Brownies and Bogles Part 1

Brownies and Bogles.

by Louise Imogen Guiney.

CHAPTER I.

WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID.

A FAIRY is a humorous person sadly out of fashion at present, who has had, nevertheless, in the actors' phrase, a long and prosperous run on this planet. When we speak of fairies nowadays, we think only of small sprites who live in a kingdom of their own, with manners, laws, and privileges very different from ours. But there was a time when "fairy"

suggested also the knights and ladies of romance, about whom fine spirited tales were told when the world was younger. Spenser's Faery Queen, for instance, deals with dream-people, beautiful and brave, as do the old stories of Arthur and Roland; people who either never lived, or who, having lived, were glorified and magnified by tradition out of all kinship with common men. Our fairies are fairies in the modern sense. We will make it a rule, from the beginning, that they must be small, and we will put out any who are above the regulation height. Such as the charming famous Melusina, who wails upon her tower at the death of a Lusignan, we may as well skip; for she is a tall young lady, with a serpent's tail, to boot, and thus, alas! half-monster; for if we should accept any like her in our plan, there is no reason why we should not get confused among mermaids and dryads, and perhaps end by scoring down great Juno herself as a fairy! Many a dwarf and goblin, whom we shall meet anon, is as big as a child. Again, there are rumors in nearly every country of finding hundreds of them on a square inch of oak-leaf, or beneath the thin shadow of a blade of gra.s.s. The fairies of popular belief are little and somewhat shrivelled, and quite as apt to be malignant as to be frolicsome and gentle. We shall find that they were divided into several cla.s.ses and families; but there is much a.n.a.logy and vagueness among these divisions. By and by you may care to study them for yourselves; at present, we shall be very high-handed with the science of folk-lore, and pay no attention whatever to learned gentlemen, who quarrel so foolishly about these things that it is not helpful, nor even funny, to listen to them. A widely-spread notion is that when our crusading forefathers went to the Holy Land, they heard the Paynim soldiers, whom they fought, speaking much of the Peri, the loveliest beings imaginable, who dwelt in the East. Now, the Arabian language, which these swarthy warriors used, has no letter P, and therefore they called their spirits Feri, as did the Crusaders after them; and the word went back with them to Europe, and slipped into general use.

"Elf" and "goblin," too, are interesting to trace. There was a great Italian feud, in the twelfth century, between the German Emperor and the Pope, whose separate partisans were known as the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. As time went on, and the memory of that long strife was still fresh, a descendant of the Guelfs would put upon anybody he disliked the odious name of Ghibelline; and the latter, generation after generation, would return the compliment ardently, in his own fashion.

Both terms, finally, came to be mere catch-words for abuse and reproach.

And the fairies, falling into disfavor with some bold mortals, were angrily nicknamed "elf" and "goblin"; in which shape you will recognize the last threadbare reminder of the once bitter and historic faction of Guelf and Ghibelline.

It is likely that the tribe were designated as fairies because they were, for the most part, fair to see, and full of grace and charm, especially among the Celtic branches; and people, at all times, had too much desire to keep their good-will, and too much shrinking from their rancor and spite, to give them any but the most flattering t.i.tles. They were seldom addressed otherwise than "the little folk," "the kind folk,"

"the gentry," "the fair family," "the blessings of their mothers," and "the dear wives"; just as, thousands of years back, the n.o.blest and cleverest nation the world has ever seen, called the dreaded Three "Eumenides," the gracious ones. It is a sure and fast maxim that wheedling human nature puts on its best manners when it is afraid. In Goldsmith's racy play, She Stoops to Conquer, old Mistress Hardcastle meets what she takes to be a robber. She hates robbers, of course, and is scared half out of her five wits; but she implores mercy with a cowering politeness at which n.o.body can choose but laugh, of her "good Mr. Highwayman." Now, fairies, who knew how to be bountiful and tender, and who made slaves of themselves to serve men and women, as we shall see, were easily offended, and wrought great mischief and revenge if they were not treated handsomely; all of which kept people in the habit of courtesy toward them. A whirlwind of dust is a very annoying thing, and makes one splutter, and feel absurdly resentful; but in Ireland, exactly as in modern Greece, the peasantry thought that it betokened the presence of fairies going a journey; so they lifted their hats gallantly, and said: "G.o.d speed you, gentlemen!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "G.o.d SPEED YOU, GENTLEMEN!"]

