England
Merry elves, their morrice pacing,
To aërial minstrelsy,
Emerald rings on brown heath tracing,
Trip it deft and merrily.
Scott.
The Fairy Mythology of England divides itself into two branches, that of the people and that of the poets. Under the former head will be comprised the few scattered traditions which we have been able to collect respecting a system, the belief in which is usually thought to be nearly extinct; the latter will contain a selection of passages, treating of fairies and their exploits, from our principal poets.
The Fairies of England are evidently the Dwarfs of Germany and the North, though they do not appear to have been ever so denominated.317 Their appellation was Elves, subsequently Fairies; but there would seem to have been formerly other terms expressive of them, of which hardly a vestige is now remaining in the English language.
They were, like their northern kindred, divided into two classes—the rural Elves, inhabiting the woods, fields, mountains, and caverns; and the domestic or house-spirits, usually called Hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows. But the Thames, the Avon, and the other English streams, never seem to have been the abode of a Neck or Kelpie.
The following curious instances of English superstition, occur in the twelfth century.
The Green Children
“Another wonderful thing,” says Ralph of Coggeshall,318 “happened in Suffolk, at St. Mary’s of the Wolf-pits. A boy and his sister were found by the inhabitants of that place near the mouth of a pit which is there, who had the form of all their limbs like to those of other men, but they differed in the colour of their skin from all the people of our habitable world; for the whole surface of their skin was tinged of a green colour. No one could understand their speech. When they were brought as curiosities to the house of a certain knight, Sir Richard de Calne, at Wikes, they wept bitterly. Bread and other victuals were set before them, but they would touch none of them, though they were tormented by great hunger, as the girl afterwards acknowledged. At length, when some beans just cut, with their stalks, were brought into the house, they made signs, with great avidity, that they should be given to them. When they were brought, they opened the stalks instead of the pods, thinking the beans were in the hollow of them; but not finding them there, they began to weep anew. When those who were present saw this, they opened the pods, and showed them the naked beans. They fed on these with great delight, and for a long time tasted no other food. The boy, however, was always languid and depressed, and he died within a short time. The girl enjoyed continual good health; and becoming accustomed to various kinds of food, lost completely that green colour, and gradually recovered the sanguine habit of her entire body. She was afterwards regenerated by the laver of holy baptism, and lived for many years in the service of that knight (as I have frequently heard from him and his family), and was rather loose and wanton in her conduct. Being frequently asked about the people of her country, she asserted that the inhabitants, and all they had in that country, were of a green colour; and that they saw no sun, but enjoyed a degree of light like what is after sunset. Being asked how she came into this country with the aforesaid boy, she replied, that as they were following their flocks, they came to a certain cavern, on entering which they heard a delightful sound of bells; ravished by whose sweetness, they went for a long time wandering on through the cavern, until they came to its mouth. When they came out of it, they were struck senseless by the excessive light of the sun, and the unusual temperature of the air; and they thus lay for a long time. Being terrified by the noise of those who came on them, they wished to fly, but they could not find the entrance of the cavern before they were caught.”
This story is also told by William of Newbridge,319 who places it in the reign of King Stephen. He says he long hesitated to believe it, but he was at length overcome by the weight of evidence. According to him, the place where the children appeared was about four or five miles from Bury St. Edmund’s: they came in harvest-time out of the Wolf-pits; they both lost their green hue, and were baptised, and learned English. The boy, who was the younger, died; but the girl married a man at Lenna, and lived many years. They said their country was called St. Martin’s Land, as that saint was chiefly worshiped there; that the people were Christians, and had churches; that the sun did not rise there, but that there was a bright country which could be seen from theirs, being divided from it by a very broad river.
The Fairy Banquet
In the next chapter of his history, William of Newbridge relates as follows:—
“In the province of the Deiri (Yorkshire), not far from my birth-place, a wonderful thing occurred, which I have known from my boyhood. There is a town a few miles distant from the Eastern Sea, near which are those celebrated waters commonly called Gipse.... A peasant of this town went once to see a friend who lived in the next town, and it was late at night when he was coming back, not very sober; when lo! from the adjoining barrow, which I have often seen, and which is not much over a quarter of a mile from the town, he heard the voices of people singing, and, as it were, joyfully feasting. He wondered who they could be that were breaking in that place, by their merriment, the silence of the dead night, and he wished to examine into the matter more closely. Seeing a door open in the side of the barrow, he went up to it, and looked in; and there he beheld a large and luminous house, full of people, women as well as men, who were reclining as at a solemn banquet. One of the attendants, seeing him standing at the door, offered him a cup. He took it, but would not drink; and pouring out the contents, kept the vessel. A great tumult arose at the banquet on account of his taking away the cup, and all the guests pursued him; but he escaped by the fleetness of the beast he rode, and got into the town with his booty. Finally, this vessel of unknown material, of unusual colour, and of extraordinary form, was presented to Henry the Elder, king of the English, as a valuable gift, and was then given to the queen’s brother David, king of the Scots, and was kept for several years in the treasury of Scotland; and a few years ago (as I have heard from good authority), it was given by William, king of the Scots, to Henry the Second, who wished to see it.”
The scene of this legend, we may observe, is the very country in which the Danes settled; and it is exactly the same as some of the legends current at the present day among the Danish peasantry.320 It is really extraordinary to observe the manner in which popular traditions and superstitions will thus exist for centuries.
Gervase of Tilbury, the Imperial Chancellor, gives the following particulars respecting the Fairy Mythology of England in the thirteenth century.
The Fairy Horn
“There is,” says he,321 “in the county of Gloucester, a forest abounding in boars, stags, and every species of game that England produces. In a grovy lawn of this forest there is a little mount, rising in a point to the height of a man, on which knights and other hunters are used to ascend when fatigued with heat and thirst, to seek some relief for their wants. The nature of the place, and of the business, is, however, such, that whoever ascends the mount must leave his companions, and go quite alone.
“When alone, he was to say, as if speaking to some other person, ‘I thirst,’ and immediately there would appear a cupbearer in an elegant dress, with a cheerful countenance, bearing in his stretched-out hand a large horn, adorned with gold and gems, as was the custom among the most ancient English. In the cup322 nectar of an unknown but most delicious flavour was presented, and when it was drunk, all heat and weariness fled from the glowing body, so that one would be thought ready to undertake toil instead of having toiled. Moreover, when the nectar was taken, the servant presented a towel to the drinker, to wipe his mouth with, and then having performed his office, he waited neither for a recompense for his services, nor for questions and enquiry.
“This frequent and daily action had for a very long period of old times taken place among the ancient people, till one day a knight of that city, when out hunting, went thither, and having called for a drink and gotten the horn, did not, as was the custom, and as in good manners he should have done, return it to the cup-bearer, but kept it for his own use. But the illustrious Earl of Gloucester, when he learned the truth of the matter, condemned the robber to death, and presented the horn to the most excellent King Henry the Elder, lest he should be thought to have approved of such wickedness, if he had added the rapine of another to the store of his private property.”
The Portunes
In another part of this work the Chancellor says,323—
“They have in England certain demons, though I know not whether I should call them demons or figures of a secret and unknown generation, which the French call Neptunes, the English Portunes.324 It is their nature to embrace the simple life of comfortable farmers, and when, on account of their domestic work, they are sitting up at night, when the doors are shut, they warm themselves at the fire, and take little frogs out of their bosom, roast them on the coals, and eat them. They have the countenance of old men, with wrinkled cheeks, and they are of a very small stature, not being quite half-an-inch high.325 They wear little patched coats, and if anything is to be carried into the house, or any laborious work to be done, they lend a hand, and finish it sooner than any man could. It is their nature to have the power to serve, but not to injure. They have, however, one little mode of annoying. When in the uncertain shades of night the English are riding any where alone, the Portune sometimes invisibly joins the horseman; and when he has accompanied him a good while, he at last takes the reins, and leads the horse into a neighbouring slough; and when he is fixed and floundering in it, the Portune goes off with a loud laugh, and by sport of this sort he mocks the simplicity of mankind.
