“Thy wife which is of fairie
Of suche a childe delivered is,
Fro kinde, whiche stante all amis.”
(_Ibid._ fo. 32, b.)
In another part of his book is a story “Howe the Kynge of Armenis
daughter mette on a tyme a companie of the _fairy_.” These “ladies,”
ride aside “on fayre [white] ambulende horses,” clad, very
magnificently, but all alike, in white and blue, and wore “corownes on
their heades;” but they are not called _fays_ in the poem, nor does the
word _fay_ or _fairie_ once occur therein.
The fairies or elves of the British isles are peculiar to this part
of the world, and are not, so far as literary information or oral
tradition enables us to judge, to be found in any other country. For
this fact the authority of father Chaucer will be decisive, till we
acquire evidence of equal antiquity in favour of other nations:—
“In olde dayes of the King Artour,
Of which the Bretons speken gret honour,
All was this lond fulfilled of faerie;
The elf–quene, with hire joly compagnie,
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede.
This was the old opinion as I rede;
I speke of many hundred yeres ago;
But now can no man see non elves mo,
For now the grete charitee and prayers
Of limitoures and other holy freres,
That serchen every land, and every streme,
As thickke as motes in the sunnebeme,
Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,
Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures,
Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies,
This maketh that ther ben no faeries.”
(_Wif of Bathes Tale._)
The fairy may be defined as a species of being partly material, partly
spiritual, with a power to change its appearance, and be, to mankind,
visible or invisible, according to its pleasure. In the old song,
printed by Peck, Robin Goodfellow, a well–known fairy, professes
that he had played his pranks from the time of Merlin, who was the
contemporary of Arthur.
Chaucer uses the word _faërie_ as well for the _individual_ as for the
_country_ or _system_, or what we should now call _fairy–land_, or
_faryism_. He knew nothing, it would seem, of _Oberon_, _Titania_, or
_Mab_, but speaks of—
“Pluto, that is the King of Faerie,
And many a ladie in his compagnie,
Folwing his wif, the quene Proserpina, etc.”
(_The Marchantes Tale_, i. 10101.)
From this passage of Chaucer Mr. Tyrwhitt “cannot help thinking that
his _Pluto_ and _Proserpina_ were the true progenitors of _Oberon_ and
_Titania_.”
In the progress of _The Wif of Bathes Tale_, it happed the knight,
“——in his way ... to ride
In all his care, under a forest side,
Whereas he saw upon a dance go
Of ladies foure–and–twenty, and yet mo.
Toward this ilke dance, he drow ful yerne,
In hope that he som wisdom shulde lerne,
But, certainly, er he came fully there,
Yvanished was this dance, he wiste not wher.”
These _ladies_ appear to have been _fairies_, though nothing is
insinuated of their size. Milton seems to have been upon the prowl here
for his “forest–side.”