Fairies had their followers and votaries from early times. Nothing in the Bible hints that they were known among the heathens with whom the Israelites warred; nothing in cla.s.sic mythology has any approach to them, except the beautiful wood and water-nymphs. Yet poet Homer, Pliny the scientist, and Aristotle the philosopher, had some notion of them, and of their influence. In old China, whole mountains were peopled with them, and the coriander-seeds grown in their gardens gave long life to those who ate of them. The Persians had a hierarchy of elves, and were the first to set aside Fairyland as their dwelling-place. Saxons, in their wild forests, believed in tiny dwarves or demons called Duergar.

Celtic countries, Scotland, Brittany, Ireland, Wales, were always crowded with them. In the "uttermost mountains of India, under a merry part of heaven," or by the h.o.a.ry Nile, according to other writers, were the Pigmeos, one cubit high, full-grown at three years, and old at seven, who fought with cranes for a livelihood. And the Swiss alchemist, Paracelsus (a most pompous and amusing old bigwig), wrote that in his day all Germany was filled with fairies two feet long, walking about in little coats!

Their favorite color, noticeably in Great Britain, was green; the majority of them wore it, and grudged its adoption by a mortal. Sir Walter Scott tells us that it was a fatal hue to several families in his country, to the entire gallant race of Grahames in particular; for in battle a Grahame was almost always shot through the green check of his plaid. French fairies went in white; the Nis of Jutland, and many other house-sprites, in red and gray, or red and brown; and the plump Welsh goblins, whose holiday dress was also white, in the gayest and most varied tints of all. In North Wales were "the old elves of the blue petticoat"; in Cardiganshire was the familiar green again, though it was never seen save in the month of May; and in Pembrokeshire, a uniform of jolly scarlet gowns and caps. The fairy gentlemen were quite as much given to finery as the ladies, and their general air was one of extreme cheerful dandyism. Only the mine and ground-fairies were attired in sombre colors. Indeed, their idea of clothes was delightfully liberal; an elf bespoke himself by what he chose to wear; and fashions ranged all the way from the sprites of the Orkney Islands, who strutted about in armor, to the little Heinzelmanchen of Cologne, who scorned to be burdened with so much as a hat!

People accounted in strange ways for their origin. A legend, firmly held in Iceland, says that once upon a time Eve was washing a number of her children at a spring, and when the Lord appeared suddenly before her, she hustled and hid away those who were not already clean and presentable; and that they being made forever invisible after, became the ancestors of the "little folk," who pervade the hills and caves and ruins to this day. In Ireland and Scotland fairies were spoken of as a wandering remnant of the fallen angels. The Christian world over, they were deemed either for a while, or perpetually, to be locked out from the happiness of the blessed in the next world. The Bretons thought their Korrigans had been great Gallic princesses, who refused the new faith, and clung to their pagan G.o.ds, and fell under a curse because of their stubbornness. The Small People of Cornwall, too, were imagined to be the ancient inhabitants of that country, long before Christ was born, not good enough for Heaven, and yet too good to be condemned altogether, whose fate it is to stray about, growing smaller and smaller, until by and by they vanish from the face of the earth.

Therefore the poor fairy-folk, with whom theology deals so rudely, were supposed to be tired waiting, and anxious to know how they might fare everlastingly; and they waylaid many mortals, who, of course, really could tell them nothing, to ask whether they might not get into Heaven, by chance, at the end. It was their chief cause of doubt and melancholy, and ran in their little minds from year to year. And since we shall revert no more to the sad side of fairy-life, let us close with a most sweet story of something which happened in Sweden, centuries ago.