The Grant
“There is,” says he, again326 “in England a certain kind of demon whom in their language they call Grant,327 like a yearling foal, erect on its hind legs, with sparkling eyes. This kind of demon often appears in the streets in the heat of the day, or about sunset. If there is any danger impending on the following day or night, it runs about the streets provoking the dogs to bark, and, by feigning flight, draws the dogs after it, in the vain hope of catching it. This illusion warns the inhabitants to beware of fire, and the friendly demon, while he terrifies those who see him, puts by his coming the ignorant on their guard.”
Thus far the Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, and, except in the poets, we have met with no further account of, or allusion to, fairies, until the reign of Elizabeth, when a little work appeared, named, The mad Pranks and merry Jests of Robin Goodfellow,328 from which Shakespeare seems in a good measure to have derived his Puck.
This work consists of two parts. In the first we are informed that Robin was the offspring of a “proper young wench by a hee-fayrie, a king or something of that kind among them.” By the time he was six years old he was so mischievous and unlucky that his mother found it necessary to promise him a whipping. He ran away and engaged with a tailor, from whom also he soon eloped. When tired he sat down and fell asleep, and in his sleep he had a vision of fairies; and when he awoke he found lying beside him a scroll, evidently left by his father, which, in verses written in letters of gold, informed him that he should have any thing he wished for, and have also the power of turning himself “To horse, to hog, to dog, to ape,” etc., but he was to harm none but knaves and queans, and was to “love those that honest be, and help them in necessity.” He made trials of his power and found that he really possessed it. His first exploit was to turn himself into a horse, to punish a churlish clown, whom he induced to mount him, and gave him a fall that went well nigh to break his neck. The fellow then went to ride him through a great plash of water, “and in the middle of it he found himself with nothing but a pack-saddle between his legs, while Robin went off laughing, Ho, ho, hoh! He next exerted himself in the cause of two young lovers, and secured their happiness.
In the Second Part we find him more in the character of the Nis or Brownie. Coming to a farmer’s house, he takes a liking to a “good handsome maid,” that was there, and in the night does her work for her, at breaking hemp and flax, bolting meal, etc. Having watched one night and seen him at work, and observed that he was rather bare of clothes, she provided him with a waistcoat against the next night. But when he saw it he started and said:—
Because thou layest me himpen hampen
I will neither bolt nor stampen:
’Tis not your garments, new or old,
That Robin loves: I feel no cold.
Had you left me milk or cream,
You should have had a pleasing dream:
Because you left no drop or crum,
Robin never more will come.
He went off laughing Ho, ho, hoh! and the maid in future had to do all the work herself.
A company of young fellows who had been making merry with their sweethearts were coming home over a heath. Robin met them, and to make himself merry took the form of a walking fire, and led them up and down till daylight, and then went off saying:—
Get you home, you merry lads:
Tell your mammies and your dads,
And all those that news desire,
How you saw a walking fire.
Wenches that do smile and lispe,
Use to call me Willy Wispe.
If that you but weary be,
It is sport alone for me.
Away: unto your houses go,
And I’ll go laughing, Ho, ho, hoh!
A fellow was attempting to offer violence to a young maiden. Robin came to her aid, ran between his legs in the shape of a hare, then turning himself into a horse, carried him off on his back, and flung him into a thick hedge.
Robin fell in love with a weaver’s pretty wife, and for her sake took service with her husband. The man caught them one day kissing, and next night he went and took Robin as he was sleeping, up out of his bed, and went to the river and threw him in. But instantly he heard behind him—
For this your service, master, I you thank.
Go swim yourself; I’ll stay upon the bank;
and was pushed in by Robin, who had put a bag of yarn in his bed, and now went off with, Ho, ho, hoh!
Robin went as a fiddler to a wedding. When the candles came he blew them out, and giving the men boxes in the ears he set them a-fighting. He kissed the prettiest girls, and pinched the others, till he made them scratch one another like cats. When the posset was brought forth, he turned himself into a bear, and frightening them away, had it all to himself.
At length his father who we now find was king Obreon (i.e. Oberon),329 called him up out of his bed one night, and took him to where the fairies were dancing to the music of Tom Thumb’s bagpipe, and thence to Fairy-land, where he “did show him many secrets which he never did open to the world.”
In the same work Sib says of the woman-fairies:
“To walk nightly as do the men-fairies we use not; but now and then we go together, and at good housewives’ fires we warm our fairy children.330 If we find clean water and clean towels we leave them money, either in their basins, or in their shoes; but if we find no clean water in their houses, we wash our children in their pottage, milk, or beer, or whatever we find: for the sluts that have not such things fitting, we wash their faces and hands with a gilded child’s clout, or else carry them to some river and duck them over head and ears. We often use to dwell in some great hill, and from thence we do lend money to any poor man or woman that hath need; but if they bring it not again at the day appointed, we do not only punish them with pinching, but also in their goods, so that they never thrive till they have paid us.”
The learned and strong-minded Reginald Scot, thus notices the superstitions of his own and the preceding age.331
“Indeed your grandams’ maids were wont to set a bowl of milk before him (Incubus) and his cousin Robin Goodfellow, for grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight; and you have also heard that he would chafe exceedingly if the maid or good-wife of the house, having compassion of his nakedness, laid any clothes for him besides his mess of white bread and milk, which was his standing fee; for in that case he saith,
What have we here? Hemten, hamten,
Here will I never more tread nor stampen.
Again:332
“The Faeries do principally inhabit the mountains and caverns of the earth, whose nature is to make strange apparitions on the earth, in meadows or on mountains, being like men and women, soldiers, kings, and ladies, children and horsemen, clothed in green, to which purpose they do in the night steal hempen stalks from the fields where they grow, to convert them into horses, as the story goes.
“Such jocund and facetious spirits,” he continues, “are said to sport themselves in the night by tumbling and fooling with servants and shepherds in country houses, pinching them black and blue, and leaving bread, butter, and cheese, sometimes with them, which, if they refuse to eat, some mischief shall undoubtedly befal them by the means of these Faeries; and many such have been taken away by the said spirits for a fortnight or a month together, being carried with them in chariots through the air, over hills and dales, rocks and precipices, till at last they have been found lying in some meadow or mountain, bereaved of their senses, and commonly one of their members to boot.”
Elsewhere333 he gives the following goodly catalogue of these objects of popular terror:—“Our mother’s maids have so frayed us with Bull-beggars, Spirits, Witches, Urchins, Elves, Hags, Faeries, Satyrs, Pans, Faunes, Sylens, Kit-wi-the-Canstick, Tritons, Centaurs, Dwarfs, Gyants, Impes, Calcars, Conjurors, Nymphs, Changelings, Incubus, Robin Goodfellow, the Spoorn, the Mare, the Man-in-the-Oak, the Hell-wain, the Firedrake, the Puckle, Tom-thombe, Hob-goblin, Tom-tumbler, Boneless, and such other Bugs, that we are afraid of our shadow.”334
Burton, after noticing from Paracelsus those which in Germany “do usually walk in little coats, some two foot long,” says,335 “A bigger kind there is of them called with us Hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows, that would, in those superstitious times, grind corn for a mess of milk, cut wood, or do any manner of drudgery work.” And again: “Some put our Fairies into this rank (that of terrestrial devils), which have been in former times adored with much superstition, with sweeping their houses, and setting of a pail of clean water, good victuals, and the like, and then they should not be pinched, but find money in their shoes, and be fortunate in their enterprises.” In another place (p. 30,) he says, “And so those which Miyaldus calls Ambulones, that walk about midnight, on heaths and desert places, which (saith Lavater) draw men out of the way and lead them all night a by-way, or quite barre them of their way; these have several names, in several places; we commonly call them Pucks.”
