“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee.”
MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.
ASTR. Why so thoughtful, fair Castaly? I fear Evelyn has clipped your
sylphid wings, and made a mortal of you.
CAST. Your finger on your lips, Astrophel; for the world, not a syllable
of confession to Evelyn.
I could think I heard the murmurs of a host of fairies streaming up to
earth from elf-land, in fear of libels on their own imperial sovereignty
by this matter-of-fact scholar.
ASTR. Why did we listen to his philosophy? why not still believe the
volumes of our antique legends; that those which tell the influence of
fairies and demons on man’s life, have their source in the real history
of a little world of creatures more ethereal than ourselves? Perhaps
even the bright thoughts of a poet’s fancy are not his own creation.
CAST. We must hear no more, although Evelyn will still convert syrens
into rocks and trees, and make a monster out of a mist or a
thunder-cloud. The sunlight is sleeping on Wyndcliff, and the breeze,
creeping among the leaves, seems to me a symphony meet to conjure the
phantoms of romantic creatures. Evelyn is far away among the rocks; let
us steal the moment to revel in our dreams of faëry. Even now, are we
not in a realm of Peristan? Yon mossy carpet of emerald velvet, strewed
with pearls and gold, may be the presence-chamber of Titania; and fays
are dancing within their ring, which the silvery beech o’ercanopies so
shadily; and the chaunting of their _viralays_, or green-songs, comes
like the humming of a zephyr’s wing flitting o’er the mouth of a lily.
Ariel is lying asleep in her cinque-spotted cowslip bell, and the fays
are feeding on their fairy-bread, made of the pollen of the jasmine; and
Oberon quaffs to his queen the drops that hang on the purple lip of the
violet, or glitter in the honied bell of the hyacinth, or that purest
crystal of the lotus, that brings life to the fainting Indian in the
desert, or the liquid treasure of the _nepenthe_.
We pray you, Astrophel, recount to us, now we are in the humour, the
infancy of bright and dark spirits; for you have dipped deep, I know,
into the Samothracian mysteries.
ASTR. Know, then, that the birth-time of mythology and romance was in
the primeval ages of man. The ancient heathens believed in the legends
of their deities, as we have credence in modern history and biography;
indeed, the _romance_ of the moderns was with the ancients _truth_. They
had implicit faith in the presence of their gods, and that they might
perchance meet them in the groves and hills, which were consecrated to
their worship, and adorned with sculpture and idols in honour of the
deities. Hence the profusion of their names and nature, recorded in the
pages of the olden time, when the scribe traced his reed letter on the
papyrus.
From the climes of the sun came the orient tales of genie, and deeves,
and peris; and of naiad, and nereid, and dryad, and hamadryad, from
Greece and Rome. In the Koran shone forth the promised houris of
Mahomet’s paradise; and its mysteries were echoed to us from the lips
and tables of pilgrims and crusaders, who had blazoned their red cross
in the holy wars. Thus was romance cradled and bosomed in religion.
From the legends of the East, spring the fairy romances of our own days.
The _Peri_ of Persia was the denizen of Peristan, as the _Ginn_ of
Arabia was of Ginnistan, and the _Fairy_ of England of Fairyland; and we
have their synonyms in the _Fata_ of Italy and the _Duerga_ of northern
Europe.
These spirits of romance are almost innumerable; for thus saith the
“Golden Legend:” that “the air is full of sprites as the sonnebeams ben
full of small motes, which is small dust or poudre.”
The alchemyst Paracelsus asserts that the elements were peopled with
life; the air with _sylphs_ and _sylvains_, the water with _ondines_,
the earth with _gnomes_, and the fire with _salamanders_. And Martin
Luther coincides with these assertions; nay, hath not Master Cross of
Bristol illustrated the creed, and shown, by his galvanic power, an
animated atom starting forth, as if by magic, from a flint, a seeming
inorganic mass?
The sagas, or historical records of Scandinavia, of the Celtic, Scaldic,
and Runic mythology, assert that the duergas or dwarfs, which are the
Runic fairies, sprang from the worms in the body of the giant Ymor,
slain, according to the Edda, by Odin and his brother; and Spenser has
left a very interesting genealogical record of the faëry brood, in that
romantic allegory of the Elizabethan age, the “Faëry Queen.” Elf, the
man fashioned and inspired by Prometheus, was wandering over the earth
alone, and in the bosky groves of Adonis he discovered a lady of
marvellous beauty—Fay. From this romantic pair sprang the mighty race
of the fairies, and we have wondrous tales of the prowess of their
heroic princes. Elfiline threw a golden wall round the city of
Cleopolis; Elfine conquered the Gobbelines; Elfant built Panthea, of
purest crystal; Elfan slew the giant twins; and Elfinor spanned the sea
with a bridge of glass.
