Heo bigolen that child They enchanted that child Mid galdere swith stronge. With magic most strong.

Heo zeven him mihte They gave him might To beon best alre cnihton. To be the best of all knights.

Heo zeven him an other thing They gave him another thing That he scolde beon riche king. That he should be a rich king.

Heo zeven him that thridde They gave him the third That he scolde longe libben. That he should long live.

Heo zeven that kin-bern They gave to that kingly child Custen swithe gode. Virtues most good.

That he was mete-custi That he was most generous Of alle quike monnen. Of all men alive.

This the Alven him zef. This the Elves him gave.

vv. 19254: _seq._

If we have made any discovery of importance in the department of romantic literature, it is our identification of Ogier le Danois with the Eddaic Helgi.[383] We have shown among other points of resemblance, that as the Norns were at the birth of the one, so the Fees were at that of the other. With this circumstance Layamon was apparently acquainted, and when he wished to transfer it to Arthur as the Norns were no longer known and the Fees had not yet risen into importance, there only remained for him to employ the Elves, which had not yet acquired tiny dimensions. Hence then we see that the progress was Norns, Elves, Fees, and these last held their place in the subsequent Fairy tales of France and Italy.

These potent Elves are still superior to the popular Fairies which we first met with in Chaucer.

Yet nothing in the passages in which he speaks of them leads to the inference of his conceiving them to be of a diminutive stature. His notions, indeed, on the subject seem very vague and unsettled; and there is something like a confusion of the Elves and Fairies of Romance, as the following passages will show:--

The Wife of Bathes Tale is evidently a Fairy tale. It thus commences:

In olde dayes of the king Artour, Of which that Bretons speken gret honour, All was this lond fulfilled of faerie;[384]

The Elf-quene with her 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 prayeres Of limitoures, and other holy freres, That serchen every land and every streme, As thikke as motes in the sonne-beme, Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures, Citees and burghes, castles highe, and toures, Thropes[385] and bernes, shepenes and dairies, This maketh that there ben no faeries; For there as wont to walken was an elf, There walketh now the limitour himself, In undermeles,[386] and in morweninges, And sayth his matines and his holy thinges, As he goth in his limitatioun.

Women may now go safely up and down; In every bush and under every tree There is none other incubus but he, And he ne will don hem no dishonour.

The Fairies therefore form a part of the tale, and they are thus introduced:

The day was come that homward must he turne; And in his way it happed him to ride, In all his care, under a forest side, Wheras 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 n'iste not wher; No creature saw he that bare lif, Save on the grene he saw sitting a wif, A fouler wight ther may no man devise.

These ladies bear a great resemblance to the Elle-maids of Scandinavia. We need hardly inform our readers that this "foul wight"

becomes the knight's deliverer from the imminent danger he is in, and that, when he has been forced to marry her, she is changed into a beautiful young maiden. But who or what she was the poet sayeth not.

In the Marchantes Tale we meet the Faerie attendant on Pluto and Proserpina, their king and queen, a sort of blending of classic and Gothic mythology:

for to tell The beautee of the gardin, and the well That stood under a laurer alway grene; Ful often time he Pluto, and his quene Proserpina, and alle hir faerie[387]

Disporten hem, and maken melodie About that well, and daunced, as men told.

Again, in the same Tale:

And so befel in that bright morwe tide, That, in the gardin, on the ferther side, Pluto, that is the king of Faerie, And many a ladye in his compagnie, Folwing his wif, the quene Proserpina, Which that he ravisshed out of Ethna, While that she gadred floures in the mede, (In Claudian ye may the story rede, How that hire in his grisely carte he fette); This king of Faerie adoun him sette Upon a benche of turves, fresh and grene.

In the conversation which ensues between these august personages, great knowledge of Scripture is displayed; and the queen, speaking of the "sapient prince," passionately exclaims--

I sete nat of all the vilanie That he of women wrote a boterflie; I am a woman nedes moste I speke, Or swell unto that time min herte breke.

Some might suspect a mystery in the queen's thus emphatically styling herself a woman, but we lay no stress upon it, as Faire Damoselle Pertelote, the hen, who was certainly less entitled to it, does the same.

In the Man of Lawes Tale the word Elfe is employed, but whether as equivalent to witch or fairy is doubtful.