Harsenet thus speaks of them in his Declaration:336—
“And if that the bowl of curds and cream were not duly set out for Robin Goodfellow, the friar, and Sisse the dairy-maid, why then, either the pottage was burned the next day in the pot, or the cheeses would not curdle, or the butter would not come, or the ale in the fat never would have good head. But if a Peter-penny or a Housle-egge337 were behind, or a patch of tythe unpaid—then ’ware of bull-beggars, spirits, &c.”
Nash thus describes them:338—
“Then ground they malt, and had hempen shirts for their labours; daunced in rounds in green meadows; pincht maids in their sleep that swept not their houses clean, and led poor travellers out of their way.”
As the celebrated Luck of Eden Hall is supposed to have been a chalice, due respect for the piety of our forefathers will not allow of our placing the desecration of it any higher than the reign of Elizabeth, or that of her father at farthest. We will therefore introduce its history in this place.
The Luck of Eden Hall
In this house (Eden Hall, a seat of the Musgraves,) are some good old-fashioned apartments. An old painted drinking-glass, called the Luck of Eden Hall, is preserved with great care. In the garden near to the house is a well of excellent spring water, called St. Cuthbert’s Well. (The church is dedicated to that saint.) This glass is supposed to have been a sacred chalice; but the legendary tale is, that the butler, going to draw water, surprised a company of Fairies, who were amusing themselves upon the green near the well; he seized the glass which was standing upon its margin. They tried to recover it; but, after an ineffectual struggle, flew away, saying,—
If that glass either break or fall,
Farewell the luck of Eden Hall.339
“In the year 1633-4 (says Aubrey340) soon after I had entered into my grammar, at the Latin schoole of Yatton-Keynel, [near Chippenham, Wilts,] our curate, Mr. Hart, was annoyed one night by these elves or fayeries. Comming over the downes, it being neere darke, and approaching one of the faiery dances, as the common people call them in these parts, viz. the greene circles made by those sprites on the grasse, he all at once saw an innumerable quantitie of pigmies, or very small people, dancing rounde and rounde, and singing and making all maner of small odd noyses. He, being very greatly amazed, and yet not being able, as he says, to run away from them, being, as he supposes, kept there in a kinde of enchantment, they no sooner perceave him but they surround him on all sides, and what betwixte feare and amazement he fell down, scarcely knowing what he did; and thereupon these little creatures pinched him all over, and made a quick humming noyse all the tyme; but at length they left him, and when the sun rose he found himself exactly in the midst of one of these faiery dances. This relation I had from him myselfe a few days after he was so tormented; but when I and my bed-fellow, Stump, wente soon afterwards, at night time, to the dances on the downes, we sawe none of the elves or faieries. But, indeed, it is saide they seldom appeare to any persons who go to seeke for them.”
The next account, in order of time, that occurs, is what Sir Walter Scott calls the Cock Lane narrative of Anne Jefferies, who was born in 1626, in the parish of St. Teath, in Cornwall, and whose wonderful adventures with the fairies were, in 1696, communicated by Mr. Moses Pitt, her master’s son, to Dr. Fowler, bishop of Gloucester.341
According to this account, Anne described the Fairies, who she said came to her, as “six small people, all in green clothes.” They taught her to perform numerous surprising cures; they fed her from harvest-time till Christmas; they always appeared in even numbers. When seen dancing in the orchard among the trees, she said she was dancing with the fairies. These fairies scorned the imputation of being evil spirits, and referred those who termed them such to Scripture.
The following “relation of the apparition of Fairies, their seeming to keep a fair, and what happened to a certain man that endeavoured to put himself in amongst them,” is given by Bovet.342
The Fairy-Fair
“Reading once the eighteenth of Mr. Glanvil’s relations, p. 203, concerning an Irishman that had like to have been carried away by spirits, and of the banquet they had spread before them in the fields, etc., it called to mind a passage I had often heard, of Fairies or spirits, so called by the country people, which showed themselves in great companies at divers times. At some times they would seem to dance, at other times to keep a great fair or market. I made it my business to inquire amongst the neighbours what credit might be given to that which was reported of them, and by many of the neighbouring inhabitants I had this account confirmed.
“The place near which they most ordinarily showed themselves was on the side of a hill, named Black-down, between the parishes of Pittminster and Chestonford, not many miles from Tanton. Those that have had occasion to travel that way have frequently seen them there, appearing like men and women, of a stature generally near the smaller size of men. Their habits used to be of red, blue, or green, according to the old way of country garb, with high crowned hats. One time, about fifty years since, a person living at Comb St. Nicholas, a parish lying on one side of that hill, near Chard, was riding towards his home that way, and saw, just before him, on the side of the hill, a great company of people, that seemed to him like country folks assembled as at a fair. There were all sorts of commodities, to his appearance, as at our ordinary fairs; pewterers, shoemakers, pedlars, with all kind of trinkets, fruit, and drinking-booths. He could not remember anything which he had usually seen at fairs but what he saw there. It was once in his thoughts that it might be some fair for Chestonford, there being a considerable one at some time of the year; but then again he considered that it was not the season for it. He was under very great surprise, and admired what the meaning of what he saw should be. At length it came into his mind what he had heard concerning the Fairies on the side of that hill, and it being near the road he was to take, he resolved to ride in amongst them, and see what they were. Accordingly he put on his horse that way, and, though he saw them perfectly all along as he came, yet when he was upon the place where all this had appeared to him, he could discern nothing at all, only seemed to be crowded and thrust, as when one passes through a throng of people. All the rest became invisible to him until he came to a little distance, and then it appeared to him again as at first. He found himself in pain, and so hastened home; where, being arrived, lameness seized him all on one side, which continued on him as long as he lived, which was many years; for he was living in Comb, and gave an account to any that inquired of this accident for more than twenty years afterwards; and this relation I had from a person of known honour, who had it from the man himself.
“There were some whose names I have now forgot, but they then lived at a gentleman’s house, named Comb Farm, near the place before specified: both the man, his wife, and divers of the neighbours, assured me they had, at many times, seen this fair-keeping in the summer-time, as they came from Tanton-market, but that they durst not adventure in amongst them; for that every one that had done so had received great damage by it.”
The Fairies’ Caldron
“In the vestry of Frensham church, in Surrey, on the north side of the chancel, is an extraordinary great kettle or caldron, which the inhabitants say, by tradition, was brought hither by the fairies, time out of mind, from Borough-hill, about a mile hence. To this place, if anyone went to borrow a yoke of oxen, money, etc., he might have it for a year or longer, so he kept his word to return it. There is a cave where some have fancied to hear music. In this Borough-hill is a great stone, lying along of the length of about six feet. They went to this stone and knocked at it, and declared what they would borrow, and when they would repay, and a voice would answer when they should come, and that they should find what they desired to borrow at that stone. This caldron, with the trivet, was borrowed here after the manner aforesaid, and not returned according to promise; and though the caldron was afterwards carried to the stone, it could not be received, and ever since that time no borrowing there.”343
The Cauld Lad of Hilton
“Hilton Hall, in the vale of the Wear, was in former times the resort of a Brownie or House-spirit called The Cauld Lad. Every night the servants who slept in the great hall heard him at work in the kitchen, knocking the things about if they had been set in order, arranging them if otherwise, which was more frequently the case. They were resolved to banish him if they could, and the spirit, who seemed to have an inkling of their design, was often heard singing in a melancholy tone:
Wae’s me! wae’s me!
