The Fairy Mythology.

by Thomas Keightley.

PREFACE.

A preface is to a book what a prologue is to a play--a usual, often agreeable, but by no means necessary precursor. It may therefore be altered or omitted at pleasure. I have at times exercised this right, and this is the third I have written for the present work.

In the first, after briefly stating what had given occasion to it, I gave the germs of the theory which I afterwards developed in the Tales and Popular Fictions. The second contained the following paragraph:--

"I never heard of any one who read it that was not pleased with it. It was translated into German as soon as it appeared, and was very favourably received. Goethe thought well of it. Dr. Jacob Grimm--perhaps the first authority on these matters in Europe--wrote me a letter commending it, and assuring me that even to _him_ it offered something new; and I was one Christmas most agreeably surprised by the receipt of a letter from Vienna, from the celebrated orientalist, Jos Von Hammer, informing me that it had been the companion of a journey he had lately made to his native province of Styria, and had afforded much pleasure and information to himself and to some ladies of high rank and cultivated minds in that country. The initials at the end of the preface, he said, led him to suppose it was a work of mine. So far for the Continent. In this country, when I mention the name of Robert Southey as that of one who has more than once expressed his decided approbation of this performance, I am sure I shall have said quite enough to satisfy any one that the work is not devoid of merit."

I could now add many names of distinguished persons who have been pleased with this work and its pendent, the Tales and Popular Fictions.

I shall only mention that of the late Mr. Douce, who, very shortly before his death, on the occasion of the publication of this last work, called on me to assure me that "it was many, many years indeed, since he had read a book which had yielded him so much delight."

The contents of the work which gave such pleasure to this learned antiquary are as follows:--

I. Introduction--Similarity of Arts and Customs--Similarity of Names--Origin of the Work--Imitation--Casual Coincidence--Milton--Dante. II. The Thousand and One Nights--Bedoween Audience around a Story-teller--Cleomades and Claremond--Enchanted Horses--Peter of Provence and the fair Maguelone. III. The Pleasant Nights--The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Beautiful Green Bird--The Three Little Birds--Lactantius--Ulysses and Sindbad. IV. The Shah-Nameh--Roostem and Soohrab--Conloch and Cuchullin--Macpherson's Ossian--Irish Antiquities. V. The Pentamerone--Tale of the Serpent--Hindoo Legend.

VI. Jack the Giant-killer--The Brave Tailoring--Thor's Journey to Utgard--Ameen of Isfahan and the Ghool--The Lion and the Goat--The Lion and the Ass. VII. Whittington and his Cat--Danish Legends--Italian Stories--Persian Legend. VIII. The Edda--Sigurd and Brynhilda--Volund--Helgi--Holger Danske--Ogier le Danois--Toko--William Tell. IX. Peruonto--Peter the Fool--Emelyan the Fool--Conclusion. Appendix.

Never, I am convinced, did any one enter on a literary career with more reluctance than I did when I found it to be my only resource--fortune being gone, ill health and delicacy of constitution excluding me from the learned professions, want of interest from every thing else. As I journeyed to the metropolis, I might have sung with the page whom Don Quixote met going a-soldiering:

A la guerra me lleva--mi necesidad, Si tuviera dineros--no fuera en verdad

for of all arts and professions in this country, that of literature is the least respected and the worst remunerated. There is something actually degrading in the expression "an author by trade," which I have seen used even of Southey, and that by one who did not mean to disparage him in the slightest degree. My advice to those who may read these pages is to shun literature, if not already blest with competence.

One of my earliest literary friends in London was T. Crofton Croker, who was then engaged in collecting materials for the Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland. He of course applied to his friends for aid and information; and I, having most leisure, and, I may add, most knowledge, was able to give him the greatest amount of assistance. My inquiries on the subject led to the writing of the present work, which was succeeded by the Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy, and the Tales and Popular Fictions; so that, in effect, if Mr. Croker had not planned the Fairy Legends, these works, be their value what it may, would in all probability never have been written.

