THE
ROMANCE OF THE FAIRY BRIDE.
The Peris of Eastern romance are most likely the source from which
sprang the tales of romantic fancy with which our legendary lore
abounds.
In the enunciation of the Arabic language the word "Peri" would sound
"Fairy," the letter P not occurring in its alphabet, and would be so
pronounced by the Crusaders in their early intercourse with the Arabs.
In the wreck of Gothic mythology consequent on the introduction of
Christianity, the amiable characteristics of the Peris or Fairies became
degraded amid the mischievous attributes ascribed to subordinate
spirits, more unamiable in their persons and practices, yet more
congenial to the habits of thought of the northern peoples.
In Eastern tales, however vaguely they are described, the females are
uniformly represented as beings of great beauty, amiability, and
beneficence--the fairest creatures of romantic fancy.
With the early troubadours and minstrels, those nymphs formed the
subject of many a lay, and the fate of their amours, of many a wild
romaunt.
The fondness of female fays for human society were fertile themes of
Persian poetry and early European romances, such as "Sir Launfal and Sir
Gruelan," wherein the Fairies of Normandy and Bretagne are endowed with
all the splendour of Eastern description.
The Fairy _Malusina_, who married Guy de Lusignan under condition that
he should never intrude on her privacy, was of this class. She bore him
many children, and erected for him a magnificent castle by her art. They
lived in uninterrupted harmony until the prying husband concealed
himself to behold his wife in her enchanted bath. When discovered,
_Malusina_ fled in great sorrow, and was never again seen. A humiliating
tale, which, _if true_, would seem to show that men are quite as curious
and inquisitive as women are popularly supposed to be.
So common was the idea of the union of human beings with the females of
Fairyland in early times, that it was firmly believed the ancestor of
the English monarchs, Geoffrey Plantagenet, had married one of these
beings.
In the ballad of "Thomas of Ercildoune," the Queen of Fairyland is
represented as becoming enamoured of True Thomas. Among the Icelanders
the belief was common. Torfaeus, in his history, gives an account of a
female who, having born a child to an Icelander, claimed the privilege
of baptism, and deposited the infant at the gate of the churchyard for
that purpose, with a golden goblet as an offering. The belief is still
held by the Laplanders.
The origin of the noble family of Hay dates from a remote period in our
national history. In Normandy there were lands and a lordship
denominated Hay, and in the roll of the adventurers who accompanied
William the Conqueror into England in 1066, Le Sieur de la Haya is
expressly mentioned; but the origin of the Erroll family is thus told by
tradition:--The Danes, having landed in Aberdeenshire, ravaged the
country as far as the town of Perth. King Kenneth hastened to give them
battle, and the hostile armies met on the Leys of Luncarty, in
Perthshire. The Scots at first gave way, and fled through a narrow pass,
where they were stopped by a countryman of great strength and courage,
and his two sons, who had no other weapons than the yokes of their
ploughs, they having been at work in a field not far from the scene of
action. Upbraiding the fugitives for their conduct in flying from the
field, these peasants succeeded in rallying them. The Scots turned upon
their conquerors, and, after a second encounter, still more furious than
the first, they gained a complete victory. It is said that, after the
Danes were defeated, the old man, lying on the ground, wounded and
fatigued, cried "Hay, Hay," which word became the surname of his
posterity. The King rewarded him with as much land in the Carse of
Gowrie as a falcon should fly over before she settled; and a falcon,
being accordingly let off, flew over an extent of ground six miles in
length, afterwards called Erroll, and lighted on a stone still styled
the Falcon Stone. The King also raised him to the dignity of nobility,
and assigned to him and his family armorial bearings in accordance with
the signal service which he and his two sons had rendered to their
country.
"Till lately, indeed," says Lord Lindsay, in his _Lives of the
Lindsays_, "more especially in Great Britain and north of the Tweed,
Genealogy merited the ridicule which was so freely lavished on her. It
is but a few years ago since the most unfounded fictions were currently
believed as to the origin of the Scottish families. The Stuarts were
universally held to be the descendants of Banquo--the Douglases of 'the
dark grey man,' who fought under King Salvathius against the Danes. It
would be endless to enumerate all the fictions with which vanity and
flattery peopled the blank of time; they are now forgotten--all save the
beautiful legend of the patriarch Hay of Luncarty, on which Milton, in
his youth, purposed to found a drama, and which has been immortalised by
Shakespeare in the play of _Cymbeline_."
"Circumstantial evidence," says Pratt, "is also so far in favour of the
traditionary record as to render it hazardous to set it aside as wholly
unworthy of credit. Thus, the _Hawkestone_ at St Madoes, the well-known
boundary of the ancient possessions of the Hays of Erroll in Perthshire,
is mentioned by Boethius as existing in his day (anno. 1500), and as
having been set up immediately after the defeat of the Danes, in 980.
Also the _Stone_ so carefully preserved at Slains Castle, and which from
time immemorial has been venerated by the family as that on which their
ancestor sat down after the conflict. For the origin of these and
similar traditions it would be difficult to account, had there been no
foundation whatever for the narrative of Luncarty."
Gilbert de Haya, Regent of Scotland during the minority of Alexander
II., married a daughter of William Comyn, Earl of Buchan, about 1255.
The old Castle of Slains belonged originally to the Earls of Buchan, and
became afterwards, for many generations, the seat of the Earls of
Erroll.
There is some doubt whether the Castle owed its erection to Fergus, who
lived in the time of William the Lion (1065), or to the Comyns who
succeeded to this earldom through marriage with Marjory, only daughter
of Fergus, and Countess of Buchan in her own right.
Again,--Saladin, the famous Sultan of Syria, fought Guy de Lusignan,
King of Jerusalem, in 1187. Then Phillip Augustus of France, Richard I.
of England, with many others, and among them numbers of our Scottish
nobility, deemed themselves called upon to fly to the rescue of the Holy
Sepulchre, and by a third crusade endeavour to wrest its possession from
the infidel.
From these facts considerable doubt arises as to which of the "gallant
Hays" was the hero of the following ballad. It could hardly be Gilbert,
who married the daughter of the Earl of Buchan. If it was, then he could
scarcely have been in the third crusade; and there are grave doubts as
to the Lady Claribel having been the "child of the Elfin Queen." There
may, however, be no doubt that she was beautiful as a Princess, for
beauty is no rare qualification of the ladies of the district; nor may
it be improbable that she waylaid and captured the Hay in one of the
many knightly journeyings in search of adventures which the nobles of
those days undertook.
The ladies of those far-off times did many strange things--at least,
what now-a-days would be considered such; nevertheless, from the ballad
it appears she "made a good wife for all that."
_It is feared_, under all the circumstances, that, as in many other
legendary tales, considerable liberty has been taken with fact in favour
of fancy.