The acorn is not yet
Fallen from the tree,
That’s to grow the wood,
That’s to make the cradle,
That’s to rock the bairn,
That’s to grow to a man,
That’s to lay me.
The servants, however, resorted to the usual mode of banishing a Brownie: they left a green cloke and hood for him by the kitchen fire, and remained on the watch. They saw him come in, gaze at the new clothes, try them on, and, apparently in great delight, go jumping and frisking about the kitchen. But at the first crow of the cock he vanished, crying—
Here’s a cloak, and here’s a hood!
The Cauld Lad of Hilton will do no more good;
and he never again returned to the kitchen; yet it was said that he might still be heard at midnight singing those lines in a tone of melancholy.
There was a room in the castle long called the Cauld Lad’s Room, which was never occupied unless the castle was full of company, and within the last century many persons of credit had heard of the midnight wailing of the Cauld Lad, who some maintained was the spirit of a servant whom one of the barons of Hilton had killed unintentionally in a fit of passion.”344
In the beginning of the last century Bourne thus gives the popular belief on this subject:
“Another part of this (winter’s evening) conversation generally turns upon Fairies. These, they tell you, have frequently been seen and heard; nay, that there are some still living who were stolen away by them, and confined seven years. According to the description they give of them, 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 morning, 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.”345
The author of “Round about our Coalfire” says:346
“My grandmother has often told me of Fairies dancing upon our green, and they were little little creatures, clothed in green.
“The moment any one saw them, and took notice of them, they were struck blind of an eye. They lived under ground, and generally came out of a mole-hill.
“They had fine music always among themselves, and danced in a moonshiny night around, or in a ring, as one may see at this day upon every common in England, where mushrooms grow.
“When the master and mistress were laid on their pillows, the men and maids, if they had a game at romp, and blundered upstairs, or jumbled a chair, the next morning every one would swear it was the fairies, and that they heard them stamping up and down stairs all night, crying ‘Water’s locked! Water’s locked!’ when there was not water in every pail in the kitchen.”
To come to the present times. There is no stronger proof of the neglect of what Mr Thoms has very happily designated “Folk-lore” in this country, than the fact of there having been no account given anywhere of the Pixies or Pisgies347 of Devonshire and Cornwall, till within these last few years. In the year 1836, Mrs. Bray, a lady well known as the author of several novels, and wife of a clergyman at Tavistock, published, in a series of letters to Robert Southey, interesting descriptions of the part of Devonshire bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy. In this work there is given an account of the Pixies, from which we derive the following information:
According to the Devon peasant, the Pixies are the souls of infants who died before they were baptised. They are of small dimensions, generally handsome in their form. Their attire is always green. Dancing is their chief amusement, which they perform to the music of the cricket, the grasshopper, and the frog,—always at night; and thus they form the fairy-rings. The Pixy-house is usually in a rock. By moon-light, on the moor, or under the dark shade of rocks, the Pixy-monarch, Mrs. Bray says, holds his court, where, like Titania, he gives his subjects their several charges. Some are sent to the mines, where they will kindly lead the miner to the richest lode, or maliciously, by noises imitating the stroke of the hammer, and by false fires, draw him on to where the worst ore in the mine lies, and then laugh at his disappointment. Others are sent
To make the maids their sluttery rue,
By pinching them both black and blue.
On this account, says Mrs. Bray, “the good dames in this part of the world are very particular in sweeping their houses before they go to bed; and they will frequently place a basin of water beside the chimney-nook, to accommodate the Pixies, who are great lovers of water; and sometimes they requite the good deed by dropping a piece of money into the basin. A young woman of our town, who declared she had received the reward of sixpence for a like service, told the circumstance to her gossips; but no sixpence ever came again, and it was generally believed that the Pixies had taken offence by her chattering, as they do not like to have their deeds, good or evil, talked over by mortal tongues.”
The office of some is to steal children; of others, to lead travellers astray, as Will-o’-the-wisps, or to Pixy-lead them, as it is termed. Some will make confusion in a house by blowing out the candle, or kissing the maids “with a smack, as they ‘shriek Who’s this?’ as the old poet writes, till their grandams come in and lecture them for allowing unseemly freedoms with their bachelors.” Others will make noises in walls, to frighten people. In short, everything that is done elsewhere by fairies, boggarts, or other like beings, is done in Devon by the Pixies.
It is said that they will sometimes aid their favourites in spinning their flax. “I have heard a story about an old woman in this town,” says Mrs. Bray, “who suspected she received assistance of the above nature; and one evening, coming suddenly into the room, she spied a ragged little creature, who jumped out of the door. She thought she would try still further to win the services of her elfin friend, and so bought some smart new clothes, as big as those made for a doll. These pretty things she placed by the side of her wheel. The Pixy returned, and put them on; when, clapping her tiny hands, she was heard to exclaim—
Pixy fine, Pixy gay,
Pixy now will run away;
and off she went. But the ungrateful little creature never spun for the poor old woman after.”
Mrs. Bray has been assured that mothers used frequently to pin their children to their sides, to prevent their being stolen by the Pixies; and she heard of a woman in Tavistock who avowed that her mother had a child which was stolen by them, as she was engaged hanging out clothes to dry in her garden. She almost broke her heart when she discovered it; but she took great care of the changeling, which so pleased the Pixy, that she soon after gave the woman back her child, who proved eminently lucky in after life.
The being Pixy-led is a thing very apt to befall worthy yeomen returning at night from fair or market, especially if they sat long at the market-table; and then, says our authority, “he will declare, and offer to take his Bible-oath upon it, that, as sure as ever he’s alive to tell it, whilst his head was running round like a mill-wheel, he heard with his own ears they bits of Pisgies a-laughing and a-tacking their hands, all to see he led-astray, and never able to find the right road, though he had travelled it scores of times long agone, by night or by day, as a body might tell.” Mr. Thoms, too, was told by a Devon girl, who had often heard of the Pixies, though she had never seen any, that “she once knew a man who, one night, could not find his way out of his own fields, all he could do, until he recollected to turn his coat; and the moment he did so, he heard the Pixies all fly away, up into the trees, and there they sat and laughed. Oh! how they did laugh! But the man then soon found his way out of the field.”
This turning of the coat, or some other article of dress, is found to be the surest remedy against Pixy-illusion. Mrs. Bray says that the old folk in Tavistock have recourse to it as a preventive against being Pixy-led, if they have occasion to go out after sun-down. It appears to have been formerly in use in other parts of England also; for Bishop Corbet thus notices it in his “Iter Boreale:”
William found
A mean for our deliverance, Turne your cloakes
Quoth hee, for Pucke is busy in these oakes;
If ever wee at Bosworth will be found
Then turne your cloakes, for this is fairy ground.
In Scandinavia, also, we learn the remedy against being led astray by the Lygtemand, Lyktgubhe, or Will-o’-the-Wisp, is to turn one’s cap inside out.
Mrs. Bray gives, in addition, the following legends, which we have taken the liberty of abridging a little.
The Pixy-Labour
One night, about twelve o’clock in the morning, as the good folks say, who tell this good tale, Dame —— the sage femme of Tavistock, had just got comfortably into bed, when rap, rap, rap, came on her cottage door, with such bold and continued noise, that there was a sound of authority in every individual knock. Startled and alarmed by the call, she arose from her bed, and soon learnt that the summons was a hasty one to bid her attend on a patient who needed her help. She opened her door, when the summoner appeared to be a strange, squint-eyed, little, ugly old fellow, who had a look, as she said, very like a certain dark personage, who ought not at all times to be called by his proper name. Not at all prepossessed in favour of the errand by the visage of the messenger, she nevertheless could not, or dared not, resist the command to follow him straight, and attend on “his wife.”