This lettre spake, the quene delivered was Of so horrible a fendliche creature, That in the castle, non so hardy was, That any while dorste therein endure.

The mother was an _elfe_ by aventure, Y come, by charmes or by sorcerie, And everich man hateth hire compagnie.[388]

The Rime of Sir Thopas has been already considered as belonging to romance.

It thus appears that the works of manners-painting Chaucer give very little information respecting the popular belief in Fairies of his day. Were it not for the sly satire of the passage, we might be apt to suspect that, like one who lived away from the common people, he was willing to represent the superstition as extinct--"But now can no man see non elves mo." The only trait that he gives really characteristic of the popular elves is their love of dancing.

In the poets that intervene between Chaucer and the Maiden Reign, we do not recollect to have noticed anything of importance respecting Fairies, except the employment, already adverted to, of that term, and that of Elves, by translators in rendering the Latin _Nymphae_. Of the size of these beings, the passages in question give no information.

But in Elizabeth's days, "Fairies," as Johnson observes, "were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had made them great." A just remark, no doubt, though Johnson fell into the common error of identifying Spenser's Fairies with the popular ones.

The three first books of the Faerie Queene were published in 1590, and, as Warton remarks, Fairies became a familiar and fashionable machinery with the poets and poetasters. Shakspeare, well acquainted, from the rural habits of his early life, with the notions of the peasantry respecting these beings, and highly gifted with the prescient power of genius, saw clearly how capable they were of being applied to the production of a species of the wonderful, as pleasing, or perhaps even more so, than the classic gods; and in the Midsummer-Night's Dream he presented them in combination with the heroes and heroines of the mythic age of Greece. But what cannot the magic wand of genius effect? We view with undisturbed delight the Elves of Gothic mythology sporting in the groves of Attica, the legitimate haunts of Nymphs and Satyrs.

Shakspeare, having the Faerie Queene before his eyes, seems to have attempted a blending of the Elves of the village with the Fays of romance. His Fairies agree with the former in their diminutive stature,--diminished, indeed, to dimensions inappreciable by village gossips,--in their fondness for dancing, their love of cleanliness, and their child-abstracting propensities. Like the Fays, they form a community, ruled over by the princely Oberon and the fair Titania.[389] There is a court and chivalry: Oberon would have the queen's sweet changeling to be a "Knight of his train to trace the forest wild." Like earthly monarchs, he has his jester, "the shrewd and knavish sprite, called Robin Good-fellow."

The luxuriant imagination of the poet seemed to exult in pouring forth its wealth in the production of these new actors on the mimic scene, and a profusion of poetic imagery always appears in their train. Such lovely and truly British poetry cannot be too often brought to view; we will therefore insert in this part of our work several of these gems of our Parnassus, distinguishing by a different character such acts and attributes as appear properly to belong to the Fairy of popular belief.

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

ACT II.--SCENE I.

_Puck and a Fairy._

_Puck._ How now, spirit! whither wander you?

_Fai._ Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough briar, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire.

I do wander every where, Swifter than the moones sphere, And I serve the Fairy-queen, To dew her orbs upon the green.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats spots you see.

Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours.

I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.[390]

Farewell, thou lob of spirits! I'll be gone; Our queen and all her elves come here anon.

_Puck._ The king doth keep his revels here to-night.

Take heed the queen come not within his sight; For Oberon is passing fell and wroth, Because that she, as her attendant, hath A lovely boy stolen from an Indian king,-- She never had so sweet a changeling; And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild; But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy, Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled star-light sheen, But they do square; that all their elves, for fear, Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.

_Fai._ Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call'd Robin Good-fellow. Are you not he _That frights the maidens of the villagery, Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern, And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn; And sometimes makes the drink to bear no barm; Misleads night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?

Those that Hob-goblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck_, Are not you he?

_Puck._ Thou speakest aright, I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, _When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly-foal_; And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab, And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.

The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometimes for three-foot stool mistaketh me: Then slip I from her bum,--down topples she, And _tailor_ cries, and falls into a cough; And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe, And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there.

The haunts of the Fairies on earth are the most rural and romantic that can be selected. They meet

On hill, in dale, forest or mead, By paved fountain, or by rushy brook, Or on the beached margent of the sea, To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind.

And the place of Titania's repose is

A bank whereon the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.

There sleeps Titania, some time of the night Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.