_Dorylas with a bevy of Fairies._
_Dor._ How like you now, my Grace? Is not my countenance
Royal and full of majesty? Walk not I
Like the young prince of pygmies? Ha, my knaves,
We'll fill our pockets. Look, look yonder, elves;
Would not yon apples tempt a better conscience
Than any we have, to rob an orchard? Ha!
Fairies, like nymphs with child, must have the things
They long for. You sing here a fairy catch
In that strange tongue I taught you, while ourself
Do climb the trees. Thus princely Oberon
Ascends his throne of state.
_Elves._ Nos beata Fauni proles,
Quibus non est magna moles,
Quamvis Lunam incolamus.
Hortos sæpe frequentamus.
Furto cuncta magis bella,
Furto dulcior puella,
Furto omnia decora,
Furto poma dulciora.
Cum mortales lecto jacent,
Nobis poma noctu placent;
Illa tamen sunt ingrata
Nisi furto sint parata.
Jocastus and his man Bromius come upon the Elves while plundering the
orchard: the latter is for employing his cudgel on the occasion, but
Jocastus is overwhelmed by the condescension of the princely Oberon in
coming to his orchard, when
His Grace had orchards of his own more precious
Than mortals can have any.
The Elves, by his master's permission, pinch Bromius, singing,
Quoniam per te violamur,
Ungues hic experiamur;
Statim dices tibi datam
Cutem valde variatam.
Finally, when the coast is clear, Oberon cries,
So we are got clean off; come, noble peers
Of Fairy, come, attend our royal Grace.
Let's go and share our fruit with our queen Mab
And the other dairy-maids; where of this theme
We will discourse amidst our cakes and cream.
Cum tot poma habeamus,
Triumphos læti jam canamus;
Faunos ego credam ortos,
Tantum ut frequentent hortos.
I domum, Oberon, ad illas,
Quæ nos manent nunc, ancillas,
Quarum osculemur sinum,
Inter poma lac et vinum.
In the old play of Fuimus Troes are the following lines:[404]
Fairies small,
Two foot tall,
With caps red
On their head,
Danse around
On the ground.
The pastoral poets also employed the Fairy Mythology. Had they used it
exclusively, giving up the Nymphs, Satyrs, and all the rural rout of
antiquity, and joined with it faithful pictures of the scenery England
then presented, with just delineations of the manners and character of
the peasantry, the pastoral poetry of that age would have been as
unrivalled as its drama. But a blind admiration of classic models, and
a fondness for allegory, were the besetting sins of the poets. They
have, however, left a few gems in this way.
Britannia's Pastorals furnish the following passages:[405]
Near to this wood there lay a pleasant mead,
Where fairies often did their measures tread,
Which in the meadows made such circles green,
As if with garlands it had crowned been;
Or like the circle where the signs we track,
And learned shepherds call 't the Zodiac;
Within one of these rounds was to be seen
A hillock rise, where oft the fairy-queen
At twilight sate, and did command her elves
To pinch those maids that had not swept their shelves;
And, further, if, by maiden's oversight,
Within doors water was not brought at night,
Or if they spread no table, set no bread,
They should have nips from toe unto the head;
And for the maid who had perform'd each thing,
She in the water-pail bade leave a ring.
_Song 2._
Or of the faiery troops which nimbly play,
And by the springs dance out the summer's day,
Teaching the little birds to build their nests,
And in their singing how to keepen rests.
_Song 4._
As men by fairies led fallen in a dream.
_Ibid._
In his Shepherd's Pipe, also, Brown thus speaks of the Fairies:--
Many times he hath been seen
With the fairies on the green,
And to them his pipe did sound
While they danced in a round.
Mickle solace they would make him,
And at midnight often wake him
And convey him from his room
To a field of yellow-broom;
Or into the meadows where
Mints perfume the gentle air,
And where Flora spreads her treasure;
There they would begin their measure.
If it chanced night's sable shrouds
Muffled Cynthia up in clouds,
Safely home they then would see him,
And from brakes and quagmires free him.
But Drayton is the poet after Shakespeare for whom the Fairies had the
greatest attractions. Even in the Polyolbion he does not neglect them.
In Song xxi., Ringdale, in Cambridgeshire, says,
For in my very midst there is a swelling ground
About which Ceres' nymphs dance many a wanton round;
The frisking fairy there, as on the light air borne,
Oft run at barley-break upon the cars of corn;
And catching drops of dew in their lascivious chases,
Do cast the liquid pearl in one another's faces.
And in Song iv., he had spoken of
The feasts that underground the faëry did him (Arthur) make,
And there how he enjoyed the Lady of the Lake.
Nymphidia is a delicious piece of airy and fanciful invention. The
description of Oberon's palace in the air, Mab's amours with the
gentle Pigwiggin, the mad freaks of the jealous Oberon, the pygmy
Orlando, the mutual artifices of Puck and the Fairy maids of honour,
Hop, Mop, Pip, Trip, and Co., and the furious combat of Oberon and the
doughty Pigwiggin, mounted on their earwig chargers--present
altogether an unequalled fancy-piece, set in the very best and most
appropriate frame of metre.
It contains, moreover, several traits of traditionary Fairy lore, such
as in these lines:--
Hence shadows, seeming idle shapes
Of little frisking elves and apes,
To earth do make their wanton skapes
As hope of pastime hastes them;
Which maids think on the hearth they see,
When fires well near consumed be,
There dancing hays by two and three,
Just as their fancy casts them.[406]
These make our girls their sluttery rue,
By pinching them both black and blue,
And put a penny in their shoe.
The house for cleanly sweeping;
And in their courses make that round,
In meadows and in marshes found,
Of them so call'd the fairy ground,
Of which they have the keeping.
These, when a child haps to be got,
That after proves an idiot,
When folk perceive it thriveth not,
The fault therein to smother,
Some silly, doating, brainless calf,
That understands things by the half,
Says that the fairy left this aulf,
And took away the other.
And in these:--
Scarce set on shore but therewithal
He meeteth Puck, whom most men call
Hobgoblin, and on him doth fall
With words from frenzy spoken;
"Ho! ho!" quoth Puck, "God save your Grace!
Who drest you in this piteous case?
He thus that spoiled my sovereign's face,
I would his neck were broken.
This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt.
Still walking like a ragged colt,
And oft out of a bush doth bolt,
Of purpose to deceive us;
And leading us, makes us to stray
Long winter nights out of the way;
And when we stick in mire and clay,
He doth with laughter leave us.
In his Poet's Elysium there is some beautiful Fairy poetry, which we do
not recollect to have seen noticed any where. This work is divided into
ten Nymphals, or pastoral dialogues. The Poet's Elysium is, we are told,
a paradise upon earth, inhabited by Poets, Nymphs, and the Muses.
The poet's paradise this is,
To which but few can come,
The Muses' only bower of bliss,
Their dear Elysium.
In the eighth Nymphal,
A nymph is married to a fay,
Great preparations for the day,
All rites of nuptials they recite you
To the bridal, and invite you.
The dialogue commences between the nymphs Mertilla and Claia:--
_M._ But will our Tita wed this fay?
_C._ Yes, and to-morrow is the day.
_M._ But why should she bestow herself
Upon this dwarfish fairy elf?
_C._ Why, by her smallness, you may find
That she is of the fairy kind;
And therefore apt to choose her make
Whence she did her beginning take;
Besides he's deft and wondrous airy,
And of the noblest of the fairy,[407]
Chief of the Crickets,[408] of much fame,
In Fairy a most ancient name.
The nymphs now proceed to describe the bridal array of Tita: her
jewels are to be dew-drops; her head-dress the "yellows in the
full-blown rose;" her gown
Of pansy, pink, and primrose leaves,
Most curiously laid on in threaves;
her train the "cast slough of a snake;" her canopy composed of "moons
from the peacock's tail," and "feathers from the pheasant's head;"
Mix'd with the plume (of so high price),
The precious bird of paradise;
and it shall be
Borne o'er our head (by our inquiry)
By elfs, the fittest of the fairy.
Her buskins of the "dainty shell" of the lady-cow. The musicians are
to be the nightingale, lark, thrush, and other songsters of the grove.
But for still music, we will keep
The wren and titmouse, which to sleep
Shall sing the bride when she's alone,
The rest into their chambers gone;
And like those upon ropes that walk
On gossamer from stalk to stalk,
The tripping fairy tricks shall play
The evening of the wedding day.
Finally, the bride-bed is to be of roses; the curtains, tester, and
all, of the "flower imperial;" the fringe hung with harebells; the
pillows of lilies, "with down stuft of the butterfly;"
For our Tita is to-day,
To be married to a fay.
In Nymphal iii.,
The fairies are hopping,
The small flowers cropping,
And with dew dropping,
Skip thorow the greaves.
At barley-break they play
Merrily all the day:
At night themselves they lay
Upon the soft leaves.
And in Nymphal vi. the forester says,
The dryads, hamadryads, the satyrs, and the fawns,
Oft play at hide-and-seek before me on the lawns;
The frisking fairy oft, when horned Cynthia shines,
Before me as I walk dance wanton matachines.