CAST. Spenser, I presume, borrowed _his_ romance from Italy. We read
that the rage and party spirit of the potent Guelphs and Ghibellines
rankled even in their nurseries. The nurses were wont to frighten the
children into obedience with these hated names, which, corrupted to the
epithets of elf and goblin, were hence-forth applied to fairies and
phantoms.
ASTR. This story is itself a mere fiction. Ere the period of these feuds
of party, the term _Elfen_ (and Dance identifies this with the Teutonic
_Helfen_,) was a common epithet of the Saxon spirits: Weld-elfen were
their dryads; Zeld-elfen their field-fairies, &c.
The American Indians to this day have faith in the presidencies of
spirits over those lakes, trees, and mountains, and even fishes, birds,
and beasts, which excel in magnitude. The orient Indian, too, at this
hour, peoples the forests with his gods; and peacocks, and squirrels,
and other wild creatures, are thus profanely deified.
The legends of later days have quaintly blended the classic with the
fairy mythology. Hassenet tells us that Mercurius was called the Prince
of Fairies; and Chaucer sings of Pluto, the King of Fayrie; and, in the
romance of the Nine Champions, Proserpine sits crowned among the
fairies. The great zoologist, Pliny, writes in his Natural History, that
“you often encounter fairies that vanish away like phantasies.” And
Baxter believed that “fairies and goblins might be as common in the air,
as fishes in the sea.”
As the Peri could not enter Paradise in consequence of the errors of her
“recreant race,” so the elves could not enjoy eternity without marrying
a Christian; and on this plea they came up to the daughters of men. And
we read, in the tenets of the Cabala, that, by these earthly weddings,
they could enjoy the privileges and happiness of each other’s nature.
But these unnatural unions were not always happy. There is, in our old
chronicles, a tradition of a marriage between one of the counts of Anjou
and a fair demonia, which entailed misery and commission of crime on the
noble house of Plantagenet.
Now there are appointed times when the influence of the spirit fades for
a season. It was the moment of the eclipse, among the American Indians
and the African blacks; in Ireland, it is the feast of the Beltane; in
Scotland, this immunity came over the mortal life on Hogmanay, or
New-year’s Eve, and during the _general assemblies_ of these mystic
spirits of the world.
In Britain, it was on the eve of the first of May, the second of
November, and on All Souls’ Day. At these times, indeed, they might be
induced to divulge the secrets of their mysterious freemasonry.
In Germany, on May-day, when the unearthly rendezvous was on the dark
mountain of the Hartz, and on Halloween, in Caledonia, even the secrets
of time and futurity were unfolded by the spirits to a mortal, if one
were found so bold as to repair on these festivals to their unhallowed
haunts.
If a mortal enters the secret abodes of the Daoine Shi, in Scotland, and
anoints his eyes with their charmed ointment, the gift of seeing that
which is to all others invisible is imparted; but this must be kept
secret, for the Men of Peace will blind the second-sighted eye, if once
they are recognized on earth by a mortal.
In the gloomy forests of Germany rose the legends of _Kobolds_, and
_Umbriels_, and _Wehrwolves_, the _Holts Konig_, the _Waldebach_, the
_Reiberzahl_, and the _Schattenman_, the _Hudekin_, the _Erl Konig_, and
the beautiful naiad, the _Nixa_. The devil himself was believed to be a
gnome king; for when the Elector of Saxony offered Martin Luther the
profit of a mine, he refused it, “lest by accepting it he should tempt
the devil, who is lord of those subterraneous treasures, to tempt
_him_.”
Then we have the _Putseet_, or Puck of the Samogitæ, on the Baltic; the
_Biergen Trold_, or _Skow_, of Iceland; and those mermaids which gambol
around the Faroe Islands. We read in the _Danske Folksaga_, that these
“merrows” cast their skins like the boa, and in that condition are
changed into human beings, till their scales are restored to them. And
the Shetlanders implicitly believe that awful storms instantly arise on
the murder of one of these sea-maids.
