epidemic terror of witches seems to have gone very far. The confession
of a woman called Isobel Gowdie, of date April, 1662, implicates, as
usual, the Court of Fairy, and blends the operations of witchcraft with
the facilities afforded by the fairies. These need be the less insisted
upon in this place, as the arch-fiend, and not the elves, had the
immediate agency in the abominations which she narrates. Yet she had
been, she said, in the Dounie Hills, and got meat there from the Queen
of Fairies more than she could eat. She added, that the queen is bravely
clothed in white linen and in white and brown cloth, that the King of
Fairy is a brave man; and there were elf-bulls roaring and _skoilling_
at the entrance of their palace, which frightened her much. On another
occasion this frank penitent confesses her presence at a rendezvous of
witches, Lammas, 1659, where, after they had rambled through the country
in different shapes--of cats, hares, and the like--eating, drinking, and
wasting the goods of their neighbours into whose houses they could
penetrate, they at length came to the dounie Hills, where the mountain
opened to receive them, and they entered a fair big room, as bright as
day. At the entrance ramped and roared the large fairy bulls, which
always alarmed Isobel Gowdie. These animals are probably the
water-bulls, famous both in Scottish and Irish tradition, which are not
supposed to be themselves altogether _canny_ or safe to have concern
with. In their caverns the fairies manufactured those elf-arrow heads
with which the witches and they wrought so much evil. The elves and the
arch-fiend laboured jointly at this task, the former forming and
sharpening the dart from the rough flint, and the latter perfecting and
finishing (or, as it is called, _dighting_) it. Then came the sport of
the meeting. The witches bestrode either corn-straws, bean-stalks, or
rushes, and calling, "Horse and Hattock, in the Devil's name!" which is
the elfin signal for mounting, they flew wherever they listed. If the
little whirlwind which accompanies their transportation passed any
mortal who neglected to bless himself, all such fell under the witches'
power, and they acquired the right of shooting at him. The penitent
prisoner gives the names of many whom she and her sisters had so slain,
the death for which she was most sorry being that of William Brown, in
the Milntown of Mains. A shaft was also aimed at the Reverend Harrie
Forbes, a minister who was present at the examination of Isobel, the
confessing party. The arrow fell short, and the witch would have taken
aim again, but her master forbade her, saying the reverend gentleman's
life was not subject to their power. To this strange and very particular
confession we shall have occasion to recur when witchcraft is the more
immediate subject. What is above narrated marks the manner in which the
belief in that crime was blended with the fairy superstition.
To proceed to more modern instances of persons supposed to have fallen
under the power of the fairy race, we must not forget the Reverend
Robert Kirke, minister of the Gospel, the first translator of the Psalms
into Gaelic verse. He was, in the end of the seventeenth century,
successively minister of the Highland parishes of Balquidder and
Aberfoyle, lying in the most romantic district of Perthshire, and within
the Highland line. These beautiful and wild regions, comprehending so
many lakes, rocks, sequestered valleys, and dim copsewoods, are not even
yet quite abandoned by the fairies, who have resolutely maintained
secure footing in a region so well suited for their residence. Indeed,
so much was this the case formerly, that Mr. Kirke, while in his latter
charge of Aberfoyle, found materials for collecting and compiling his
Essay on the "Subterranean and for the most part Invisible People
heretofore going under the name of Elves, Fawnes, and Fairies, or the
like."[36] In this discourse, the author, "with undoubting mind,"
describes the fairy race as a sort of astral spirits, of a kind betwixt
humanity and angels--says, that they have children, nurses, marriages,
deaths, and burials, like mortals in appearance; that, in some respect,
they represent mortal men, and that individual apparitions, or
double-men, are found among them, corresponding with mortals existing on
earth. Mr. Kirke accuses them of stealing the milk from the cows, and of
carrying away, what is more material, the women in pregnancy, and
new-born children from their nurses. The remedy is easy in both cases.
The milk cannot be stolen if the mouth of the calf, before he is
permitted to suck, be rubbed with a certain balsam, very easily come by;
and the woman in travail is safe if a piece of cold iron is put into the
bed. Mr. Kirke accounts for this by informing us that the great northern
mines of iron, lying adjacent to the place of eternal punishment, have a
savour odious to these "fascinating creatures." They have, says the
reverend author, what one would not expect, many light toyish books
(novels and plays, doubtless), others on Rosycrucian subjects, and of an
abstruse mystical character; but they have no Bibles or works of
devotion. The essayist fails not to mention the elf-arrow heads, which
have something of the subtlety of thunderbolts, and can mortally wound
the vital parts without breaking the skin. These wounds, he says, he has
himself observed in beasts, and felt the fatal lacerations which he
could not see.
