“This is Mab, the mistress fairy,
That doth nightly rob the dairy,
And can hurt or help the churning,
(As she please) without discerning.
She that pinches country–wenches
If they rub not clean their benches,
And with sharper nails remembers
When they rake not up their embers;
But, if so they chance to feast her,
In a shoe she drops a tester.
This is she that empties cradles,
Takes out children, puts in ladles;
Trains forth midwives in their slumber,
With a sieve the holes to number;
And thus leads them from her boroughs,
Home through ponds and water–furrows.
She can start our franklin’s daughters,
In their sleep, with shrieks and laughters,
And on sweet St. Agnes’ night
Feed them with a promised sight,
Some of husbands, some of lovers,
Which an empty dream discovers.”
Fairies, they tell you, have frequently been heard and seen—nay, that
there are some living who were stolen away by them, and confined seven
years. According to the description they give who pretend to have
seen them, they are in the shape of men, exceeding little. They are
always clad in green, and frequent the woods and fields; when they make
cakes (which is a work they have been often heard at) they are very
noisy; and when they have done, they are full of mirth and pastime.
But generally they dance in moonlight when mortals are asleep and not
capable of seeing them, as may be observed on the following morn—their
dancing–places being very distinguishable. For as they dance hand in
hand, and so make a circle in their dance, so next day there will be
seen rings and circles on the grass.—(Bourne’s _Antiquitates Vulgares_,
Newcastle, 1725, 8vo, p. 82.)
These circles are thus described by Browne, the author of _Britannia’s
Pastorals_:—
“... A pleasant meade,
Where fairies often did their measures treade,
Which in the meadow made such circles greene,
As if with garlands it had crowned beene.
Within one of these rounds was to be seene
A hillock rise, where oft the fairie queene
At twy–light sate, and did command her elves
To pinch those maids that had not swept their shelves:
And further, if by maidens’ over–sight
Within doores water were not brought at night,
Or if they spred no table, set no bread,
They should have nips from toe unto the head;
And for the maid that had perform’d each thing,
She in the water–pail bad leave a ring.”
The same poet, in his “Shepeards Pipe,” having inserted Hoccleve’s
tale of _Jonathas_, and conceiving a strange unnatural affection for
that stupid fellow, describes him as a great favourite of the fairies,
alleging, that—
“Many times he hath been seene
With the fairies on the greene,
And to them his pipe did sound,
While they danced in a round,
Mickle solace would they make him,
And at midnight often wake him,
And convey him from his roome
To a field of yellow broome;
Or into the medowes, where
Mints perfume the gentle aire,
And where Flora spends her treasure,
There they would begin their measure.
If it chanc’d night’s sable shrowds
Muffled Cynthia up in clowds,
Safely home they then would see him,
And from brakes and quagmires free him.”
The fairies were exceedingly diminutive, but, it must be confessed, we
shall not readily find their real dimensions. They were small enough,
however, if we may believe one of queen Titania’s maids of honour, to
conceal themselves in acorn shells. Speaking of a difference between
the king and queen, she says:—
“But they do square; that all the elves for fear
Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.”
They uniformly and constantly wore green vests, unless when they had
some reason for changing their dress. Of this circumstance we meet with
many proofs. Thus in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_—
“Like urchins, ouphes, and fairies green.”