Writing and reading about Fairies some may deem to be the mark of a trifling turn of mind. On this subject I have given my ideas in the Conclusion; here I will only remind such critics, that as soon as this work was completed, I commenced, and wrote in the space of a few weeks, my Outlines of History; and whatever the faults of that work may be, no one has ever reckoned among them want of vigour in either thought or expression. It was also necessary, in order to write this work and its pendent, to be able to read, perhaps, as many as eighteen or twenty different languages, dialects, and modes of orthography, and to employ different styles both in prose and verse. At all events, even if it were trifling, _dulce est desipere in loco_; and I shall never forget the happy hours it caused me, especially those spent over the black-letter pages of the French romances of chivalry, in the old reading-room of the British Museum.

Many years have elapsed since this work was first published. In that period much new matter has appeared in various works, especially in the valuable Deutsche Mythologie of Dr. Grimm. Hence it will be found to be greatly enlarged, particularly in the sections of England and France. I have also inserted much which want of space obliged me to omit in the former edition. In its present form, I am presumptuous enough to expect that it may live for many years, and be an authority on the subject of popular lore. The active industry of the Grimms, of Thiele, and others, had collected the popular traditions of various countries. I came then and gathered in the harvest, leaving little, I apprehend, but gleanings for future writers on this subject. The legends will probably fade fast away from the popular memory; it is not likely that any one will relate those which I have given over again; and it therefore seems more probable that this volume may in future be reprinted, with notes and additions. For human nature will ever remain unchanged; the love of gain and of material enjoyments, omnipotent as it appears to be at present, will never totally extinguish the higher and purer aspirations of mind; and there will always be those, however limited in number, who will desire to know how the former dwellers of earth thought, felt, and acted. For these mythology, as connected with religion and history, will always have attractions.

October, 1850.

Whatever errors have been discovered are corrected in this impression.

January, 1870. T. K.

THE FAIRY MYTHOLOGY

INTRODUCTION.

In olde dayes of the King Artour, Of which that Bretons spoken gret honour, All was this lond fulfilled of faerie; The elf-qrene with hir jolie companie Danced full oft in many a grene mede.

CHAUCER.

ORIGIN OF THE BELIEF IN FAIRIES.

According to a well-known law of our nature, effects suggest causes; and another law, perhaps equally general, impels us to ascribe to the actual and efficient cause the attribute of intelligence. The mind of the deepest philosopher is thus acted upon equally with that of the peasant or the savage; the only difference lies in the nature of the intelligent cause at which they respectively stop. The one pursues the chain of cause and effect, and traces out its various links till he arrives at the great intelligent cause of all, however he may designate him; the other, when unusual phenomena excite his attention, ascribes their production to the immediate agency of some of the inferior beings recognised by his legendary creed.

The action of this latter principle must forcibly strike the minds of those who disdain not to bestow a portion of their attention on the popular legends and traditions of different countries. Every extraordinary appearance is found to have its extraordinary cause assigned; a cause always connected with the history or religion, ancient or modern, of the country, and not unfrequently varying with a change of faith.[1]

The noises and eruptions of aetna and Stromboli were, in ancient times, ascribed to Typhon or Vulcan, and at this day the popular belief connects them with the infernal regions. The sounds resembling the clanking of chains, hammering of iron, and blowing of bellows, once to be heard in the island of Barrie, were made by the fiends whom Merlin had set to work to frame the wall of brass to surround Caermarthen.[2]

