Milton disdained not to sing

How faery 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 Martene 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 Beowulf?

[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: haegeise], 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 Athenaeum for 1847.

[341] Morgan, Phnix 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 ????, 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.