There was the Norse goddess, Freya, which, like the Dragon of Wantley,
and the Caliban of the “still vexed Bermoothes,” blasted the fair face
of nature, and far eclipsed the giant-serpent off Cape Saint Anne, or
the _kraken_ of Norway; and even that monstrous sea-snake, the
_jormungandz_ (so conspicuous among the wild romances of the Edda),
whose coils entwined the globe. Thor angled for this snake with a bull’s
head, but it was not to be caught, being reserved for some splendid
achievement in the grand conflict which is to herald the
_Ragnarockr_,—the twilight of the gods.
Among the mountains of our own island we have a profuse legion. In
Wales, the _Tylwth Tag_ and the Pooka; and many a hollow in the mountain
where these strange animals resort, is called _Cwm Pooka_; and the
wondrous cavern of the Meltè, in Breconshire, was believed to be haunted
by this little pony.
In Ireland, they have a _Merrow_, the Runic sea, or oigh-maid; the
_Banshee_, or fairy prophet; the _Fear-Dearg_, the Irish Puck; the
_Clurricane_, a sottish pigmy; and the _Pooke_, the wild pony.
CAST. These must have been a prolific as well as a wandering brood, for
I also have seen many caverns in the rocky districts, called _Poola
Phouka_, in which these mischievous little creatures concealed
themselves.
ASTR. In Man there is a hill called the “Fairy Hill,” a tumulus of the
Danes, which is thought to be a nocturnal revel-place for the Man
fairies which preside over their fisheries.
Scotland was a fertile mother of monsters: the _Ourisks_ or _Uriskin_,
the goblin-satyrs or shaggy men; the _Brownies_; the _Kelpies_, or
river-demons; the _Bargheists_; the _Red-cap_; the _Daoine Shi_, or Men
of Peace; the _Glaslic_, or noontide hag, which haunted the district of
Knoidart; and the _Lham-Dearg_, or red-hand, in the forests of Glenmore,
and Rothiemurchus; the _Bodach-Glas_; and the _Pixies_, or small grey
men.
CAST. There is an islet among the Scottish Hebrides, which is called the
Isle of Pigmies; and I remember a chapel there, in which very minute
human bones were some time ago discovered. Think you, Astrophel, that
these were the skeletons of pixies?
ASTR. I cannot think the notion irrational; there are dwarfs and giants
even in our days. The _Bosgis-men_ of the Cape, and the Patagonians of
South America, prove the existence of beings of another stature; and
perchance of another _nature_, in days long agone. The Laplander and
Bushman of the Cape are little more than three feet high; and that there
were giants _too_, is proved by the fossil bones which have been found
in the strata of our earth.
CAST. Then we have really dwindled in our growth, and Adam was really a
hundred and twenty-three feet nine inches high, and Eve a hundred and
eighteen feet nine inches and three quarters, as we are solemnly
informed by our profane chronicles? Nay, even the story may be true of
the Pict, who bit off the end of the mattock, with which some slave of
science was opening his coffin, and thundered forth this exclamation: “I
see the degeneracy of your race by the smallness of your little finger.”
IDA. If Evelyn were here, he would ask why we have no skeletons of
giants as of lizards in our secondary rocks; and he would tell this
learned Theban, Castaly, that Cuvier decided these fossils, which seemed
to be the _débris_ of a giant race, to be the bones of elephants. The
legends of Athenæus are probably a fable, and the fossils of the pigmies
were, I dare say, the petrified skeletons of “span-long, wee
unchristen’d bairns.”
Your allusion to the brownies, reminds me of the monstrous errors which
have crept into our legends from the mingling of _two stories_, or the
warping of plain facts in natural history. And indeed I interrupt you to
recount, in proof of this, some fragments from “Surtees’ Durham.”