The marks which natural causes have impressed on the solid and unyielding granite rock were produced, according to the popular creed, by the contact of the hero, the saint, or the god: masses of stone, resembling domestic implements in form, were the toys, or the corresponding implements of the heroes and giants of old. Grecian imagination ascribed to the galaxy or milky way an origin in the teeming breast of the queen of heaven: marks appeared in the petals of flowers on the occasion of a youth's or a hero's untimely death: the rose derived its present hue from the blood of Venus, as she hurried barefoot through the woods and lawns; while the professors of Islam, less fancifully, refer the origin of this flower to the moisture that exuded from the sacred person of their prophet. Under a purer form of religion, the cruciform stripes which mark the back and shoulders of the patient ass first appeared, according to the popular tradition, when the Son of God condescended to enter the Holy City, mounted on that animal; and a fish only to be found in the sea[3] stills bears the impress of the finger and thumb of the apostle, who drew him out of the waters of Lake Tiberias to take the tribute-money that lay in his mouth. The repetition of the voice among the hills is, in Norway and Sweden, ascribed to the Dwarfs mocking the human speaker, while the more elegant fancy of Greece gave birth to Echo, a nymph who pined for love, and who still fondly repeats the accents that she hears. The magic scenery occasionally presented on the waters of the Straits of Messina is produced by the power of the Fata Morgana; the gossamers that float through the haze of an autumnal morning, are woven by the ingenious dwarfs; the verdant circlets in the mead are traced beneath the light steps of the dancing elves; and St. Cuthbert forges and fashions the beads that bear his name, and lie scattered along the shore of Lindisfarne.[4]

In accordance with these laws, we find in most countries a popular belief in different classes of beings distinct from men, and from the higher orders of divinities. These beings are usually believed to inhabit, in the caverns of earth, or the depths of the waters, a region of their own. They generally excel mankind in power and in knowledge, and like them are subject to the inevitable laws of death, though after a more prolonged period of existence.

How these classes were first called into existence it is not easy to say; but if, as some assert, all the ancient systems of heathen religion were devised by philosophers for the instruction of rude tribes by appeals to their senses, we might suppose that the minds which peopled the skies with their thousands and tens of thousands of divinities gave birth also to the inhabitants of the field and flood, and that the numerous tales of their exploits and adventures are the production of poetic fiction or rude invention. It may further be observed, that not unfrequently a change of religious faith has invested with dark and malignant attributes beings once the objects of love, confidence, and veneration.[5]

It is not our intention in the following pages to treat of the awful or lovely deities of Olympus, Valhalla, or Meru. Our subject is less aspiring; and we confine ourselves to those beings who are our fellow-inhabitants of earth, whose manners we aim to describe, and whose deeds we propose to record. We write of FAIRIES, FAYS, ELVES, _aut alio quo nomine gaudent_.

ORIGIN OF THE WORD FAIRY.

Like every other word in extensive use, whose derivation is not historically certain, the word Fairy has obtained various and opposite etymons. Meyric Casaubon, and those who like him deduce everything from a classic source, however unlikely, derive Fairy from F??, a Homeric name of the Centaurs;[6] or think that _fee_, whence Fairy, is the last syllable of _nympha_. Sir W. Ouseley derives it from the Hebrew ??? (_peer_), _to adorn_; Skinner, from the Anglo-Saxon [Old English: faran], _to fare_, _to go_; others from Feres, companions, or think that Fairy-folk is _quasi_ Fair-folk. Finally, it has been queried if it be not Celtic.[7]

But no theory is so plausible, or is supported by such names, as that which deduces the English Fairy from the Persian Peri. It is said that the Paynim foe, whom the warriors of the Cross encountered in Palestine, spoke only Arabic; the alphabet of which language, it is well known, possesses no _p_, and therefore organically substitutes an _f_ in such foreign words as contain the former letter; consequently Peri became, in the mouth of an Arab, Feri, whence the crusaders and pilgrims, who carried back to Europe the marvellous tales of Asia, introduced into the West the Arabo-Persian word _Fairy_. It is further added, that the Morgain or Morgana, so celebrated in old romance, is Merjan Peri, equally celebrated all over the East.

All that is wanting to this so very plausible theory is something like proof, and some slight agreement with the ordinary rules of etymology.