[Footnote 36: The title continues:--"Among the Low Country Scots, as
they are described by those who have the second sight, and now, to
occasion farther enquiry, collected and compared by a circumspect
enquirer residing among the Scottish-Irish (_i.e._, the Gael, or
Highlanders) in Scotland." It was printed with the author's name in
1691, and reprinted, Edinburgh, 1815, for Longman & Co.]
It was by no means to be supposed that the elves, so jealous and
irritable a race as to be incensed against those who spoke of them under
their proper names, should be less than mortally offended at the
temerity of the reverend author, who had pryed so deeply into their
mysteries, for the purpose of giving them to the public. Although,
therefore, the learned divine's monument, with his name duly inscribed,
is to be seen at the east end of the churchyard at Aberfoyle, yet those
acquainted with his real history do not believe that he enjoys the
natural repose of the tomb. His successor, the Rev. Dr. Grahame, has
informed us of the general belief that, as Mr. Kirke was walking one
evening in his night-gown upon a _Dun-shi,_ or fairy mount, in the
vicinity of the manse or parsonage, behold! he sunk down in what seemed
to be a fit of apoplexy, which the unenlightened took for death, while
the more understanding knew it to be a swoon produced by the
supernatural influence of the people whose precincts he had violated.
After the ceremony of a seeming funeral, the form of the Rev. Robert
Kirke appeared to a relation, and commanded him to go to Grahame of
Duchray, ancestor of the present General Graham Stirling. "Say to
Duchray, who is my cousin as well as your own, that I am not dead, but a
captive in Fairyland, and only one chance remains for my liberation.
When the posthumous child, of which my wife has been delivered since my
disappearance, shall be brought to baptism, I will appear in the room,
when, if Duchray shall throw over my head the knife or dirk which he
holds in his hand, I may be restored to society; but if this opportunity
is neglected, I am lost for ever." Duchray was apprised of what was to
be done. The ceremony took place, and the apparition of Mr. Kirke was
visibly seen while they were seated at table; but Grahame of Duchray, in
his astonishment, failed to perform the ceremony enjoined, and it is to
be feared that Mr. Kirke still "drees his weird in Fairyland," the Elfin
state declaring to him, as the Ocean to poor Falconer, who perished at
sea after having written his popular poem of "The Shipwreck"--
"Thou hast proclaimed our power--be thou our prey!"
Upon this subject the reader may consult a very entertaining little
volume, called "Sketches of Perthshire,"[37] by the Rev. Dr. Grahame of
Aberfoyle. The terrible visitation of fairy vengeance which has lighted
upon Mr. Kirke has not intimidated his successor, an excellent man and
good antiquary, from affording us some curious information on fairy
superstition. He tells us that these capricious elves are chiefly
dangerous on a Friday, when, as the day of the Crucifixion, evil spirits
have most power, and mentions their displeasure at any one who assumes
their accustomed livery of green, a colour fatal to several families in
Scotland, to the whole race of the gallant Grahames in particular;
insomuch that we have heard that in battle a Grahame is generally shot
through the green check of his plaid; moreover, that a veteran sportsman
of the name, having come by a bad fall, he thought it sufficient to
account for it, that he had a piece of green whip-cord to complete the
lash of his hunting-whip. I remember, also, that my late amiable friend,
James Grahame, author of "The Sabbath," would not break through this
ancient prejudice of his clan, but had his library table covered with
blue or black cloth, rather than use the fated colour commonly employed
on such occasions.
[Footnote 37: Edinburgh, 1812.]