“Every castle, tower, or manor-house has its visionary inhabitants. ‘The
Cauld Lad of Hilton’ belongs to a very common and numerous class, the
brownie or domestic spirit, and seems to have possessed no very
distinctive attributes. He was seldom seen, but was heard nightly by the
servants _who slept in the great hall_. If the kitchen had been left in
perfect order, they heard him amusing himself by breaking plates and
dishes, hurling the pewter in all directions, and throwing every thing
into confusion. If, on the contrary, the apartment had been left in
disarray, (a practice which the servants found it most prudent to
adopt,) the indefatigable goblin arranged every thing with the greatest
precision. This poor _esprit folet_, whose pranks were at all times
perfectly harmless, was at length banished from his haunts by the usual
expedient of presenting him with a suit of clothes. A green cloak and
hood were laid before the kitchen fire, and the domestics sat up
watching at a prudent distance. At twelve o’clock the spirit glided
gently in, stood by the glowing embers, and surveyed the garments
provided for him very attentively, tried them on, and seemed delighted
with his appearance, frisking about for some time, and cutting several
summersets and gambados, till on hearing the first cock, he twitched his
mantle tight about him and disappeared with the usual valediction:
“‘Here’s a cloak, and here’s a hood,
The cauld lad of Hilton will do no more good.’”
The genuine Brownie, however, is supposed to be, _ab origine_, an
unembodied spirit; but the boy of Hilton has, with an admixture of
English superstition, been identified with the apparition of an
unfortunate domestic, whom one of the old chiefs of Hilton slew at some
very distant period, in a moment of wrath or intemperance. The baron
had, it seems, on an important occasion, ordered his horse, which was
not brought out so soon as he expected. He went to the stable, found the
boy loitering, and seizing a hay-fork, struck him, though not
intentionally, a mortal blow. The story adds, that he covered his victim
with straw till night, and then threw him into a pond, where the
skeleton of a boy was (in confirmation of the tale) discovered in the
last baron’s time.
I am by no means clear that the story may not have its foundation in the
fact recorded in the following inquest:
“Coram Johannem King, coron., Wardæ de Chestræ, apud Hilton, 3 Jul. 7 Jac.
1609.”
(And here follows a report in Latin.)
Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that the unhousel’d spirit of Roger
Skelton, whom in the hay-field the good Hilton ghosted, took the liberty
of playing a few of those pranks which are said by writers of grave
authority to be the peculiar privilege of those spirits only who are
shouldered untimely by violence from their mortal tenements.
“Ling’ring in anguish o’er his mangled clay,
The melancholy shadow turn’d away,
And follow’d through the twilight grey.”
A free pardon for the above manslaughter appears on the rolls of Bishop
James, dated 6th September, 1609.
I will only add that, among the Harleian MSS., the same legend is told
with some variations, in which this “cauld lad” is termed the “_Pale
Boy_ of Hilton.”
This confusion of _our_ mythology is as conclusive of the fiction of all
the mysterious legends of the moderns, as the jumble which the classic
poets have made of _their_ monsters. If we read Lempriere, the genealogy
of the classic monster is involved in a maze of impious confusion; and
the mythology of _Chimera_, and _Echidna_, and _Typhon_, _Geryon_, and
_Cerberus_, and the _Hydra_ and _Bellerophon_, and _Ortha_ and the
_Sphynx_, and the _Nemæan Lion_, and the _Minotaur_, and the demoniac
records of their origin, it is almost profanation even to reflect on.
But when Martianus Capella tells us that devils have aërial bodies, that
they live and die, and yet, if cut asunder, soon re-unite; and when
Bodine asserts, in his “Solution of Natural Theology,” that spirits and
angels are _globular_, as being of the most perfect shape, I confess I
feel more disposed to smile at their imposture than to frown, were it
not for their utter worthlessness.
Yet all the allegories which adorn our legends are not so remote from
truth or nature. The vampires are said to have gloated over the
sacrifices of human life, while the gouls and afrits, the hyenas in
human shape, not only fed on dead carcases, but, by a special
transmigration, took possession of a corpse. On this fable is founded
the monstrous legend of “Assuet and Ajut.” I confess it monstrous; but
indeed there is little exaggeration even in these tales of horror, if we
may believe, for once, Master Edmund Spenser, in that part of his record
of the rebellion of Desmond, in Ireland, which treats of the Munster
massacre:—“Out of every corner of the woodes and glennes, they came
creeping forth upon their handes, for their legges could not bear them;
they looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghostes, crying out
of their graves: they eat the dead carrions—happy were they could they
find them—yea, and one another soon after, insomuch as the very
carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves.” That episode
also, in the “Inferno” of Dante, in which Count Ugolino wears out days
and nights in gnawing the skull of an enemy, may well seem a fiction;
but even this hellish repast is but a prototype of the savage rage for
scalping and cannibalism among the Indian hordes of America.