Herrick is generally regarded as the Fairy-poet, _par excellence_;
but, in our opinion, without sufficient reason, for Drayton's Fairy
pieces are much superior to his. Indeed Herrick's Fairy-poetry is by
no means his best; and we doubt if he has anything to exceed in that
way, or perhaps equal, the light and fanciful King Oberon's Apparel of
Smith.[409]
Milton disdained not to sing
How faëry Mab the junkets eat.
She was pinch'd and pull'd, she said;
And he, by _friar's_ lantern led,[410]
Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat
To earn his _cream bowl duly set_,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down, the lubber fiend,
And stretch'd out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And, crop-full, out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Regardless of Mr. Gifford's sneer at "those who may undertake the
unprofitable drudgery of tracing out the property of every word, and
phrase, and idea in Milton,"[411] we will venture to trace a little
here, and beg the reader to compare this passage with one quoted above
from Harsenet, and to say if the resemblance be accidental. The truth
is, Milton, reared in London, probably knew the popular superstitions
chiefly or altogether from books; and almost every idea in this
passage may be found in books that he must have read.
In the hands of Dryden the Elves of Chaucer lose their indefiniteness.
In the opening of the Wife of Bath her Tale,
The king of elves and _little_ fairy queen
Gamboled on heaths and danced on every green.
And
In vain the dairy now with mint is dressed,
The dairy-maid expects no fairy guest
To skim the bowls, and after pay the feast.
She sighs, and shakes her empty shoes in vain,
No silver penny to reward her pain.
In the Flower and the Leaf, unauthorised by the old bard, he makes the
knights and dames, the servants of the Daisy and of the Agnus Castus,
Fairies, subject, like the Italian Fate, to "cruel Demogorgon."
Pope took equal liberties with his original, as may be seen by a
comparison of the following verses with those quoted above:--
About this spring, if ancient fame say true,
The dapper elves their moonlight sports pursue:
Their pigmy king and little fairy queen
In circling dances gamboled on the green,
While tuneful sprites a merry concert made,
And airy music warbled through the shade.
_January and May_, 459.
It so befel, in that fair morning tide,
The fairies sported on the garden's side,
And in the midst their monarch and his bride.
So featly tripp'd the light-foot ladies round,
The knight so nimbly o'er the greensward bound,
That scarce they bent the flowers or touch'd the ground.
The dances ended, all the fairy train
For pinks and daisies search'd the flowery plain.[412]
_Ibid._, 617.
With the Kensington Garden[413] of Tickell, Pope's contemporary, our
Fairy-poetry may be said to have terminated.[414] Collins, Beattie,
and a few other poets of the last century make occasional allusions to
it, and some attempts to revive it have been made in the present
century. But vain are such efforts, the belief is gone, and divested
of it such poetry can produce no effect. The Fairies have shared the
fate of the gods of ancient Hellas.
FOOTNOTES:
[317] The Anglo-Saxon Dweorg, Dworh, and the English Dwarf, do not
seem ever to have had any other sense than that of the Latin _nanus_.
[318] As quoted by Picart in his Notes on William of Newbridge. We
could not find it in the Collection of Histories, etc., by Martène and
Durand,--the only place where, to our knowledge, this chronicler's
works are printed.
[319] _Guilielmi Neubrigensis Historia, sive Chronica Rerum
Anglicarum._ Oxon. 1719, lib. i. c. 27.
[320] See above, p. 109.
[321] Otia Imperialia _apud Leibnitz Scriptores rerum Brunsvicarum_,
vol. i. p. 981.
[322] Vice calicis.
[323] Otia Imperialia _apud Leibnitz Scriptores rerum Brunsvicarum_,
vol. i. p. 980.
[324] There is, as far as we are aware, no vestige of these names
remaining in either the French or English language, and we cannot
conceive how the Latin names of sea-gods came to be applied to the
Gotho-German Kobolds, etc.
[325] Dimidium _pollicis_. Should we not read _pedis_?
[326] Otia Imperialia _apud Leibnitz Scriptores rerum Brunsvicarum_,
vol. i. p. 980.
[327] Can this name be connected with that of Grendel, the malignant
spirit in Beówulf?
[328] Edited for the Percy Society by J. P. Collyer, Esq., 1841. Mr.
Collyer says there is little doubt but that this work was printed
before 1588, or even 1584. We think this is true only of the First
Part; for the Second, which is of a different texture, must have been
added some time after tobacco had come into common use in England: see
the verses in p. 34.
[329] Mr. Collyer does not seem to have recollected that Huon de
Bordeaux had been translated by Lord Berners; see above, p. 56.
[330] It is, according to this authority the man-fairy Gunn that
steals children and leaves changelings.
[331] Discoverie of Witchcrafte, iv. ch. 10.
[332] R. Scot, Discoverie of Witchcrafte, ii. ch. 4.
[333] _Ib._ vii. 15.
[334] This appears to us to be rather a display of the author's
learning than an actual enumeration of the objects of popular terror;
for the maids hardly talked of Satyrs, Pans, etc. For Bull-beggar, see
p. 316; for Urchin, p. 319. _Hag_ is the Anglo-Saxon [Old English:
hægeise], German _hexe_, "witche," and hence the Nightmare (see p.
332) which was ascribed to witches; we still say _Hag-ridden_. Calcar
and Sporn (spurs?) may be the same, from the idea of riding: the
French call the Nightmare, _Cauchemare_, from _Caucher_, _calcare_.
Kit-wi-the-Canstick is Jack-with-the-Lanthorn. The Man in the Oak is
probably Puck, "Turn your cloakes, quoth hee, for Pucke is busy in
these oakes."--Iter Boreale. The Hell-wain is perhaps the Death-coach,
connected with Northern and German superstitions, and the Fire-drake
an Ignis Fatuus. Boneless may have been some impalpable spectre; the
other terms seem to be mere appellations of Puck.
[335] Anat. of Mel. p. 47.
[336] Chap. xx. p. 134. Lond. 1604.
[337] This is, we apprehend, an egg at Easter or on Good Friday.
_Housle_ is the Anglo-Saxon [Old English: husel]; Goth. _hunsl_,
sacrifice or offering, and thence the Eucharist.
[338] Terrors of the Night, 1594.
[339] Hutchinson, History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 269.
[340] As quoted by Thoms in his Essay on Popular Songs, in the
Athenæum for 1847.
[341] Morgan, Phœnix Britannicus, Lond. 1732.
[342] Pandemonium, p. 207. Lond. 1684.
[343] Aubrey, Natural History of Surrey, iii 366, _ap._ Ritson, Fairy
Tales, p. 166.
[344] The Local Historian's Table-Book, by M. A. Richardson, iii. 239.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1846.
[345] Bourne, Antiquitates Vulgares, 1725.
[346] Quoted by Brand in his Popular Antiquities, an enlarged edition
of Bourne's work.
[347] This word Pixy, is evidently Pucksy, the endearing diminutive
_sy_ being added to Puck, like Betsy, Nancy, Dixie. So Mrs. Trimmer in
her Fabulous Histories--which we read with wonderful pleasure in our
childhood, and would recommend to our young readers--calls her
hen-robins Pecksy and Flapsy. Pisgy is only Pixy transposed. Mrs. Bray
derives Pixy from Pygmy. At Truro, in Cornwall, as Mr. Thoms informs
us, the _moths_, which some regard as departed souls, others as
fairies, are called _Pisgies_. He observes the curious, but surely
casual, resemblance between this and the Greek ψυχη, which is both
soul and moth. Grimm (p. 430) tells us from an old glossary, that the
caterpillar was named in Germany, _Alba_, i. e. _Elbe_, and that the
Alp often takes the form of a butterfly.
[348] _Whip says he_, as Mrs. Bray conjectures.
[349] Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 513. Bohn's edit.
[350] Given in the Literary Gazette for 1825. No. 430.
[351] Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 503. Bohn's edit.
[352] The _Elfbore_ of Scotland, where it is likewise ascribed to the
fairies, Jamieson, _s. v._ The same opinion prevails in Denmark, where
it is said that any one who looks through it will see things he would
not otherwise have known: see Thiele, ii. 18.
[353] The Anglo-Saxon _lǽan_, _laécan_, to play.
[354] We have abridged this legend from a well-written letter in the
Literary Gazette, No. 430 (1825), the writer of which says, he knew
the house in which it was said to have occurred. He also says he
remembered an old tailor, who said the horn was often pitched at the
head of himself and his apprentice, when in the North-country fashion
they went to work at the farm-house. Its identity with other legends
will be at once perceived.
[355] And true no doubt it is, _i. e._ the impression made on her
imagination was as strong as if the objects had been actually before
her. The narrator is the same person who told the preceding Boggart
story.
[356] Fairy Tales, pp. 24, 56.
[357] In Northumberland the common people call a certain fungous
excrescence, sometimes found about the roots of old trees,
Fairy-butter. After great rains and in a certain degree of
putrefaction, it is reduced to a consistency, which, together with its
colour, makes it not unlike butter, and hence the name. Brand, Popular
Antiquities, ii. 492, Bohn's edit.