“Thy wife!” thought the good dame; “Heaven forgive me, but as sure as I live I be going to the birth of a little divil.” A large coal-black horse, with eyes like balls of fire, stood at the door. The ill-looking old fellow, without more ado, whisked her up on a high pillion in a minute, seated himself before her, and away went horse and riders as if sailing through the air rather than trotting on the ground. How she got to the place of her destination she could not tell; but it was a great relief to her fears when she found herself set down at the door of a neat cottage, saw a couple of tidy children, and remarked her patient to be a decent looking woman, having all things about her fitting the time and occasion. A fine bouncing babe soon made its appearance, who seemed very bold on its entry into life, for it gave the good dame a box on the ear, as, with the coaxing and cajolery of all good old nurses, she declared the “sweet little thing to be very like its father.” The mother said nothing to this, but gave nurse a certain ointment, with directions that she should strike (i. e. rub) the child’s eyes with it. The nurse performed her task, considering what it could be for. She thought that, as no doubt it was a good thing, she might just as well try it upon her own eyes as well as those of the baby; so she made free to strike one of them by way of trial, when, O ye powers of fairy land! what a change was there!
The neat, but homely cottage, and all who were in it, seemed all on a sudden to undergo a mighty transformation; some for the better, some for the worse. The new-made mother appeared as a beautiful lady attired in white; the babe was seen wrapped in swaddling clothes of a silvery gauze. It looked much prettier than before, but still maintained the elfish cast of the eye, like his father, whilst two or three children more had undergone a strange metamorphosis. For there sat on either side the bed’s head, a couple of little flat-nosed imps, who with “mops and mows,” and with many a grimace and grin, were busied to no end in scratching their own polls, or in pulling the fairy lady’s ears with their long and hairy paws. The dame who beheld all this, fearing she knew not what, in the house of enchantment, got away as fast as she could, without saying one word about striking her own eye with the magic ointment and what she had seen. The sour-looking old fellow once more handed her up on the coal-black-horse, and sent her home in a whip sissa348 much faster than she came.
On the next market-day, when she sallied forth to sell her eggs, she saw the same old fellow busy pilfering sundry articles from stall to stall, and going up to him she enquired about his wife and child. “What!” exclaimed he, “do you see me to-day?” “See you! to be sure I do, as plain as I see the sun in the sky; and I see you are busy, too.” “Do you?” says he, “and pray with which eye do you see all this?” “With the right eye to be sure.”
“The ointment! the ointment!” cried he. “Take that, for meddling with what did not belong to you; you shall see me no more.”
He struck her eye as he spoke, and from that hour till the day of her death she was blind of that eye.
Pixy-Vengeance
Two serving-girls in Tavistock said that the Pixies were very kind to them, and used to drop silver for them into a bucket of fair water which they took care to place for them in the chimney-nook every night. Once it was forgotten, and the Pixies forthwith came up to the girls’ room, and loudly complained of the neglect. One of them, who happened to be awake, jogged the other, and proposed going down to rectify the omission, but she said, “for her part she would not stir out of bed to please all the pixies in Devonshire.” The other went down and filled the bucket, in which, by the way, she found next morning a handful of silver pennies. As she was returning, she heard the Pixies debating about what they would do to punish the other. Various modes were proposed and rejected; at last it was agreed to give her a lame leg for a term of seven years, then to be cured by an herb growing on Dartmoor, whose name of seven syllables was pronounced in a clear and audible tone. This the girl tried by every known means to fix in her memory. But when she awoke in the morning, it was gone, and she could only tell that Molly was to be lame for seven years, and then be cured by an herb with a strange name. As for Molly, she arose dead lame, and so she continued till the end of the period, when one day, as she was picking up a mushroom, a strange-looking boy started up and insisted on striking her leg with a plant which he held in his hand. He did so, and she was cured and became the best dancer in the town.
Pixy-Gratitude
An old woman who lived near Tavistock had in her garden a splendid bed of tulips. To these the Pixies of the neighbourhood loved to resort, and often at midnight might they be heard singing their babes to rest among them. By their magic power they made the tulips more beautiful and more permanent than any other tulips, and they caused them to emit a fragrance equal to that of the rose. The old woman was so fond of her tulips that she would never let one of them be plucked, and thus the Pixies were never deprived of their floral bowers.
But at length the old woman died; the tulips were taken up, and the place converted into a parsley-bed. Again, however, the power of the Pixies was shown; the parsley withered, and nothing would grow even in the other beds of the garden. On the other hand, they tended diligently the grave of the old woman, around which they were heard lamenting and singing dirges. They suffered not a weed to grow on it; they kept it always green, and evermore in spring-time spangled with wild flowers.
Thus far for the Pixies of Devon; as for the adjoining Somerset, all we have to say is, that a good woman from that county, with whom we were acquainted, used, when making a cake, always to draw a cross upon it. This, she said, was in order to prevent the Vairies from dancing on it. She described these Vairies as being very small people, who, with the vanity natural to little personages, wear high-heeled shoes, and if a new-made cake be not duly crossed, they imprint on it in their capers the marks of their heels. Of the actual existence of the Vairies, she did not seem to entertain the shadow of a doubt.
In Dorset also, the Pixy-lore still lingers. The being is called Pexy and Colepexy; the fossil belemnites are named Colepexies’-fingers; and the fossil echini, Colepexies’-heads. The children, when naughty, are also threatened with the Pexy, who is supposed to haunt woods and coppices.349
“In Hampshire,” says Captain Grose, “they give the name of Colt-Pixy to a supposed spirit or fairy, which in the shape of a horse wickers, i. e. neighs, and misleads horses into bogs, etc.”
The following is a Hampshire legend:350
The Fairy-Thieves
A farmer in Hampshire was sorely distressed by the unsettling of his barn. However straightly over-night he laid his sheaves on the threshing-floor for the application of the morning’s flail, when morning came, all was topsy-turvy, higgledy-piggledy, though the door remained locked, and there was no sign whatever of irregular entry. Resolved to find out who played him these mischievous pranks, Hodge couched himself one night deeply among the sheaves, and watched for the enemy. At length midnight arrived, the barn was illuminated as if by moonbeams of wonderful brightness, and through the key-hole came thousands of elves, the most diminutive that could be imagined. They immediately began their gambols among the straw, which was soon in a most admired disorder. Hodge wondered, but interfered not; but at last the supernatural thieves began to busy themselves in a way still less to his taste, for each elf set about conveying the crop away, a straw at a time, with astonishing activity and perseverance. The key-hole was still their port of egress and regress, and it resembled the aperture of a bee-hive, on a sunny day in June. The farmer was rather annoyed at seeing his grain vanish in this fashion, when one of the fairies said to another in the tiniest voice that ever was heard—“I weat, you weat?” Hodge could contain himself no longer. He leaped out crying, “The devil sweat ye. Let me get among ye!” when they all flew away so frightened that they never disturbed the barn any more.
In Suffolk the fairies are called farisees. Not many years ago, a butcher near Woodbridge went to a farmer’s to buy a calf, and finding, as he expressed it, that “the cratur was all o’ a muck,” he desired the farmer to hang a flint by a string in the crib, so as to be just clear of the calf’s head. “Becaze,” said he, “the calf is rid every night by the farisees, and the stone will brush them off.”351
We once questioned a girl from Norfolk on the subject of Fairy-lore. She said she had often heard of and even seen the Frairies. They were dressed in white, and lived under the ground, where they constructed houses, bridges, and other edifices. It is not safe, she added, to go near them when they appear above ground.