To return from the Perthshire fairies, I may quote a story of a nature
somewhat similar to that of Mas Robert Kirke. The life of the excellent
person who told it was, for the benefit of her friends and the poor,
protracted to an unusual duration; so I conceive that this adventure,
which took place in her childhood, might happen before the middle of
last century. She was residing with some relations near the small
seaport town of North Berwick, when the place and its vicinity were
alarmed by the following story:--
An industrious man, a weaver in the little town, was married to a
beautiful woman, who, after bearing two or three children, was so
unfortunate as to die during the birth of a fourth child. The infant was
saved, but the mother had expired in convulsions; and as she was much
disfigured after death, it became an opinion among her gossips that,
from some neglect of those who ought to have watched the sick woman, she
must have been carried off by the elves, and this ghastly corpse
substituted in the place of the body. The widower paid little attention
to these rumours, and, after bitterly lamenting his wife for a year of
mourning, began to think on the prudence of forming a new marriage,
which, to a poor artisan with so young a family, and without the
assistance of a housewife, was almost a matter of necessity. He readily
found a neighbour with whose good looks he was satisfied, whilst her
character for temper seemed to warrant her good usage of his children.
He proposed himself and was accepted, and carried the names of the
parties to the clergyman (called, I believe, Mr. Matthew Reid) for the
due proclamation of banns. As the man had really loved his late partner,
it is likely that this proposed decisive alteration of his condition
brought back many reflections concerning the period of their union, and
with these recalled the extraordinary rumours which were afloat at the
time of her decease, so that the whole forced upon him the following
lively dream:--As he lay in his bed, awake as he thought, he beheld, at
the ghostly hour of midnight, the figure of a female dressed in white,
who entered his hut, stood by the side of his bed, and appeared to him
the very likeness of his late wife. He conjured her to speak, and with
astonishment heard her say, like the minister of Aberfoyle, that she was
not dead, but the unwilling captive of the Good Neighbours. Like Mr.
Kirke, too, she told him that if all the love which he once had for her
was not entirely gone, an opportunity still remained of recovering her,
or _winning her back_, as it was usually termed, from the comfortless
realms of Elfland. She charged him on a certain day of the ensuing week
that he should convene the most respectable housekeepers in the town,
with the clergyman at their head, and should disinter the coffin in
which she was supposed to have been buried. "The clergyman is to recite
certain prayers, upon which," said the apparition, "I will start from
the coffin and fly with great speed round the church, and you must have
the fleetest runner of the parish (naming a man famed for swiftness) to
pursue me, and such a one, the smith, renowned for his strength, to hold
me fast after I am overtaken; and in that case I shall, by the prayers
of the church, and the efforts of my loving husband and neighbours,
again recover my station in human society." In the morning the poor
widower was distressed with the recollection of his dream, but, ashamed
and puzzled, took no measures in consequence. A second night, as is not
very surprising, the visitation was again repeated. On the third night
she appeared with a sorrowful and displeased countenance, upbraided him
with want of love and affection, and conjured him, for the last time, to
attend to her instructions, which, if he now neglected, she would never
have power to visit earth or communicate with him again. In order to
convince him there was no delusion, he "saw in his dream" that she took
up the nursling at whose birth she had died, and gave it suck; she
spilled also a drop or two of her milk on the poor man's bed-clothes, as
if to assure him of the reality of the vision.
The next morning the terrified widower carried a statement of his
perplexity to Mr. Matthew Reid, the clergyman. This reverend person,
besides being an excellent divine in other respects, was at the same
time a man of sagacity, who understood the human passions. He did not
attempt to combat the reality of the vision which had thrown his
parishioner into this tribulation, but he contended it could be only an
illusion of the devil. He explained to the widower that no created being
could have the right or power to imprison or detain the soul of a
Christian--conjured him not to believe that his wife was otherwise
disposed of than according to God's pleasure--assured him that
Protestant doctrine utterly denies the existence of any middle state in
the world to come--and explained to him that he, as a clergyman of the
Church of Scotland, neither could nor dared authorize opening graves or
using the intervention of prayer to sanction rites of a suspicious
character. The poor man, confounded and perplexed by various feelings,
asked his pastor what he should do. "I will give you my best advice,"
said the clergyman. "Get your new bride's consent to be married
to-morrow, or to-day, if you can; I will take it on me to dispense with
the rest of the banns, or proclaim them three times in one day. You will
have a new wife, and, if you think of the former, it will be only as of
one from whom death has separated you, and for whom you may have
thoughts of affection and sorrow, but as a saint in Heaven, and not as a
prisoner in Elfland." The advice was taken, and the perplexed widower
had no more visitations from his former spouse.