The Menyn Tylna Têg or Fairy-butter of Wales, we are told in the same
place, is a substance found at a great depth in cavities of
limestone-rocks when sinking for lead-ore.
[358] Comp. Milton, L'Allegro, 105 _seq._
[359] Richardson, Table-Book, iii. 45; see above, p. 297.
[360] This word, as we may see, is spelt _faries_ in the following
legends; so we may suppose that _fairy_ is pronounced _farry_ in the
North, which has a curious coincidence with _Peri_: see above, p. 15.
[361] Probably pronounced _Poke_, as still in Worcestershire. Our
ancestors frequently used _ou_, or _oo_ for the long _o_ while they
expressed the sound of _oo_ by _o_ followed by _e_, as _rote_ root,
_coke_ cook, _more_ moor, _pole_ pool.
[362] Passus xvii. _v._ 11,323 _seq._ ed. 1842. Comp. _vv._ 8363,
9300, 10,902.
[363] Mr. Todd is right, in reading _pouke_ for _ponke_, an evident
typographic error: wrong in saying, "He is the Fairy, Robin
Good-fellow, known by the name of Puck." Robin is the "hob-goblin"
mentioned two lines after.
[364] We know nothing of the Oriental origin of Puck, and cannot give
our full assent to the character of our ancestry, as expressed in the
remaining part of Mr. Gifford's note: "but a fiend engendered in the
moody minds, and rude and gloomy fancies of the barbarous invaders of
the North." It is full time to have done with describing the old
Gothic race as savages.
[365] _Der Putz würde uns über berg und thäler tragen._ To frighten
children they say _Der Butz kommt!_ see Grimm, Deut. Mythol. p. 474.
[366] The former made by adding the Anglo-Saxon and English _el_,
_le_; the latter by adding the English _art_: see p. 318.
[367] By Sir F. Palgrave, from whose article in the Quarterly Review,
we have derived many of the terms named above. He adds that the
Anglo-Saxon _pæcan_ is to deceive, seduce; the Low-Saxon _picken_ to
gambol; _pickeln_ to play the fool; _pukra_ in Icelandic to make a
murmuring noise, to steal secretly; and _pukke_ in Danish to scold. He
further adds the Swedish _poika_ boy, the Anglo-Saxon and Swedish
_piga_ and Danish _pige_ girl. If, however, Pouke is connected with
the Sclavonic Bog, these at the most can be only derivations from it.
By the way _boy_ itself seems to be one of these terms; the
Anglo-Saxon _piga_ was probably pronounced _piya_, and _a_ is a
masculine termination in that language.
[368] See above, p. 291. In Low German, however, the Kobold is called
Bullmann, Bullermann, Bullerkater, from _bullen_, _bullern_, to knock:
see Grimm, _ut sup._ p. 473.
[369] Essay on the Ignis Fatuus, quoted by Thoms.
[370]
And you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms.--_Tempest_, v. 1.
[371] Jack-o'-the-lanthorn, Will-o'-the-wisp. In Worcestershire they
call it Hob-and-his-lanthorn, and Hobany's- or Hobredy's-lanthorn.
Allies, _ut sup._
[372] Knight of the Burning Pestle: see above, p. 309.
[373] _Ard_ is the German _hart_, and is, like it, depreciatory. It is
not an Anglo-Saxon termination, but from the Anglo-Saxon [Old English:
doll], _dull_, we have _dullard_. May not _haggard_ be _hawk-ard_, and
the French _hagard_ be derived from it, and not the reverse?
[374] For in Anglo-Saxon _áttorcoppe_ (_Poison-head?_) is spider, and
from _áttorcoppe-web_, by the usual aphœresis of the two first syllables
we put _coppe-web_, cobweb. May not the same have been the case with
_lob_? and may not the nasty _bug_ be in a similar manner connected with
Puck? As _dvergsnat_ is in Swedish a cobweb, one might be tempted to
suppose that this last, for which no good etymon has been offered, was
_lob-web_; but the true etymon is _cop-web_, from its usual site.
Upon the _cop_ right of his nose he hedde
A wert.--Chaucer, _Cant. Tales_, _v._ 556.
[375] Deut. Mythol. p. 492.
[376] See _France_. _In_ is a mere termination, perhaps, like _on_, a
diminutive, as in _Catin_ Kate, _Robin_ Bob. _Lutin_ was also spelt
_Luyton_: see p. 42.
[377] The two lines which follow
Fro the nightes mare the witè Paternoster!
Where wonest thou Seint Peter's suster?
are rather perplexing. We would explain them thus. Bergerac, as quoted
by Brand (Pop. Antiq. i. 312. Bohn's edit.) makes a magician say "I
teach the shepherds the wolf's paternoster," _i. e._ one that keeps
off the wolf. _Wite_ may then be _i. q. wight_, and _wight
paternoster_ be a safeguard against the wights, and we would read the
verse thus: "Fro the nightes mare the wite paternoster" _sc. blisse
it_ or _us_. St. Peter's _suster_, _i. e._ wife (see I Cor. ix. 5) may
have been canonised in the popular creed, and held to be potent
against evil beings. The term _suster_ was used probably to obviate
the scandal of supposing the first Pope to have been a married man.
This charm is given at greater length and with some variations by
Cartwright in his Ordinary, Act iii. sc. 1.
[378] He derives it from the French _oursin_, but the Ang.-Sax. name
of the hedgehog is [Old English: erscen].
[379] Athenæum, Oct. 9, 1847.
[380] Hist. of England, i. 478, 8vo edit.
[381] Deut. Mythol. p. 419.
[382] Layamon's Brut, etc., by Sir Frederick Madden.
[383] Tales and Popular Fictions, ch. viii. We do not wonder that this
should have eluded previous observation, but it is really surprising
that we should have been the first to observe the resemblance between
Ariosto's tale of Giocondo and the introductory tale of the Thousand
and One Nights. It is also strange that no one should have noticed the
similarity between Ossian's Carthon and the tale of Soohrâb in the
Shâh-nâmeh.
[384] Both here and lower down we would take _faërie_ in its first
sense.
[385] _Thrope_, _thorpe_, or _dorp_, is a village, the German _dorf_;
Dutch _dorp_; we may still find it in the names of places, as
Althorpe. _Dorp_ occurs frequently in Drayton's Polyolbion; it is also
used by Dryden, Hind and Panther, _v._ 1905.
[386] _Undermeles_ i. e. _undertide_ (p 51), aftermeal, afternoon.
[387] This is the third sense of _Faërie_. In the next passage it is
doubtful whether it be the second or third sense; we think the latter.
[388]
This wife which is of _faërie_,
Of such a childe delivered is,
Fro kindè which stante all amis.
GOWER, _Legende of Constance_.
[389] The derivation of Oberon has been already given (p. 208). The
Shakspearean commentators have not thought fit to inform us why the
poet designates the Fairy-queen, Titania. It, however, presents no
difficulty. It was the belief of those days that the Fairies were the
same as the classic Nymphs, the attendants of Diana: "That fourth kind
of spritis," says King James, "quhilk be the gentilis was called
Diana, and her wandering court, and amongst us called the _Phairie_."
The Fairy-queen was therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid (Met. iii.
173) styles Titania; Chaucer, as we have seen, calls her Proserpina.
[390]
'Twas I that led you through the painted meads,
Where the light Fairies danced upon the flowers,
Hanging on every leaf an orient pearl.
_Wisdom of Dr. Dodypoll, 1600. Steevens._
Men of fashion, in that age, wore earrings.
[391]
And the yellow-skirted Fayes
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.
MILTON, _Ode on the Nativity_, 235.
[392] _Ouph_, Steevens complacently tells us, in the Teutonic
language, is a fairy; if by Teutonic he means the German, and we know
of no other, he merely showed his ignorance. Ouph is the same as _oaf_
(formerly spelt _aulf_), and is probably to be pronounced in the same
manner. It is formed from _elf_ by the usual change of _l_ into _u_.
[393] _i. e._ Pinch severely. The Ang.-Sax. [Old English: to] joined
to a verb or part. answers to the German _zu_ or _zer_. [Old English:
to-brecan] is to break to pieces, [Old English: to-drifan] to drive
asunder, scatter. Verbs of this kind occur in the Vision of Piers
Ploughman, in Chaucer and elsewhere. The part. is often preceded by
_all_, in the sense of the German _ganz_, quite, with which some
ignorantly join the _to_ as _all-to ruffled_ in Comus, 380, instead of
_all to-ruffled_. In Golding's Ovid (p. 15) we meet "With rugged head
as white as down, and garments _all to-torn_;" in Judges ix. 53, "and
_all to-brake_ his skull." See also Faerie Queene, iv. 7, 8; v. 8, 4,
43, 44; 9, 10.
[394] After all the commentators have written, this line is still nearly
unintelligible to us. It may relate to the supposed origin of the
fairies. For _orphan_, Warburton conjectured _ouphen_, from _ouph_.
[395] The Anglo-Saxon [Old English: Midan eard] or [Old English:
geard]; and is it not also plainly the Midgard of the Edda?