We now proceed to Yorkshire, where the Boggart and the Barguest used to appear in by-gone days. The former, whose name we will presently explain, is the same as the Brownie or Kobold; the latter, whose proper name perhaps is Barn-ghaist, or Barn-spirit, keeps without, and usually takes the form of some domestic animal.
The Boggart
In the house of an honest farmer in Yorkshire, named George Gilbertson, a Boggart had taken up his abode. He here caused a good deal of annoyance, especially by tormenting the children in various ways. Sometimes their bread and butter would be snatched away, or their porringers of bread and milk be capsized by an invisible hand; for the Boggart never let himself be seen; at other times, the curtains of their beds would be shaken backwards and forwards, or a heavy weight would press on and nearly suffocate them. The parents had often, on hearing their cries, to fly to their aid. There was a kind of closet, formed by a wooden partition on the kitchen-stairs, and a large knot having been driven out of one of the deal-boards of which it was made, there remained a hole.352 Into this one day the farmer’s youngest boy stuck the shoe-horn with which he was amusing himself, when immediately it was thrown out again, and struck the boy on the head. The agent was of course the Boggart, and it soon became their sport (which they called laking353 with Boggart) to put the shoe-horn into the hole and have it shot back at them.
The Boggart at length proved such a torment that the farmer and his wife resolved to quit the house and let him have it all to himself. This was put into execution, and the farmer and his family were following the last loads of furniture, when a neighbour named John Marshall came up—“Well, Georgey,” said he, “and soa you’re leaving t’ould hoose at last?”—“Heigh, Johnny, my lad, I’m forced tull it; for that damned Boggart torments us soa, we can neither rest neet nor day for’t. It seems loike to have such a malice again t’poor bairns, it ommost kills my poor dame here at thoughts on’t, and soa, ye see, we’re forced to flitt loike.” He scarce had uttered the words when a voice from a deep upright churn cried out, “Aye, aye, Georgey, we’re flitting ye see.”—“Od damn thee,” cried the poor farmer, “if I’d known thou’d been there, I wadn’t ha’ stirred a peg. Nay, nay, it’s no use, Mally,” turning to his wife, “we may as weel turn back again to t’ould hoose as be tormented in another that’s not so convenient.”354
Addlers and Menters
An old lady in Yorkshire related as follows:—My eldest daughter Betsey was about four years old; I remember it was on a fine summer’s afternoon, or rather evening, I was seated in this chair which I now occupy. The child had been in the garden, she came into that entry or passage from the kitchen (on the right side of the entry was the old parlour-door, on the left the door of the common sitting-room; the mother of the child was in a line with both the doors); the child, instead of turning towards the sitting-room made a pause at the parlour-door, which was open. She stood several minutes quite still; at last I saw her draw her hand quickly towards her body; she set up a loud shriek and ran, or rather flew, to me crying out “Oh! Mammy, green man will hab me! green man will hab me!” It was a long time before I could pacify her; I then asked her why she was so frightened. “O Mammy,” she said, “all t’parlour is full of addlers and menters.” Elves and fairies (spectres?) I suppose she meant. She said they were dancing, and a little man in a green coat with a gold laced cocked hat on his head, offered to take her hand as if he would have her as his partner in the dance. The mother, upon hearing this, went and looked into the old parlour, but the fairy vision had melted into thin air. “Such,” adds the narrator, “is the account I heard of this vision of fairies. The person is still alive who witnessed or supposed she saw it, and though a well-informed person, still positively asserts the relation to be strictly true.355
Ritson, who was a native of the bishopriek of Durham, tells us356 that the fairies frequented many parts of it; that they were described as being of the smallest size, and uniformly habited in green. They could, however, change their size and appearance. “A woman,” he says, “who had been in their society challenged one of the guests whom she espied in the market selling fairy-butter.357 This freedom was deeply resented, and cost her the eye she first saw him with. Some one informed him that an acquaintance of his in Westmoreland, wishing to see a fairy, was told that on such a day on the side of such a hill, he should be gratified. He went, and there, to use his own words, “the hobgoblin stood before him in the likeness of a green-coat lad,” but vanished instantly. This, he said, the man told him. A female relation of his own told Mr. Ritson of Robin Goodfellow’s, it would seem, thrashing the corn, churning the butter, drinking the milk, etc., and when all was done, lying before the fire “like a great rough hurgin (hugging?) bear.”358
The Barguest used also to appear in the shape of a mastiff-dog and other animals, and terrify people with his skrikes (shrieks). There was a Barguest named the Picktree Brag, whose usual form was that of a little galloway, “in which shape a farmer, still or lately living thereabouts, reported that it had come to him one night as he was going home; that he got upon it and rode very quietly till it came to a great pond, to which it ran and threw him in, and went laughing away.”
In Northumberland the belief in the fairies is not yet extinct. The writer from whom we derive the following legends tells us359 that he knew an old man whose dog had pointed a troop of fairies,360 and though he could not see them he plainly heard their music sounding like a fiddle and a very small pair of pipes. He also tells us, that many years ago a girl who lived near Nether Witton, as she was returning from milking with her pail on her head, saw the fairies playing in the fields, and though she pointed them out to her companions they could not see them. The reason it seemed was her weise or pad for bearing the pail on her head was composed of four-leaved clover, which gives the power of seeing fairies. Spots are pointed out in sequestered places as the favourite haunts of the elves. A few miles from Alnwick is a fairy-ring, round which if people run more than nine times, some evil will befall them. The children constantly run this number, but nothing will induce them to venture a tenth run.
The Fary Nurseling
A cottager and his wife residing at Nether Witton were one day visited by a fary and his spouse with their young child, which they wished to leave in their charge. The cottager agreed to take care of the child for a certain period when it had to be taken thence. The fary gave the man a box of ointment with which to anoint the child’s eyes; but he had not on any account to touch himself with it, or some misfortune would befal him. For a long time he and his wife were very careful to avoid the dangerous unction; but one day when his wife was out curiosity overcame his prudence, and he anointed his eyes without any noticeable effect; but after a while, when walking through Long Horsley Fair, he met the male fary and accosted him. He started back in amazement at the recognition; but instantly guessing the truth, blew on the eyes of the cottager, and instantly blinded him. The child was never more seen.
The Fary Labour
Another tale relates that a messenger having visited a country midwife or howdie requested her professional assistance in a case where so much secrecy was required that she must be conducted to and from the destined place blindfolded; she at first hesitated, but her scruples were overcome by a handsome present, the promise of a future reward, and assurance of perfect personal safety. She then submitted to the required condition, mounted behind the messenger on a fleet charger, and was carried forward in an unaccountable manner. The journey was not of long continuance, the steed halted, she dismounted, and was conducted into a cottage where the bandage was removed from her eyes; everything appeared neat and comfortable. She was shown the woman “in the straw,” and performed her office; but when ready to dress the babe, an old woman, (who, according to the narration, appears to have been the nurse,) put a box of ointment into her hand, requiring her to anoint the child all over with it, but to be careful that it did not touch her own person; she prudently complied, though wondering at the motive. Whilst this operation was going on, she felt an itching in one of her eyes, and in an unguarded moment rubbed it with a finger which had touched the mysterious ointment. And now a new scene forced itself upon her astonished vision, and she saw everything in a different light; instead of the neat cottage, she perceived the large overhanging branches of an ancient oak, whose hollow and moss-grown trunk she had before mistaken for the fire place, glowworms supplied the place of lamps, and, in short, she found herself in the abode of a family of faries, with faries was she surrounded, and one of their number reposed on her lap. She however retained her self-possession, finished her task, and was conducted homeward in the same manner as she was brought. So far all went well, and the howdie might have carried the secret to her grave, but in after time, on a market-day (in what town the legend saith not,) forgetful of her former caution, she saw the old nurse among the countrywomen, gliding about from one basket to another, passing a little wooden scraper along the rolls of butter, and carefully collecting the particles thus purloined into a vessel hung by her side. After a mutual but silent recognition, the nurse addressed her thus, “Which eye do you see me with?” “With this,” innocently answered the other. No sooner had she spoken than a puff from the withering breath of her unearthly companion extinguished the ill-fated orb for ever, and the hag instantly vanished.