Had Feerie, or Fairy, originally signified the individual in the French and English, the only languages in which the word occurs, we might feel disposed to acquiesce in it. But they do not: and even if they did, how should we deduce from them the Italian Fata, and the Spanish Fada or Hada, (words which unquestionably stand for the same imaginary being,) unless on the principle by which Menage must have deduced Lutin from Lemur--the first letter being the same in both? As to the fair Merjan Peri (D'Herbelot calls her Merjan Banou[8]), we fancy a little too much importance has been attached to her. Her name, as far as we can learn, only occurs in the Caherman Nameh, a Turkish romance, though perhaps translated from the Persian.

The foregoing etymologies, it is to be observed, are all the conjectures of English scholars; for the English is the only language in which the name of the individual, Fairy, has the canine letter to afford any foundation for them.

Leaving, then, these sports of fancy, we will discuss the true origin of the words used in the Romanic languages to express the being which we name Fairy of Romance. These are _Faee_, _Fee_, French; _Fada_, Provencal (whence _Hada_, Spanish); and _Fata_, Italian.

The root is evidently, we think, the Latin _fatum_. In the fourth century of our aera we find this word made plural, and even feminine, and used as the equivalent of Parcae. On the reverse of a gold medal of the Emperor Diocletian are three female figures, with the legend _Fatis victricibus_; a _cippus_, found at Valencia in Spain, has on one of its sides _Fatis Q. Fabius ex voto_, and on the other, three female figures, with the attributes of the Mrae or Parcae.[9] In this last place the gender is uncertain, but the figures would lead us to suppose it feminine. On the other hand, Ausonius[10] has _tres Charites_, _tria Fata_; and Procopius[11] names a building at the Roman Forum ta t??a fata, adding ??t? ?a? ??a??? ta? ???a? ?e????as? ?a?e??. The Fatae or Fata, then, being persons, and their name coinciding so exactly with the modern terms, and it being observed that the Mrae were, at the birth of Meleager, just as the Fees were at that of Ogier le Danois, and other heroes of romance and tale, their identity has been at once asserted, and this is now, we believe, the most prevalent theory. To this it may be added, that in Gervase of Tilbury, and other writers of the thirteenth century, the Fada or Fee seems to be regarded as a being different from human kind.[12]

On the other hand, in a passage presently to be quoted from a celebrated old romance, we shall meet a definition of the word _Fee_, which expressly asserts that such a being was nothing more than a woman skilled in magic; and such, on examination, we shall find to have been all the Fees of the romances of chivalry and of the popular tales; in effect, that _fee_ is a participle, and the words _dame_ or _femme_ is to be understood.

In the middle ages there was in use a Latin verb, _fatare_,[13] derived from _fatum_ or _fata_, and signifying to enchant. This verb was adopted by the Italian, Provencal[14] and Spanish languages; in French it became, according to the analogy of that tongue, _faer_, _feer_. Of this verb the past participle _fae_, _fe_; hence in the romances we continually meet with _les chevaliers faes_, _les dames faees_, _Oberon la fae_, _le cheval etoit fae_, _la clef etait fee_, and such like. We have further, we think, demonstrated[15] that it was the practice of the Latin language to elide accented syllables, especially in the past participle of verbs of the first conjugation, and that this practice had been transmitted to the Italian, whence _fatato-a_ would form _fato-a_, and _una donna fatata_ might thus become _una fata_. Whether the same was the case in the Provencal we cannot affirm, as our knowledge of that dialect is very slight; but, judging from analogy, we would say it was, for in Spanish _Hadada_ and _Hada_ are synonymous. In the Neapolitan Pentamerone _Fata_ and _Maga_ are the same, and a Fata sends the heroine of it to a sister of hers, _pure fatata_.

Ariosto says of Medea--

E perche per virtu d' erbe e d'incanti Delle Fate una ed immortal fatta era.

_I Cinque Canti_, ii. 106.

The same poet, however, elsewhere says--

Queste che or Fate e dagli antichi foro Gia dette Ninfe e Dee con piu bel nome.--_Ibid._ i. 9.

and,

Nascemmo ad un punto che d'ogni altro male Siamo capaci fuorche della morte.--_Orl. Fur._ xliii. 48.