[396] The origin of Mab is very uncertain; it may be a contraction of
Habundia, see below _France_. "Mab," says Voss, one of the German
translators of Shakspeare, "is not the Fairy-queen, the same with
Titania, as some, misled by the word _queen_, have thought. That word
in old English, as in Danish, designates the female sex." He might
have added the Ang.-Sax. [Old English: cþen] woman, whence both
_queen_ and _quean_. Voss is perhaps right and _elf-queen_ may have
been used in the same manner as the Danish _Elle-quinde_, _Elle-kone_
for the female Elf. We find Phaer (see above, p. 11) using
_Fairy-queen_, as a translation for _Nympha_.
[397] _i. e._, Night-mare. "Many times," says Gull the fairy, "I get
on men and women, and so lie on their stomachs, that I cause them
great pain; for which they call me by the name of Hagge or
Night-mare." _Merry Pranks_, etc. p. 42.
[398]
Auræque et venti, montesque, amnesque, lacusque,
Dîque omnes nemorum, dîque omnes noctis, adeste.
_Ovid, Met._ l. vii. 198.
Ye ayres and winds, ye _elves_ of hills, of brooks, of woods, alone,
Of standing lakes, and of the night--approach ye everich one.
GOLDING.
Golding seems to have regarded, by chance or with knowledge, the Elves
as a higher species than the Fairies. Misled by the word _elves_,
Shakspeare makes sad confusion of classic and Gothic mythology.
[399] _Take_ signifies here, to strike, to injure.
And there he blasts the tree and _takes_ the cattle.
_Merry Wives of Windsor_, iv. 4.
Thou farest as fruit that with the frost is taken.
SURREY, _Poems_, p. 13, Ald. edit.
In our old poetry _take_ also signifies, to give.
[400]
But not a word of it,--'tis fairies' treasure,
Which but revealed brings on the blabber's ruin.
MASSINGER, _Fatal Dowry_, Act iv. sc. 1.
A prince's secrets are like fairy favours,
Wholesome if kept, but poison if discovered.
_Honest Man's Fortune._
[401] We do not recollect having met with any account of this prank;
but Jonson is usually so correct, that we may be certain it was a part
of the popular belief.
[402] Whalley was certainly right in proposing to read Agnes. This
ceremony is, we believe, still practised in the north of England on
St. Agnes' night. See Brand, i. 34.
[403] Shakespeare gives different colours to the Fairies; and in some
places they are still thought to be white. See p. 306.
[404] Act i. sc. 5. R. Dodsley's Old Plays, vii. p. 394. We quote this
as the first notice we have met of the red caps of the fairies.
[405] Brown, their author, was a native of Devon, the Pixy region;
hence their accordance with the Pixy legends given above.
[406] This is perhaps the dancing on the hearth of the fairy-ladies to
which Milton alludes: see above, p. 42. "Doth not the warm zeal of an
English-man's devotion make them maintain and defend the social hearth
as the sanctuary and chief place of residence of the tutelary lares
and household gods, and the only court where the _lady-fairies convene
to dance and revel_?"--Paradoxical Assertions, etc. 1664, quoted by
Brand, ii. p. 504.
[407] The reader will observe that the third sense of Fairy is the
most usual one in Drayton. It occurs in its second sense two lines
further on, twice in Nymphidia, and in the following passage of his
third Eclogue,
For learned Colin (Spenser) lays his pipes to gage,
And is to _Fayrie_ gone a pilgrimage,
The more our moan.
[408] Mr. Chalmers does not seem to have known that the Crickets were
family of note in Fairy. Shakspeare (_Merry Wives of Windsor_)
mentions a Fairy named Cricket; and no hint of Shakspeare's was lost
upon Drayton.
[409] In the Musarum Deliciæ.
[410] This is a palpable mistake of the poet's. The Friar (see above,
p. 291) is the celebrated Friar Rush, who haunted houses, not fields,
and was never the same with Jack-o'-the-Lanthorn. It was probably the
name Rush, which suggested _rushlight_, that caused Milton's error. He
is the Brüder Rausch of Germany, the Broder Ruus of Denmark. His name
is either as Grimm thinks, _noise_, or as Wolf (Von Bruodor Rauschen,
p. xxviii.) deems _drunkenness_, our old word, _rouse_. Sir Walter
Scott in a note on Marmion, says also "Friar Rush, _alias_
Will-o'-the-Wisp. He was also a sort of Robin Goodfellow and
Jack-o'-Lanthorn," which is making precious confusion. Reginald Scot
more correctly describes him as being "for all the world such another
fellow as this Hudgin," _i. e._ Hödeken: see above, p. 255.
[411] Ben Jonson's Works, vol. ii. p. 499. We shall never cease to
regret that the state to which literature has come in this country
almost precludes even a hope of our ever being able to publish our
meditated edition of Milton's poems for which we have been collecting
materials these five and twenty years. It would have been very
different from Todd's. [Published in 1859.]
[412] Evidently drawn from Dryden's Flower and Leaf.
[413] We meet here for the last time with Fairy in its collective
sense, or rather, perhaps, as the country:
All Fairy shouted with a general voice
[414] In Mr Halliwell's Illustrations of Fairy Mythology, will be
found a good deal of Fairy poetry, for which we have not had space in
this work.
SCOTTISH LOWLANDS.
When from their hilly dens, at midnight hour,
Forth rush the airy elves in mimic state,
And o'er the moonlight heath with swiftness scour,
In glittering arms the little horsemen shine.
ERSKINE.
The Scottish Fairies scarcely differ in any essential point from those
of England. Like them they are divided into the rural and the
domestic. Their attire is green, their residence the interior of the
hills. They appear more attached than their neighbours to the
monarchical form of government, for the Fairy king and queen, who seem
in England to have been known only by the poets, were recognised by
law in Caledonia, and have at all times held a place in the popular
creed. They would appear also to be more mischievously inclined than
the Southrons, and less addicted to the practice of dancing. They
have, however, had the advantage of not being treated with contempt
and neglect by their human countrymen, and may well be proud of the
attention shown them by the brightest genius of which their country
can boast. There has also been long due from them an acknowledgment of
the distinction conferred on them by the editor of the Nithsdale and
Galloway Song,[415] for the very fanciful manner in which he has
described their attributes and acts.
The Scottish Fairies have never been taken by the poets for their
heroes or machinery, a circumstance probably to be attributed to the
sterner character of Scottish religion. We cannot, therefore, as in
England, make a distinction between popular and poetic fairies.
The earliest notice we have met with of the Fairies is in Montgomery's
Flyting against Polwart, where he says,
In the hinder end of harvest, at All-hallowe'en,
When our _good neighbours_[416] dois ride, if I read right,
Some buckled on a beenwand, and some on a been,
Ay trottand in troops from the twilight;
Some saidled on a she-ape all graithed in green,
Some hobland on a hempstalk hovand to the sight;
The king of Phairie and his court, with the elf-queen,
With many elfish incubus, was ridand that night.
Elf-land was the name of the realm ruled by the king of Phairie. King
James[417] speaks of him and his queen, and "of sic a jolie court and
traine as they had; how they had a teinde and a dewtie, as it were, of
all guidis; how they naturally raid and yeid, eat and drank, and did
all other actions lyke natural men and women. I think," concludes the
monarch, "it is lyker Virgilis _Campi Elysii_ nor anything that ought
to be believed by Christianis." And one of the interlocutors in his
dialogue asks how it was that witches have gone to death confessing
that they had been "transported with the Phairie to such and such a
hill, which, opening, they went in, and there saw a faire queene, who,
being now lighter, gave them a stone which had sundry virtues."
According to Mr. Cromek, who, however, rather sedulously keeps their
darker attributes out of view, and paints everything relating to them
_couleur de rose_, the Lowland Fairies are of small stature, but
finely proportioned; of a fair complexion, with long yellow hair
hanging over their shoulders, and gathered above their heads with
combs of gold. They wear a mantle of green cloth, inlaid with wild
flowers; green pantaloons, buttoned with bobs of silk; and silver
shoon. They carry quivers of "adder-slough," and bows made of the ribs
of a man buried where _three lairds' lands meet_; their arrows are
made of bog-reed, tipped with white flints, and dipped in the dew of
hemlock; they ride on steeds whose hoofs "would not dash the dew from
the cup of a harebell." With their arrows they shoot the cattle of
those who offend them; the wound is imperceptible to common eyes, but
there are gifted personages who can discern and cure it.[418]
In their intercourse with mankind they are frequently kind and generous.
A young man of Nithsdale, when out on a love affair, heard most
delicious music, far surpassing the utterance of 'any mortal mixture of
earth's mould.' Courageously advancing to the spot whence the sound
appeared to proceed, he suddenly found himself the spectator of a
Fairy-banquet. A green table with feet of gold, was laid across a small
rivulet, and supplied with the finest of bread and the richest of wines.
The music proceeded from instruments formed of reeds and stalks of corn.