Another version says the Doctor is presented with a box of eye-salve by his conductor; on using it he sees a splendid portico in the side of a steep hill, through this he is shown into the faries’ hall in the interior of the mountain: he performs his office, and on coming out receives a second box; he rubs one eye, and with it sees the hill in its natural shape; then thinking to cheat the devil, feigns to rub the other, and gallops off. Afterwards he sees the fary’s husband stealing corn in the market, when similar consequences befal him as those which occurred unto the woman.
Ainsel
A widow and her son, a little boy, lived together in a cottage in or near the village of Rothley, Northumberland. One winter’s evening the child refused to go to bed with his mother, as he wished to sit up for a while longer, “for,” said he, “I am not sleepy.” The mother finding remonstrance in vain, at last told him that if he sat up by himself the faries would most certainly come and take him away. The boy laughed as his mother went to bed, leaving him sitting by the fire; he had not been there long, watching the fire and enjoying its cheerful warmth, till a beautiful little figure, about the size of a child’s doll, descended the chimney and alighted on the hearth! The little fellow was somewhat startled at first, but its prepossessing smile as it paced to and fro before him soon overcame his fears, and he inquired familiarly, “What do they ca’ thou?” “Ainsel,” answered the little thing haughtily, at the same time retorting the question, “And what do they ca’ thou?” “My ainsel’,” answered the boy; and they commenced playing together like two children newly acquainted. Their gambols continued quite innocently until the fire began to grow dim; the boy then took up the poker to stir it, when a hot cinder accidently fell upon the foot of his playmate; her tiny voice was instantly raised to a most terrific roar, and the boy had scarcely time to crouch into the bed behind his mother, before the voice of the old fary-mother was heard shouting, “Who’s done it? Who’s done it?” “Oh! it was my ainsel!” answered the daughter. “Why, then,” said the mother, as she kicked her up the chimney, “what’s all this noise for: there’s nyon (i.e. no one) to blame.”
Such is the sum of what we have been able to collect respecting the popular fairy-lore of England, the largest and most complete collection that, to our knowledge, has ever been made. We might venture to add that little more is ever likely to be collected, for the sounds of the cotton-mill, the steam-engine, and, more than all, the whistle of the railway train, more powerful than any exorcists, have banished, or soon will banish, the fairy tribes from all their accustomed haunts, and their name and their exploits will in future be found in works like the present rather than in village tradition.
As the merry spirit, Puck, is so prominent an actor in the scenes forming our next division, this may be deemed no unfitting place for the consideration of his various appellations; such as Puck, Robin Good-fellow, Robin Hood, Hobgoblin.
Puck is evidently the same with the old word Pouke,361 the original meaning of which would seem to be devil, demon, or evil spirit. We first meet with it in the Vision of Piers Ploughman, where it undoubtedly signifies ‘the grand adversary of God and man.’
When, in this poem,362 the Seer beholds Abraham, the personification of Faith, with his “wide clothes,” within which lay a Lazar,
Amonges patriarkes and prophetes,
Pleying togideres,
and asks him what was there,
| Loo! quod he, and leet me see. | Ne no buyrn be oure borgh, |
| Lord mercy! I seide; | Ne bringe us from his daunger; |
| This is a present of muche pris, | Out of the poukes pondfold |
| What prynce shal it have? | No maynprise may us fecche, |
| It is a precious present, quod he, | Til he come that I carpe of, |
| Ac the pouke it hath attached, | Crist is his name, |
| And me theremyde, quod that man, | That shall delivere us som day |
| May no wed us quyte, | Out of the develes power. |
Golding also must have understood Pooke in the sense of devil, when in the ninth book of his translation of Ovid, unauthorised however by the original, he applies it to the Chimæra,
The country where Chymæra, that same pooke
Hath goatish body, lion’s head and brist, and dragon’s tayle.
Spenser employs the word, and he clearly distinguishes it from hob-goblin:
Ne let housefires nor lightnings helpless harms,
Ne let the pouke363 nor other evil sprites,
Ne let mischievous witches with their charms,
Ne let hob-goblins, names whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not.—Epithalamion, v. 340.
These terms are also distinguished in the poem named The Scourge of Venus:
And that they may perceive the heavens frown,
The poukes and goblins pull the coverings down.
In Ben Jonson’s play of The Devil is an Ass, the unlucky fiend who gives origin to its name is called Pug, and in the same author’s Sad Shepherd the personage named Puck-hairy is, as Gifford justly observes, “not the Fairy or Oriental Puck, though often confounded with him.”364 In truth, it is first in Shakespeare that we find Puck confounded with the House-spirit, and having those traits of character which are now regarded as his very essence, and have caused his name Pug to be given to the agile mischievous monkey, and to a kind of little dog.
We will now discuss the origin of this far-famed appellation and its derivation.
In the Slavonic tongues, which are akin to the Teutonic, Bôg is God, and there are sleights of etymology which would identify the two terms; the Icelandic Puki is an evil spirit, and such we have seen was the English Pouke, which easily became Puck, Pug, and Bug; finally, in Friesland the Kobold is called Puk, and in old German we meet with Putz or Butz as the name of a being not unlike the original English Puck.365 The Devonshire fairies are called Pixies, and the Irish have their Pooka, and the Welsh their Pwcca, both derived from Pouke or Puck. From Bug comes the Scottish Bogle, (which Gawin Douglas expressly distinguishes from the Brownie) and the Yorkshire Boggart.366 The Swedish language has the terms spöka, spöke; the Danish spöge, spögelse, the German, spuken, spuk, all used of spirits or ghosts, and their apparitions. Perhaps the Scottish pawkey, sly, knowing, may belong to the same family of words. Akin to Bogle was the old English term Puckle, noticed above, which is still retained in the sense of mischievous, as in Peregrine Pickle and Little Pickle. It has been conjectured367 that Picklehäring, the German term for zany or merry-andrew, may have been properly Picklehärin, i.e. the hairy sprite, answering to Jonson’s Puck-hairy, and that he may have worn a vesture of hair or leaves to be rough like the Brownie and kindred beings.
From Bug also come Bugbear, and Bugleboo, or Bugaboo. They owe their origin probably to the Ho! Ho! Ho! given to Puck or Robin Goodfellow, as it was to the Devil (i.e., Pouke) in the Mysteries. Bull-beggar may be only a corruption of Bugbear.368
The following passage from a writer of the present day proves that in some places the idea of Puck as a spirit haunting the woods and fields is still retained. “The peasantry,” says Mr. Allies,369 “of Alfrick and those parts of Worcestershire, say that they are sometimes what they call Poake-ledden, that is, that they are occasionally waylaid in the night by a mischievous sprite whom they call Poake, who leads them into ditches, bogs, pools, and other such scrapes, and then sets up a loud laugh and leaves them quite bewildered in the lurch.” This is what in Devon is called being Pixy-led. We may observe the likeness here to the Puck of Shakspeare and Drayton, who were both natives of the adjoining county.
