus we prance, and thus we sing-a!
Trip and go, to and fro, over this green-a;
All about, in and out, for our brave queen-a.
For the elves, as we know, were governed generally by a queen, who bore
a white wand, and stood in the centre while her gay retainers skipped
about her. Fairy-rings were common in every Irish parish. At Alnwick in
Northumberland County in England, was one celebrated from antiquity; and
it was believed that evil would befall any who ran around it more than
nine times. The children were constantly running it that often; but
nothing could tempt the bravest of them all to go one step farther. In
France, as in Wales, the fairies guarded the cromlechs with care, and
preferred to hold revel near them.
At these merry festivals, in the pauses of action, meat and drink were
passed around. A Danish ballad tells how Svend-Faelling drained a horn
presented by elf-maids, which made him as strong as twelve men, and gave
him the appetite of twelve men, too; a natural but embarrassing
consequence. It used to be proclaimed that any one daring enough to rush
on a fairy feast, and snatch the drinking-glass, and get away with it,
would be lucky henceforward. The famous goblet, the Luck of Edenhall,
was seized after that fashion, by one of the Musgraves; whereat the
little people disappeared, crying aloud:
If that glass do break or fall,
Farewell the Luck of Edenhall!
Once upon a time the Duke of Wharton dined at Edenhall, and came very
near ruining his host, and all his race; for the precious Luck slipped
from his hand; but the clever butler at his elbow happily caught it in
his napkin, and averted the catastrophe: so the beautiful cup and the
favored family enjoy each other in security to this day.
In the Song of Sir Olaf, we are told how he fell in, while riding by
night, with the whirling elves; and how, after their every plea and
threat that he should stay from his to-be-wedded sweetheart at home, and
dance, instead, with them, he hears the weird French refrain:
O the dance, the dance! How well the dance goes under the trees!
And through their wicked magic, after all his steadfast resistance, with
the wild music and the dizzy measure whirling in his brain, there he
dies.
All the gay, unsteady, fantastic motion broke up at the morning
cock-crow, and instantly the little bacchantes vanished. And, strangest
of all! the betraying flash of the dawn showed their peach-like color,
their blonde, smooth hair, and bodily agility changed, like a Dead Sea
apple, and turned into ugliness and distortion! It was not the lovely
vision of a minute back which hurried away on the early breeze, but a
crowd of leering, sullen-eyed bugaboos, laughing fiercely to think how
they had deceived a beholder.
These, then, were the Light Elves, not all lovable, or loyal, or gentle,
as they were expected to be, but cruel to wayfarers like poor Sir Olaf,
and treacherous and mocking; beautiful so long as they were good, and
hideous when they had done a foul deed. It is hard to say wherein they
were better than the Underground Elves, who were, despite some kindly
characteristics, professional doers of evil, and had not the choice or
chance of being so happy and fortunate. But we record them as we find
them, not without the sobering thought that here, as at every point, the
fairies are a running commentary on the puzzle of our own human life.