He was invited to partake in the dance, and presented with a cup of
wine. He was allowed to depart in safety, and ever after possessed the
gift of second sight. He said he saw there several of his former
acquaintances, who were become members of the Fairy society.
We give the following legend on account of its great similarity to a
Swiss tradition already quoted:--
Two lads were ploughing in a field, in the middle of which was an old
thorn-tree, a trysting place of the Fairy-folk. One of them described a
circle round the thorn, within which the plough should not go. They were
surprised, on ending the furrow, to behold a green table placed there,
heaped up with excellent bread and cheese, and even wine. The lad who
had drawn the circle sat down without hesitation, ate and drank
heartily, saying, "Fair fa' the hands whilk gie." His companion whipped
on the horses, refusing to partake of the Fairy-food. The other, said
Mr. Cromek's informant, "thrave like a breckan," and was a proverb for
wisdom, and an oracle for country knowledge ever after.[419]
The Fairies lend and borrow, and it is counted _uncanny_ to refuse them.
A young woman was one day sifting meal warm from the mill, when a nicely
dressed beautiful little woman came to her with a bowl of antique form,
and requested the loan of as much meal as would fill it. Her request was
complied with, and in a week she returned to make repayment. She set
down the bowl and breathed over it, saying, "Be never toom." The woman
lived to a great age, but never saw the bottom of the bowl.
Another woman was returning late one night from a gossiping. A pretty
little boy came up to her and said, "Coupe yere dish-water farther
frae yere door-step, it pits out our fire." She complied with this
reasonable request, and prospered ever after.
_The Fairies' Nurse._
The Fairies have a great fondness for getting their babes suckled by
comely, healthy young women. A fine young woman of Nithsdale was one
day spinning and rocking her first-born child. A pretty little lady in
a green mantle, and bearing a beautiful babe, came into the cottage
and said, "Gie my bonny thing a suck." The young woman did so, and the
lady left her babe and disappeared, saying, "Nurse kin' and ne'er
want." The young woman nursed the two children, and was astonished to
find every morning, when she awoke, rich clothes for the children, and
food of a most delicious flavour. Tradition says this food tasted
like wheaten-bread, mixed with wine and honey.
When summer came, the Fairy lady came to see her child. She was
delighted to see how it had thriven, and, taking it in her arms,
desired the nurse to follow her. They passed through some scroggy
woods skirting the side of a beautiful green hill, which they ascended
half way. A door opened on the sunny side--they went in, and the sod
closed after them. The Fairy then dropped three drops of a precious
liquid on her companion's left eyelid, and she beheld a most delicious
country, whose fields were yellow with ripening corn, watered by
_looping burnies_, and bordered by trees laden with fruit. She was
presented with webs of the finest cloth, and with boxes of precious
ointments. The Fairy then moistened her right eye with a green fluid,
and bid her look. She looked, and saw several of her friends and
acquaintances at work, reaping the corn and gathering the fruit.
"This," said the Fairy, "is the punishment of evil deeds!" She then
passed her hand over the woman's eye, and restored it to its natural
power. Leading her to the porch at which she had entered, she
dismissed her; but the woman had secured the wonderful salve. From
this time she possessed the faculty of discerning the Fairy people as
they went about invisibly; till one day, happening to meet the
Fairy-lady, she attempted to shake hands with her. "What ee d'ye see
me wi'?" whispered she. "Wi' them baith," said the woman. The Fairy
breathed on her eyes, and the salve lost its efficacy, and could never
more endow her eyes with their preternatural power.[420]
_The Fairy Rade._
The _Fairy Rade_, or procession, was a matter of great importance. It
took place on the coming in of summer, and the peasantry, by using the
precaution of placing a branch of rowan over their door, might safely
gaze on the cavalcade, as with music sounding, bridles ringing, and
voices mingling, it pursued its way from place to place. An old woman of
Nithsdale gave the following description of one of these processions:
"In the night afore Roodmass I had trysted with a neebor lass a Scots
mile frae hame to talk anent buying braws i' the fair. We had nae
sutten lang aneath the haw-buss till we heard the loud laugh of fowk
riding, wi' the jingling o' bridles, and the clanking o' hoofs. We
banged up, thinking they wad ride owre us. We kent nae but it was
drunken fowk ridin' to the fair i' the forenight. We glowred roun' and
roun', and sune saw it was the _Fairie-fowks Rade_. We cowred down
till they passed by. A beam o' light was dancing owre them mair bonnie
than moonshine: they were a' wee wee fowk wi' green scarfs on, but ane
that rade foremost, and that ane was a good deal larger than the lave
wi' bonnie lang hair, bun' about wi' a strap whilk glinted like stars.
They rade on braw wee white naigs, wi' unco lang swooping tails, an'
manes hung wi' whustles that the win' played on. This an' their tongue
when they sang was like the soun' o' a far awa psalm. Marion an' me
was in a brade lea fiel', where they came by us; a high hedge o'
haw-trees keepit them frae gaun through Johnnie Corrie's corn, but
they lap a' owre it like sparrows, and gallopt into a green know
beyont it. We gaed i' the morning to look at the treddit corn; but the
fient a hoof mark was there, nor a blade broken."
_The Changeling._
But the Fairies of Scotland were not, even according to Mr. Cromek,
uniformly benevolent. Woman and child abstraction was by no means
uncommon with them, and the substitutes they provided were, in
general, but little attractive.
A fine child at Caerlaveroc, in Nithsdale, was observed on the second
day after its birth, and before it was baptised, to have become quite
ill-favoured and deformed. Its yelling every night deprived the whole
family of rest; it bit and tore its mother's breasts, and would lie
still neither in the cradle nor the arms. The mother being one day
obliged to go from home, left it in charge of the servant girl. The
poor lass was sitting bemoaning herself--"Were it nae for thy girning
face, I would knock the big, winnow the corn, and grun the
meal."--"Lowse the cradle-band," said the child, "and tent the
neighbours, and I'll work yere work." Up he started--the wind
arose--the corn was chopped--the outlyers were foddered--the hand-mill
moved around, as by instinct--and the knocking-mill did its work with
amazing rapidity. The lass and child then rested and diverted
themselves, till, on the approach of the mistress, it was restored to
the cradle, and renewed its cries. The girl took the first opportunity
of telling the adventure to her mistress. "What'll we do with the wee
diel?" said she. "I'll work it a pirn," replied the lass. At midnight
the chimney-top was covered up, and every chink and cranny stopped.
The fire was blown till it was glowing hot, and the maid speedily
undressed the child, and tossed him on the burning coals. He shrieked
and yelled in the most dreadful manner, and in an instant the Fairies
were heard moaning on every side, and rattling at the windows, door,
and chimney. "In the name of God bring back the bairn," cried the
lass. The window flew up, the real child was laid on the mother's lap,
and the _wee diel_ flew up the chimney laughing.
_Departure of the Fairies._
On a Sabbath morning, all the inmates of a little hamlet had gone to
church, except a herd-boy, and a little girl, his sister, who were
lounging beside one of the cottages, when just as the shadow of the
garden-dial had fallen on the line of noon, they saw a long cavalcade
ascending out of the ravine, through the wooded hollow. It winded
among the knolls and bushes, and turning round the northern gable of
the cottage, beside which the sole spectators of the scene were
stationed, began to ascend the eminence towards the south. The horses
were shaggy diminutive things, speckled dun and grey; the riders
stunted, misgrown, ugly creatures, attired in antique jerkins of
plaid, long grey clokes, and little red caps, from under which their
wild uncombed locks shot out over their cheeks and foreheads. The boy
and his sister stood gazing in utter dismay and astonishment, as rider
after rider, each more uncouth and dwarfish than the other which had
preceded it, passed the cottage and disappeared among the brushwood,
which at that period covered the hill, until at length the entire
rout, except the last rider, who lingered a few yards behind the
others, had gone by. "What are you, little manie? and where are ye
going?" inquired the boy, his curiosity getting the better of his
fears and his prudence. "Not of the race of Adam," said the creature,
turning for a moment in its saddle, "the people of peace shall never
more be seen in Scotland."[421]
_The Brownie._
The Nis, Kobold, or Goblin, appears in Scotland under the name of
Brownie.[422] Brownie is a personage of small stature, wrinkled visage,
covered with short curly brown hair, and wearing a brown mantle and
hood. His residence is the hollow of an old tree, a ruined castle, or
the abode of man. He is attached to particular families, with whom he
has been known to reside, even for centuries, threshing the corn,
cleaning the house, and doing everything done by his northern and
English brethren. He is, to a certain degree, disinterested; like many
great personages, he is shocked at anything approaching to the name of a
bribe or _douceur_, yet, like them, allows his scruples to be overcome
if the thing be done in a genteel, delicate, and secret way. Thus, offer
Brownie a piece of bread, a cup of drink, or a new coat and hood, and he
flouted at it, and perhaps, in his huff, quitted the place for ever; but
leave a nice bowl of cream, and some fresh honeycomb, in a snug private
corner, and they soon disappeared, though Brownie, it was to be
supposed, never knew anything of them.