An instance, perhaps the latest which has been made public, of
communication with the Restless People--(a more proper epithet than that
of _Daoine Shi_, or Men of Peace, as they are called in Gaelic)--came
under Pennant's notice so late as during that observant traveller's tour
in 1769. Being perhaps the latest news from the invisible commonwealth,
we give the tourist's own words.
"A poor visionary who had been working in his cabbage-garden (in
Breadalbane) imagined that he was raised suddenly up into the air, and
conveyed over a wall into an adjacent corn-field; that he found himself
surrounded by a crowd of men and women, many of whom he knew to have
been dead for some years, and who appeared to him skimming over the tops
of the unbending corn, and mingling together like bees going to hive;
that they spoke an unknown language, and with a hollow sound; that they
very roughly pushed him to and fro, but on his uttering the name of God
all vanished, but a female sprite, who, seizing him by the shoulder,
obliged him to promise an assignation at that very hour that day
seven-night; that he then found his hair was all tied in double knots
(well known by the name of elf-locks), and that he had almost lost his
speech; that he kept his word with the spectre, whom he soon saw
floating through the air towards him; that he spoke to her, but she told
him she was at that time in too much haste to attend to him, but bid him
go away and no harm should befall him, and so the affair rested when I
left the country. But it is incredible the mischief these _ægri somnia_
did in the neighbourhood. The friends and neighbours of the deceased,
whom the old dreamer had named, were in the utmost anxiety at finding
them in such bad company in the other world; the almost extinct belief
of the old idle tales began to gain ground, and the good minister will
have many a weary discourse and exhortation before he can eradicate the
absurd ideas this idle story has revived."[38]
[Footnote 38: Pennant's "Tour in Scotland," vol. i. p. 110.]
It is scarcely necessary to add that this comparatively recent tale is
just the counterpart of the story of Bessie Dunlop, Alison Pearson, and
of the Irish butler who was so nearly carried off, all of whom found in
Elfland some friend, formerly of middle earth, who attached themselves
to the child of humanity, and who endeavoured to protect a fellow-mortal
against their less philanthropic companions.
These instances may tend to show how the fairy superstition, which, in
its general sense of worshipping the _Dii Campestres_, was much the
older of the two, came to bear upon and have connexion with that horrid
belief in witchcraft which cost so many innocent persons and crazy
impostors their lives for the supposed commission of impossible crimes.
In the next chapter I propose to trace how the general disbelief in the
fairy creed began to take place, and gradually brought into discredit
the supposed feats of witchcraft, which afforded pretext for such cruel
practical consequences.
LETTER VI.
Immediate Effect of Christianity on Articles of Popular
Superstition--Chaucer's Account of the Roman Catholic Priests
banishing the Fairies--Bishop Corbett imputes the same Effect to the
Reformation--His Verses on that Subject--His Iter
Septentrionale--Robin Goodfellow and other Superstitions mentioned
by Reginald Scot--Character of the English Fairies--The Tradition
had become obsolete in that Author's Time--That of Witches remained
in vigour--But impugned by various Authors after the Reformation, as
Wierus, Naudæus, Scot, and others--Demonology defended by Bodinus,
Remigius, &c.--Their mutual Abuse of each other--Imperfection of
Physical Science at this Period, and the Predominance of Mysticism
in that Department.
Although the influence of the Christian religion was not introduced to
the nations of Europe with such radiance as to dispel at once those
clouds of superstition which continued to obscure the understanding of
hasty and ill-instructed converts, there can be no doubt that its
immediate operation went to modify the erroneous and extravagant
articles of credulity which lingered behind the old pagan faith, and
which gave way before it, in proportion as its light became more pure
and refined from the devices of men.
The poet Chaucer, indeed, pays the Church of Rome, with its monks and
preaching friars, the compliment of having, at an early period, expelled
from the land all spirits of an inferior and less holy character. The
verses are curious as well as picturesque, and may go some length to
establish the existence of doubts concerning the general belief in
fairies among the well-instructed in the time of Edward III.
The fairies of whom the bard of Woodstock talks are, it will be
observed, the ancient Celtic breed, and he seems to refer for the
authorities of his tale to Bretagne, or Armorica, a genuine Celtic
colony:--
"In old time of the King Artour,
Of which that Bretons speken great honour,
All was this land fulfilled of faerie;
The Elf queen, with her joly company,
Danced full oft in many a grene mead.