A further proof perhaps of Puck’s rural and extern character is the following rather trifling circumstance. An old name of the fungus named puffball is puckfist, which is plainly Puck’s-fist, and not puff-fist as Nares conjectured; for its Irish name is Cos-a-Phooka, or Pooka’s-foot, i.e., Puck’s-foot. We will add by the way, that the Anglo-Saxon old english Wulold english feold english s-old english fiold english sold english t, Wolf’s-fist, is rendered in the dictionaries toadstool, mushroom, and we cannot help suspecting that as wolf and elf were sometimes confounded, and wolf and fist are, in fact, incompatible terms, this was originally Ælold english feold english s-old english fiold english sold english t Elf’s-fist, and that the mushrooms meant were not the thick ugly toadstools, the “grislie todestooles,” of Spenser, but those delicate fungi called in Ireland fairy-mushrooms, and which perhaps in England also were ascribed to the fairies.370
So much then for Puck; we will now consider some other terms.
Robin Goodfellow, of whom we have given above a full account, is evidently a domestic spirit, answering in name and character to the Nisse God-dreng of Scandinavia, the Knecht Ruprecht, i.e., Robin of Germany. He seems to unite in his person the Boggart and Barguest of Yorkshire.
Hob-goblin is, as we have seen, another name of the same spirit. Goblin is the French gobelin, German Kobold; Hob is Rob, Robin, Bob; just as Hodge is Roger. We still have the proper names Hobbs, Hobson, like Dix, Dixon, Wills, Wilson; by the way, Hick, i. e. Dick, from Richard, still remains in Hicks, Hickson.
Robin Hood, though we can produce no instance of it, must, we think, also have been an appellation of this spirit, and been given to the famed outlaw of merry Sherwood, from his sportive character and his abiding in the recesses of the greenwood. The hood is a usual appendage of the domestic spirit.
Roguery and sportiveness are, we may see, the characteristics of this spirit. Hence it may have been that the diminutives of proper names were given to him, and even to the Ignis Fatuus, which in a country like England, that was in general dry and free from sloughs and bog-holes, was mischievous rather than dangerous.371 But this seems to have been a custom of our forefathers, for we find the devil himself called Old Nick, and Old Davy is the sailor’s familiar name for Death.
In the Midsummer Night’s Dream the fairy says to Puck “Thou Lob of spirits;” Milton has the lubber-fiend, and Fletcher says,372 “There is a pretty tale of a witch that had a giant to be her son that was called Lob Lie-by-the-fire.” This might lead us to suppose that Lob, whence loby (looby), lubbard, lubber,373 and adding the diminutive kin, Lubberkin, a name of one of the clowns in Gay’s Pastorals, was an original name of some kind of spirit. We shall presently see that the Irish name of the Leprechaun is actually Lubberkin. As to the origin of the name we have little to say, but it may have had a sense the very opposite of the present one of lubber, and have been connected with the verb to leap.374 Grimm375 tells of a spirit named the Good Lubber, to whom the bones of animals used to be offered at Mansfield in Germany; but we see no resemblance between him and our Lob of spirits; we might rather trace a connexion with the French Lutin, Lubin.376 The phrase of being in or getting into Lob’s Pound (like the “Pouke’s pondfold,”) is easy of explanation, if we suppose Lob to be a sportive spirit. It is equivalent to being Poake-ledden or Pixy-led.
Wight, answering to the German Wicht, seems to have been used in the time of Chaucer for elf or fairy, most probably for such as haunted houses, or it may have had the signification of witch, which is evidently another form of it. In the Miller’s Tale the carpenter says,
I crouchè thee from elvès and from wights.
And
Jesu Crist, and Seint Benedight,
Blisse this house from every wicked wight!377
Urchin is a term which, like elf and such like, we still apply to children, but which seems formerly to have been one of the appellations of the fairies. Reginald Scott, as we have seen, places it in his list, and we find it in the following places of the poets:—
Urchins
Shall for the vast of night that they may work
All exercise on thee.—Tempest, i. 2.
His spirits hear me,
And yet I needs must curse; but they’ll not pinch.
Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i’ the mire,
Nor lead me like a fire-brand in the dark
Out of my way, unless he bid ’em.—Ib. ii. 2.
Like urchins, ouphs, and fairies.
Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 4.
Elves, urchins, goblins all, and little fairyes.
Mad Pranks, etc., p. 38.
Great store of goblins, fairies, bugs, nightmares,
Urchins, and elves, to many a house repairs.
Old Poem, in Brand, ii. 514.
Trip it, little urchins all.
Maid’s Metamorphosis.
Helping all urchin-blasts and ill-luck signs,
That the shrewd meddling elfe delights to make.
Comus, 845.
Urchin is a hedgehog, as Stevens has justly observed,378 and in these lines of Titus Andronicus (ii. 3.)
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
it probably has this sense. We still call the echinus marinus the Sea-urchin. Still as we have no analogy, but rather the contrary, for transferring the name of an animal to the elves, we feel inclined to look for a different origin of the term as applied to these beings. The best or rather only hypothesis we have met with379 is that which finds it in the hitherto unexplained word Orcneas in Beówulf, which may have been Orcenas, and if, as we have supposed,380 the Anglo-Saxons sometimes pronounced c before e and i in the Italian manner, we should have, if needed, the exact word. We would also notice the old German urkinde, which Grimm renders nanus.381
We now come to the poets.
In Beówulf, an Anglo-Saxon poem, supposed not to be later than the seventh century, we meet with the following verse,
“Eotenas, and Ylfe,
And Orcneas.”
The first of these words is evidently the same as the Iötunn or Giants of the northern mythology; the second is as plainly its Alfar, and we surely may be excused for supposing that the last may be the same as its Duergar.
Layamon, in the twelfth century, in his poetic paraphrase of Wace’s Brut,382 thus expands that poet’s brief notice of the birth of Arthur:—
“Ertur son nom; de sa bunte
Ad grant parole puis este.”
| Sone swa he com on eorthe, | So soon he came on earth, |
| Alven hine ivengen. | Elves received him. |
| 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 Fées 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, Fées, 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 oldè dayès of the king Artoúr,
Of which that Bretons speken gret honoúr,
All was this lond fulfilled of faërie;384
The Elf-quene with her joly compagnie,
Danced ful oft in many a grenè mede.
This was the old opinion as I rede;
I speke of many hundred yeres ago.
But now can no man see non elvès mo,
For now the gretè charitee and prayéres
Of limitoures, and other holy freres,
That serchen every land and every streme,
As thikke as motès in the sonnè-beme,
Blissing halles, chambres, kichenès, and boures,
Citees and burghès, castles highe, and toures,
Thropès385 and bernès, shepenes and dairiés,
This maketh that there ben no faëries;
For there as wont to walken was an elf,
There walketh now the limitour himself,
In undermelès,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 dishonoúr.
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 dancè go
Of ladies foure and twenty, and yet mo:
Toward this ilke dance he drow ful yerne,
In hope that he som wisdom shuldè lerne;
But certainly, er he came fully there,
Yvanished was this dance, he n’iste not wher;
No creäture saw he that barè 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 faërie387
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 Faërie,
And many a ladye in his compagnie,
Folwing his wif, the quene Proserpina,
Which that he ravisshed out of Ethná,
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 Faërie adoun him sette
Upon a benche of turvès, 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 setè nat of all the vilanie
That he of women wrote a boterflie;
I am a woman nedès moste I speke,
Or swell unto that time min hertè 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 horríble a fendliche creätúre,
That in the castle, non so hardy was,
That any whilè dorste therein endure.
The mother was an elfe by áventure,
Y come, by charmès 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 Nymphæ. 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.