A good woman had just made a web of linsey-woolsey, and, prompted by
her good nature, had manufactured from it a snug mantle and hood for
her little Brownie. Not content with laying the gift in one of his
favourite spots, she indiscreetly called to tell him it was there.
This was too direct, and Brownie quitted the place, crying,
A new mantle and a new hood;
Poor Brownie! ye'll ne'er do mair gude!
Another version of this legend says, that the gudeman of a farm-house
in the parish of Glendevon having left out some clothes one night for
Brownie, he was heard to depart, saying,
Gie Brownie coat, gie Brownie sark,
Ye'se get nae mair o' Brownie's wark![423]
At Leithin-hall, in Dumfrieshire, a Brownie had dwelt, as he himself
declared, for three hundred years. He used to show himself but once to
each master; to other persons he rarely discovered more than his hand.
One master was greatly beloved by Brownie, who on his death bemoaned
him exceedingly, even abstaining from food for many successive days.
The heir returning from foreign parts to take possession of the
estate, Brownie appeared to do him homage, but the Laird, offended at
his mean, starved appearance, ordered him meat and drink, and new
livery. Brownie departed, loudly crying,
Ca', cuttee, ca'!
A' the luck of Leithin Ha'
Gangs wi' me to Bodsbeck Ha'.
In a few years Leithin Ha' was in ruins, and "bonnie Bodsbeck"
flourishing beneath the care of Brownie.
Others say that it was the gudeman of Bodsbeck that offended the
Brownie by leaving out for him a mess of bread and milk, and that he
went away, saying,
Ca, Brownie, ca',
A' the luck of Bodsbeck awa to Leithenha'.
Brownie was not without some roguery in his composition. Two lasses
having made a fine bowlful of buttered brose, had taken it into the
byre to sup in the dark. In their haste they brought but one spoon,
so, placing the bowl between them, they supped by turns. "I hae got
but three sups," cried the one, "and it's a' dune."--"It's a' dune,
indeed," cried the other.--"Ha, ha, ha!" cried a third voice, "Brownie
has got the maist o' it."--And Brownie it was who had placed himself
between them, and gotten two sups for their one.
The following story will remind the reader of Hinzelmann. A Brownie
once lived with Maxwell, Laird of Dalswinton, and was particularly
attached to the Laird's daughter, the comeliest lass in all the holms
of Nithsdale. In all her love affairs Brownie was her confidant and
assistant; when she was married, it was Brownie who undressed her for
the bridal bed; and when a mother's pains first seized her, and a
servant, who was ordered to go fetch the _cannie wife_, who lived on
the other side of the Nith, was slow in getting himself ready,
Brownie, though it was one of dark December's stormy nights, and the
wind was howling through the trees, wrapped his lady's fur cloak about
him, mounted the servant's horse, and dashed through the waves of the
foaming Nith. He went to the cannie wife, got her up behind him, and,
to her terror and dismay, plunged again into the torrent. "Ride nae by
the auld pool," said she, "lest we suld meet wi' Brownie." "Fear nae,
dame," replied he, "ye've met a' the Brownies ye will meet." He set
her down at the hall steps, and went to the stable. There finding the
lad, whose embassy he had discharged, but drawing on his boots, he
took off the bridle, and by its vigorous application instilled into
the memory of the loitering loon the importance of dispatch. This was
just at the time of the Reformation, and a zealous minister advised
the Laird to have him baptised. The Laird consented, and the worthy
minister hid himself in the barn. When Brownie was beginning his
night's work, the man of God flung the holy water in his face,
repeating at the same time the form of baptism. The terrified Brownie
gave a yell of dismay, and disappeared for ever.
Another name by which the domestic spirit was known in some parts of
Scotland was Shellycoat, of which the origin is uncertain.[424]
* * * * *
Scotland has also its water-spirit, called Kelpie, who in some respects
corresponds with the Neck of the northern nations. "Every lake," says
Graham,[425] "has its _Kelpie_, or Water-horse, often seen by the
shepherd, as he sat in a summer's evening upon the brow of a rock,
dashing along the surface of the deep, or browsing on the pasture-ground
upon its verge. Often did this malignant genius of the waters allure
women and children to his subaqueous haunts, there to be immediately
devoured. Often did he also swell the torrent or lake beyond its usual
limits, to overwhelm the hapless traveller in the flood."[426]
* * * * *
We have now gone through nearly the whole of the Gotho-German race,
and everywhere have found their fairy system the same--a proof, we
conceive, of the truth of the position of its being deeply founded in
the religious system originally common to the whole race. We now
proceed to another, and, perhaps, an older European family, the Celts.
FOOTNOTES:
[415] Mr. Cromek. There was, we believe, some false dealing on the
part of Allan Cunningham toward this gentleman, such as palming on him
his own verses as traditionary ones. But the legends are genuine.
[416] This answers to the _Deenè Mâh_, Good People, of the Highlands
and Ireland. An old Scottish name, we may add, for a fairy seems to
have been Bogle, akin to the English Pouke, Puck, Puckle; but
differing from the Boggart. Thus Gawain Douglas says,
Of _Brownyis_ and of _Boggles_ full is this Beuk.
[417] Daemonologie, B. III. c. 5.
[418] These elf-arrows are triangular pieces of flint, supposed to have
been the heads of the arrows used by the aborigines. Though more
plentiful in Scotland they are also found in England and Ireland, and
were there also attached to the fairies, and the wounds were also only
to be discerned by gifted eyes. In an Anglo-Saxon poem, there occur the
words [Old English: æsa gescot] and [Old English: ýlfa gescot], _i. e._
arrow of the Gods, and arrow of the Elves. Grimm, Deut. Mythol., p. 22.
[419] "It was till lately believed by the ploughmen of Clydesdale,
that if they repeated the rhyme
Fairy, fairy, bake me a bannock and roast me a collop,
And I'll gie ye a spurtle off my gadend!
three several times on turning their cattle at the terminations of
ridges, they would find the said fare prepared for them on reaching the
end of the fourth furrow."--Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 33.
[420] See above, pp. 302, 311. Graham also relates this legend in his
Picturesque Sketches of Perthshire.
[421] Hugh Miller, The Old Red Sandstone, p. 251. We are happy to have
an opportunity of expressing the high feelings of respect and esteem
which we entertain for this extraordinary man. Born in the lowest rank
of society, and commencing life as a workman in a stone-quarry, he
has, by the mere force of natural genius, become not only a most able
geologist but an elegant writer, and a sound and discerning critic.
Scotland seems to stand alone in producing such men.
[422] He is named as we have seen (p. 351) by Gawain Douglas. King
James says of him "The spirit called Brownie appeared like a rough
man, and haunted divers houses without doing any evill, but doing, as
it were, necessarie turns up and down the house; yet some are so
blinded as to believe that their house was all the sonsier, as they
called it, that such spirits resorted there."
[423] Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 33.
[424] Grimm (Deut. Mythol., p. 479) says it is the German Schellenrock,
_i. e._, Bell-coat, from his coat being hung with bells like those of
the fools. A _Pūck_ he says, once served in a convent in Mecklenburg,
for thirty years, in kitchen, and stable, and the only reward he asked
was "tunicam de diversis coloribus et _tintinnabulis_ plenam."
[425] Sketches of Perthshire, p. 245.
[426] In what precedes, we have chiefly followed Mr. Cromek. Those
anxious for further information will meet it in the Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border, and other works.
CELTS AND CYMRY.
There every herd by sad experience knows,
How winged with fate their elf-shot arrows fly;
When the sick ewe her summer-food foregoes,
Or, stretched on earth, the heart-smit heifers lie.
COLLINS.
Under the former of these appellations we include the inhabitants of
Ireland, the Highlands of Scotland, and the Isle of Man; under the
latter, the people of Wales and Brittany. It is, not, however, by any
means meant to be asserted that there is in any of these places to be
found a purely Celtic or Cymric population. The more powerful
Gotho-German race has, every where that they have encountered them,
beaten the Celts and Cymry, and intermingled with them, influencing
their manners, language, and religion.
Our knowledge of the original religion of this race is very limited,
chiefly confined to what the Roman writers have transmitted to us, and
the remaining poems of the Welsh bards. Its character appears to have
been massive, simple, and sublime, and less given to personification
than those of the more eastern nations. The wild and the plastic
powers of nature never seem in it to have assumed the semblance of
huge giants and ingenious dwarfs.
Yet in the popular creed of all these tribes, we meet at the present day
beings exactly corresponding to the Dwarfs and Fairies of the
Gotho-German nations. Of these beings there is no mention in any
works--such as the Welsh Poems, and Mabinogion, the Poems of Ossian, or
the different Irish poems and romances--which can by any possibility lay
claim to an antiquity anterior to the conquests of the Northmen. Is it
not then a reasonable supposition that the Picts, Saxons, and other sons
of the North, brought with them their Dwarfs and Kobolds, and
communicated the knowledge of, and belief in, them to their Celtic and
Cymric subjects and neighbours? Proceeding on this theory, we have
placed the Celts and Cymry next to and after the Gotho-German nations,
though they are perhaps their precursors in Europe.
IRELAND.