This was the old opinion, as I rede--
I speake of many hundred years ago,
But now can no man see no elves mo.
For now the great charity and prayers
Of limitours,[39] and other holy freres,
That searchen every land and every stream,
As thick as motes in the sunne-beam,
Blessing halls, chambers, kitchenes, and boures,
Cities and burghes, castles high and towers,
Thropes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies,
This maketh that there ben no fairies.
For there as wont to walken was an elf,
There walketh now the limitour himself,
In under nichtes and in morwenings,
And saith his mattins and his holy things,
As he goeth in his limitation.
Women may now go safely up and doun;
In every bush, and under every tree,
There is no other incubus than he,
And he ne will don them no dishonour."[40]
[Footnote 39: Friars limited to beg within a certain district.]
[Footnote 40: "Wife of Bath's Tale."]
When we see the opinion which Chaucer has expressed of the regular
clergy of his time, in some of his other tales, we are tempted to
suspect some mixture of irony in the compliment which ascribes the exile
of the fairies, with whih the land was "fulfilled" in King Arthur's
time, to the warmth and zeal of the devotion of the limitary friars.
Individual instances of scepticism there might exist among scholars, but
a more modern poet, with a vein of humour not unworthy of Geoffrey
himself, has with greater probability delayed the final banishment of
the fairies from England, that is, from popular faith, till the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, and has represented their expulsion as a consequence of
the change of religion. Two or three verses of this lively satire may be
very well worth the reader's notice, who must, at the same time, be
informed that the author, Dr. Corbett, was nothing less than the Bishop
of Oxford and Norwich in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The
poem is named "A proper new Ballad, entitled the Fairies' Farewell, to
be sung or whistled to the tune of the Meadow Brow by the learned; by
the unlearned to the tune of Fortune:"--
"Farewell, rewards and fairies,
Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they;
And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?
"Lament, lament, old abbies,
The fairies' lost command;
They did but change priests' babies,
But some have changed your land;
And all your children sprung from hence
Are now grown Puritans,
Who live as changelings ever since
For love of your domains.
"At morning and at evening both,
You merry were and glad,
So little care of sleep and sloth
Those pretty ladies had.
When Tom came home from labour.
Or Cis to milking rose,
Then merrily, merrily went their tabor,
And merrily went their toes.
"Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs, which yet remain,
Were footed, in Queen Mary's days,
On many a grassy plain;
But since of late Elizabeth,
And later James came in,
They never danced on any heath
As when the time hath bin.
"By which we note, the fairies
Were of the old profession,
Their songs were Ave Maries,
Their dances were procession.
But now, alas! they all are dead,
Or gone beyond the seas;
Or farther for religion fled,
Or else they take their ease."
The remaining part of the poem is dedicated to the praise and glory of
old William Chourne of Staffordshire, who remained a true and stanch
evidence in behalf of the departed elves, and kept, much it would seem
to the amusement of the witty bishop, an inexhaustible record of their
pranks and feats, whence the concluding verse--
"To William all give audience,
And pray ye for his noddle,
For all the fairies' evidence
Were lost if that were addle."[41]
[Footnote 41: Corbett's Poems, edited by Octavuis Gilchrist, p. 213.]
This William Chourne appears to have attended Dr. Corbett's party on the
_iter septentrionale_, "two of which were, and two desired to be,
doctors;" but whether William was guide, friend, or domestic seems
uncertain. The travellers lose themselves in the mazes of Chorley Forest
on their way to Bosworth, and their route becomes so confused that they
return on their steps and labour--
"As in a conjuror's circle--William found
A mean for our deliverance,--'Turn your cloaks,'
Quoth he, 'for Puck is busy in these oaks;
If ever you at Bosworth would be found,
Then turn your cloaks, for this is fairy ground.'
But ere this witchcraft was performed, we meet
A very man who had no cloven feet.
Though William, still of little faith, has doubt,
'Tis Robin, or some sprite that walks about.
'Strike him,' quoth he, 'and it will turn to air--
Cross yourselves thrice and strike it.'--'Strike that dare,'
Thought I, 'for sure this massy forester,
In strokes will prove the better conjuror.'
But 'twas a gentle keeper, one that knew
Humanity and manners, where they grew,
And rode along so far, till he could say,
'See, yonder Bosworth stands, and this your way.'"[42]
[Footnote 42: Corbett's Poems, p. 191.]