Like him, the Sprite,
Whom maids by night
Oft meet in glen that's haunted.
MOORE.
We commence our survey of the lands of Celts and Cymry with Ireland,
as being the first in point of importance, but still more as being the
land of our birth. It is pleasing to us, now in the autumn of our
life, to return in imagination to where we passed its spring--its most
happy spring. As we read and meditate, its mountains and its vales,
its verdant fields and lucid streams, objects on which we probably
never again shall gaze, rise up in their primal freshness and beauty
before us, and we are once more present, buoyant with youth, in the
scenes where we first heard the fairy-legends of which we are now to
treat. Even the forms of the individual peasants who are associated
with them in our memory, rise as it were from their humble
resting-places and appear before us, again awaking our sympathies;
for, we will boldly assert it, the Irish peasantry, with all their
faults, gain a faster hold on the affections than the peasantry of any
other country. We speak, however, particularly of them as they were in
our county and in our younger days; for we fear that they are somewhat
changed, and not for the better. But our present business is with the
Irish fairies rather than with the Irish people.
The fairies of Ireland can hardly be said to differ in any respect
from those of England and Scotland. Like them they are of diminutive
size, rarely exceeding two feet in height; they live also in society,
their ordinary abode being the interior of the mounds, called in
Irish, Raths (_Râhs_), in English, Moats, the construction of which
is, by the peasantry, ascribed to the Danes from whom, it might thence
perhaps be inferred, the Irish got their fairies direct and not _viâ_
England. From these abodes they are at times seen to issue mounted on
diminutive steeds, in order to take at night the diversion of the
chase. Their usual attire is green with red caps.[427] They are fond
of music, but we do not in general hear much of their dancing, perhaps
because on account of the infrequency of thunder, the fairy-rings are
less numerous in Ireland than elsewhere. Though the fairies steal
children and strike people with paralysis and other ailments (which is
called being _fairy-struck_), and shoot their elf-arrows at the
cattle, they are in general kind to those for whom they have
contracted a liking, and often render them essential service in time
of need. They can make themselves visible and invisible, and assume
any forms they please. The pretty tiny conical mushrooms which grow so
abundantly in Ireland are called Fairy-mushrooms; a kind of nice
regularly-formed grass is named Fairy-flax, and the bells of the
foxglove called in some places Fairy-bells, are also said to have some
connexion with the Little People.
The popular belief in Ireland also is, that the Fairies are a portion of
the fallen angels, who, being less guilty than the rest, were not driven
to hell, but were suffered to dwell on earth. They are supposed to be
very uneasy respecting their condition after the final judgement.
The only names by which they are known in those parts of Ireland in
which the English language is spoken are, Fairies, the Good
People,[428] and the Gentry, these last terms being placatory, like
the Greek Eumenides. When, for example, the peasant sees a cloud of
dust sweeping along the road, he raises his hat and says, "God speed
you, gentlemen!" for it is the popular belief that it is in these
cloudy vehicles that the Good People journey from one place to
another.[429] The Irish language has several names for the fairies;
all however are forms or derivations of the word _Shia_,[430] the
proper meaning of which seems to be Spirit. The most usual name
employed by the Munster peasantry is _Shifra_; we are not acquainted
with the fairy-belief and terminology of the inhabitants of Connemara
and the other wilds of Connaught.[431]
Most of the traits and legends of the Irish fairies are contained in
the Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, compiled by
Mr. Crofton Croker. As we ourselves aided in that work we must inform
the reader that our contributions, both in text and notes, contain
only Leinster ideas and traditions, for that was the only province
with which we were acquainted. We must make the further confession,
that some of the more poetic traits which MM. Grimm, in the
Introduction to their translation of this work, give as characteristic
of the Irish fairies, owe their origin to the fancy of the writers,
who were, in many cases, more anxious to produce amusing tales than to
transmit legends faithfully.
The Legend of Knockshegowna (_Hill of the Fairy-calf_) the first given
in that work, relates how the fairies used to torment the cattle and
herdsmen for intruding on one of their favourite places of resort
which was on this hill. The fairy-queen, it says, having failed in her
attempts to daunt a drunken piper who had undertaken the charge of the
cattle, at last turned herself into a calf, and, with the piper on her
back, jumped over the Shannon, ten miles off, and back again. Pleased
with his courage, she agreed to abandon the hill for the future.
The Legend of Knock-Grafton tells how a little hunchback, while
sitting to rest at nightfall at the side of a Rath or Moat, heard the
fairies within singing over and over again, _Da Luan, Da Mart!_
(_i.e._, Monday, Tuesday!) and added, weary with the monotony, _Agus
da Cadin!_ (_i.e._, and Wednesday!) The fairies were so delighted with
this addition to their song that they brought him into the Moat,
entertained him, and finally freed him from the incumbrance of his
hump. Another hunchback hearing the story went to the Moat to try if
he could meet with the same good fortune. He heard the fairies singing
the amended version of the song, and, anxious to contribute, without
waiting for a pause or attending to the rhythm or melody, he added
_Agus da Hena!_ (_i.e._, and Friday.)[432] His reward was, being
carried into the Moat, and having his predecessor's hump placed on his
back in addition to his own.[433]
In the story named the Priest's Supper, a fisherman, at the request of
the fairies, asks a priest who had stopt at his house, whether they
would be saved or not at the last day. The priest desired him to tell
them to come themselves and put the question to him, but this they
declined doing, and the question remained undecided.
The next three stories are of changelings. The Young Piper, one of our
own contributions, will be found in the Appendix. The Changeling has
nothing peculiar in it; but the Brewery of Eggshells is one which we
find in many places, even in Brittany and Auvergne. In the present
version, the mother puts down eggshells to boil, and to the enquiry of
the changeling she tells him that she is brewing them, and clapping
his hands he says, "Well! I'm fifteen hundred years in the world, and
I never saw a brewery of eggshells before!"
In the Capture of Bridget Purcel, a girl is struck with a little
switch between the shoulders, by something in the form of a little
child that came suddenly behind her, and she pined away and died.
The Legend of Bottle Hill gives the origin of that name, which was as
follows. A poor man was driving his only cow to Cork to sell her. As
he was going over that hill he was suddenly joined by a
strange-looking little old man with a pale withered face and red eyes,
to whom he was eventually induced to give his cow in exchange for a
bottle, and both cow and purchaser then disappeared. When the poor man
came home he followed the directions of the stranger, and spreading a
cloth on the table, and placing the bottle on the ground, he said,
"Bottle, do your duty!" and immediately two little beings rose out of
it, and having covered the table with food in gold and silver dishes,
went down again into the bottle and vanished. By selling these he got
a good deal of money and became rich for one in his station. The
secret of his bottle however transpired, and his landlord induced him
to sell it to him. But his prosperity vanished with it, and he was
again reduced to one cow, and obliged to drive her to Cork for sale.
As he journeyed over the same hill he met the same old man, and sold
him the cow for another bottle. Having made the usual preparations, he
laid it on the ground and said, "Bottle, do your duty!" but instead of
the tiny little lads with their gold and silver dishes, there jumped
up out of it two huge fellows with cudgels, who fell to belabouring
the whole family. When they had done and were gone back into the
bottle, the owner of it, without saying a word, put it under his coat
and went to his landlord, who happened to have a great deal of company
with him, and sent in word that he was come with another bottle to
sell. He was at once admitted, the bottle did its duty, and the men
with cudgels laid about them on all present, and never ceased till the
original wealth-giving bottle was restored. He now grew richer than
ever, and his son married his landlord's daughter, but when the old
man and his wife died, the servants, it is recorded, fighting at their
wake, broke the two bottles.[434]
The Confessions of Tom Bourke, as it contains a faithful transcript of
the words and ideas of that personage, is perhaps the most valuable
portion of the work. From this we learn that in Munster the fairies are,
like the people themselves, divided into _factions_. Thus we are told
that, on the occasion of the death of Bourke's mother, the two parties
fought for three continuous nights, to decide whether she should be
buried with her own or her husband's _people_ (_i. e._ family). Bourke
also had sat for hours looking at two parties of the Good People playing
at the popular game of hurling, in a meadow at the opposite side of the
river, with their coats and waistcoats off, and white handkerchiefs on
the heads of one, and red on these of the other party.
A man whom Tom knew was returning one evening from a fair, a little
elevated of course, when he met a _berrin_ (_i. e._ funeral), which he
joined, as is the custom; but, to his surprise, there was no one there
that he knew except one man, and _he_ had been dead for some years.
When the _berrin_ was over, they gathered round a piper, and began to
dance in the churchyard. Davy longed to be among them, and the man
that he knew came up to him, and bid him take out a partner, but on no
account to give her the usual kiss. He accordingly took out the
_purtiest girl in the ring_, and danced a jig with her, to the
admiration of the whole company; but at the end he forgot the warning,
and complied with the custom of kissing one's partner. All at once
everything vanished; and when Davy awoke nest morning, he found
himself lying among the tombstones.
Another man, also a little in liquor, was returning one night from a
_berrin_. The moon was shining bright, and from the other side of the
river came the sounds of merriment, and the notes of a bagpipe. Taking
off his shoes and stockings, he waded across the river, and there he
found a great crowd of people dancing on the Inch[435] on the other
side. He mingled with them without being observed, and he longed to
join in the dance; for he had no mean opinion of his own skill. He did
so, but found that it was not to be compared to theirs, they were so
light and agile. He was going away quite in despair, when a little old
man, who was looking on with marks of displeasure in his face, came up
to him, and telling him he was his friend, and his father's friend,
bade him go into the ring and call for a lilt. He complied, and all
were amazed at his dancing; he then got a table and danced on it, and
finally he span round and round on a trencher. When he had done, they
wanted him to dance again; but he refused with a great oath, and
instantly he found himself lying on the Inch with only a white cow
grazing beside him. On going home, he got a shivering and a fever. He
was for many days out of his mind, and recovered slowly; but ever
after he had great skill in fairy matters. The dancers, it turned out,
had belonged to a different faction, and the old man who gave him his
skill to that to which he himself was attached.
In these genuine confessions it is very remarkable that the Good People
are never represented as of a diminutive size; while in every story that
we ever heard of them in Leinster, they were of pygmy stature. The
following account of their mode of entering houses in Ulster gives them
dimensions approaching to those of Titania's 'small elves.'
A Fairy, the most agile, we may suppose, of the party, is selected,
who contrives to get up to the keyhole of the door, carrying with him
a piece of thread or twine. With this he descends on the inside, where
he fastens it firmly to the floor, or some part of the furniture.
Those without then 'haul taut and belay,' and when it is fast they
prepare to march along this their perilous Es-Sirat, leading to the
paradise of pantry or parlour, in this order. First steps up the
Fairy-piper, and in measured pace pursues his adventurous route,
playing might and main an invigorating elfin-march, or other
spirit-stirring air; then one by one the rest of the train mount the
cord and follow his steps. Like the old Romans, in their triumphal
processions, they pass beneath the lofty arch of the keyhole, and move
down along the other side. Lightly, one by one, they then jump down on
the floor, to hold their revels or accomplish their thefts.
* * * * *
We have never heard of any being, in the parts of Ireland with which
we are acquainted, answering to the Boggart, Brownie, or Nis. A
farmer's family still, we believe, living in the county of Wicklow,
used to assert that in their grandfather's time they never had any
trouble about washing up plates and dishes; for they had only to leave
them collected in a certain part of the house for the Good People,
who would come in and wash and clean them, and in the morning
everything would be clean and in its proper place.
Yet in the county of Cork it would seem that the Cluricaun, of which we
shall presently speak, used to enact the part of Nis or Boggart. Mr.
Croker tells a story of a little being, which he calls a Cluricaun, that
haunted the cellar of a Mr. Macarthy, and in a note on this tale he
gives the contents of a letter informing him of another ycleped Little
Wildbean, that haunted the house of a Quaker gentleman named Harris, and
which is precisely the Nis or Boggart. This Wildbean, who kept to the
cellar, would, if one of the servants through negligence left the
beer-barrel running, wedge himself into the cock and stop it, till some
one came to turn it. His dinner used to be left for him in the cellar,
and the cook having, one Friday, left him nothing but part of a herring
and some cold potatoes, she was at midnight dragged out of her bed, and
down the cellar-stairs, and so much bruised that she kept her bed for
three weeks. In order at last to get rid of him, Mr. Harris resolved to
remove, being told that if he went beyond a running stream the Cluricaun
could not follow him. The last cart, filled with empty barrels and such
like, was just moving off, when from the bung-hole of one of them
Wildbean cried out, "Here, master! here we go all together!" "What!"
said Mr. Harris, "dost thou go also?" "Yes, to be sure, master. Here we
go, all together!" "In that case, friend," replied Mr. Harris, "let the
carts be unloaded; we are just as well where we are." It is added, that
"Mr. Harris died soon after, but it is said the Cluricaun still haunts
the Harris family."
In another of these Fairy Legends, Teigue of the Lee, who haunted the
house of a Mr. Pratt, in the county of Cork, bears a strong
resemblance to the Hinzelmann of Germany. To the story, which is
exceedingly well told by a member of the society of Friends, now no
more, also the narrator of the Legend of Bottle-hill, Mr. Croker has
in his notes added some curious particulars.
A being named the Fear Dearg (_i. e._ Red Man) is also known in Munster.
A tale named The Lucky Guest, which Mr. Croker gives as taken down
_verbatim_ from the mouth of the narrator by Mr. M'Clise, the artist,
gives the fullest account of this being. A girl related that, when she
was quite a child, one night, during a storm of wind and rain, a
knocking was heard at the door of her father's cabin, and a voice like
that of a feeble old man craving admission. On the door's being opened,
there came in a little old man, about two feet and a half high, with a
red sugar-loaf hat and a long scarlet coat, reaching down nearly to the
ground, his hair was long and grey, and his face yellow and wrinkled. He
went over to the fire (which the family had quitted in their fear), sat
down and dried his clothes, and began smoking a pipe which he found
there. The family went to bed, and in the morning he was gone. In about
a month after he began to come regularly every night about eleven
o'clock. The signal which he gave was thrusting a hairy arm through a
hole in the door, which was then opened, and the family retired to bed,
leaving him the room to himself. If they did not open the door, some
accident was sure to happen next day to themselves or their cattle. On
the whole, however, his visits brought good luck, and the family
prospered, till the landlord put them out of their farm, and they never
saw the Fear Dearg more.
* * * * *
As far as our knowledge extends, there is no being in the Irish rivers
answering to the Nix or Kelpie; but on the sea coast the people
believe in beings of the same kind as the Mermen and Mermaids. The
Irish name is Merrow,[436] and legends are told of them similar to
those of other countries. Thus the Lady of Gollerus resembles the
Mermaid-wife and others which we have already related. Instead,
however, of an entire dress, it is a kind of cap, named _Cohuleen
Driuth_, without which she cannot return to her subaqueous abode.
Other legends tell of matrimonial unions formed by mortals with these
sea-ladies, from which some families in the south claim a descent. The
Lord of Dunkerron, so beautifully told in verse by Mr. Croker, relates
the unfortunate termination of a marine amour of one of the O'Sullivan
family. The Soul-cages alone contains the adventures of a Mermau.
The Irish Pooka[437] ([Irish Uncial: puca]) is plainly the English
Pouke, Puck, and would seem, like it, to denote an evil spirit. The
notions respecting it are very vague. A boy in the mountains near
Killarney told Mr. Croker that "old people used to say that the Pookas
were very numerous in the times long ago. They were wicked-minded,
black-looking, bad things, that would come in the _form of wild colts_,
with chains hanging about them. They did great hurt to benighted
travellers." Here we plainly have the English Puck; but it is remarkable
that the boy should speak of Pookas in the plural number. In Leinster,
it was always _the_, not _a_ Pooka, that we heard named. When the
blackberries begin to decay, and the seeds to appear, the children are
told not to eat them any longer, as _the_ Pooka has dirtied on them.
The celebrated fall of the Liffey, near Ballymore Eustace, is named
Pool-a-Phooka, or The Pooka's Hole. Near Macroom, in the county of Cork,
are the ruins of a castle built on a rock, named Carrig-a-Phooka, or The
Pooka's Rock. There is an old castle not far from Dublin, called Puck's
Castle, and a townland in the county of Kildare is named Puckstown. The
common expression _play the Puck_ is the same as _play the deuce_, _play
the Devil_.
* * * * *
The most remarkable of the Fairy-tribe in Ireland, and one which is
peculiar to the country, is the Leprechaun.[438] This is a being in
the form of an old man, dressed as he is described in one of the
following tales. He is by profession a maker of brogues; he resorts in
general only to secret and retired places, where he is discovered by
the sounds which he makes hammering his brogues. He is rich, like
curmudgeons of his sort, and it is only by the most violent threats
of doing him some bodily harm, that he can be made to show the place
where his treasure lies; but if the person who has caught him can be
induced (a thing that always happens, by the way) to take his eyes off
him, he vanishes, and with him the prospect of wealth. The only
instance of more than one Leprechaun being seen at a time is that
which occurs in one of the following tales, which was related by an
old woman, to the writer's sister and early companion, now no more.
Yet the Leprechaun, though, as we said, peculiar to Ireland, seems
indebted to England, at least, for his name. In Irish, as we have
seen, he is called _Lobaircin_, and it would not be easy to write the
English Lubberkin more accurately with Irish letters and Irish sounds.
Leprechaun is evidently a corruption of that word.[439] In the time of
Elizabeth and James, the word Lubrican was used in England to indicate
some kind of spirit. Thus Drayton gives as a part of Nymphidia's
invocation of Proserpina:
By the mandrake's dreadful groans;
By the Lubrican's sad moans;
By the noise of dead men's bones
In charnel-house rattling.
That this was the Leprechaun is, we think, clear; for in the Honest
Whore of Decker and Middleton, the following words are used of an
Irish footman:
As for your Irish Lubrican, that spirit
Whom by preposterous charms thy lust has raised.