Two boys were gambolling by a river, when a Neck rose up to the air, smiling, and tw.a.n.ging his harp. The elder child watched him, and cried mockingly: "Neck! what is the good of your sitting there and playing?

You will never be saved!" And the Neck's sensitive eyes filled with tears, and, dropping his harp, he sank forlornly to the bottom. But when the brothers had gone home, and told their wise and saintly father, he said they had been thoughtlessly unkind; and he bade them hurry back to the river, and comfort the little water-spirit. From afar off they saw him again on the surface, weeping bitterly. And they called to him: "Dear Neck! do not grieve; for our father says that your Redeemer liveth also." Then he threw back his bright head, and, taking his harp, sang and played with exceeding gladness until sunset was long past, and the first star sent down its benediction from the sky.

CHAPTER II.

FAIRY RULERS.

THE forming of character among the fairy-folk was a very simple and sensible matter. You will imagine that the Pagan, Druid and Christian elves varied greatly. And they did; still their morals had nothing to do with it, nor pride, nor patriotism, nor descent, nor education; nor would all the philosophy you might crowd into a thimble have made one bee-big resident of j.a.pan different from a man of his own size in Spain.

They saved themselves no end of trouble by setting up the local barometer as their standard. The only Bible they knew was the weather, and they followed it stoutly. Whatever the climate was, whatever it had helped to make the grown-up nation who lived under it, that, every time, were the "brownies and bogles." Where the land was rocky and grim, and subject to wild storms and sudden darknesses, the fairies were grim and wild too, and full of wicked tricks. Where the landscape was level and green, and the crops grew peacefully, they were tame, as in central England, and inclined to be sentimental.

And they copied the distinguishing traits of the race among whom they dwelt. A frugal Breton fairy spoke the Breton dialect; the Neapolitan had a tooth for fruits and macaroni; the Chinese was ceremonious and stern; a true Provencal fee was as vain as a peac.o.c.k, flirting a mirror before her, and an Irish elf, bless his little red feathered caubeen!

was never the man to run away from a fight.

If you look on the map, and see a section of coast-line like that of Cornwall or Norway, a sunshiny, perilous, foamy place, make up your mind that the fairies thereabouts were fellows worth knowing; that you would have needed all your wit and pluck to get the better of them, and that they would have made live, hearty playmates, too, while in good humor, for any brave boy or girl.

We do not know nearly so much about the genuine fairies as we should like. They must have been, at one time or another, in every European country. Most of the Oriental spirits were taller, and of another brood; they figured either as demons, or as what we should now call angels. But in the Germanic colonies, from very old days, fairy-lore was finely developed, and we count up tribe on tribe of necks, nixies, stromkarls and mermaids, who were water-sprites; of bergmannchen (little men of the mountain), and lovely wild-women in hilly places; of trolls around the woods and rocks; of elves in the air, and gnomes or duergars in caverns or mines. Yet from Portugal, and Russia, and Hungary, and from our own North American Indians, we learn so little that it is not worth counting.

If the good dear peasants who were acquainted with the fairies had made more rhymes about them, and handed them down more attentively; if it had occurred to the knowing scholar-monks to keep diaries of elfin doings, as it would have done had they but known how soon their little friends were to be extinct, like the glyptodon and the dodo, how wise should we not be!

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NEAPOLITAN FAIRY.]

But again, though there were hosts of supernatural beings in the beliefs of every old land, we have no business with any but the wee ones. And as these were settled most thickly in the Teutonic, Celtic and Cymric countries, we will turn our curiosity thither, without farther grumbling, and be glad to get so much authentic news of them as we may.

Fairies, as a whole, seem at bottom rather weak and disconsolate. For all of their magic and cunning, for all of their high station, and its feasting and glory, they could not keep from seeking human sympathy.

They did, indeed, hurt men, resent intrusions, foretell the future, and call down disease and storm, but they stood in awe of the weakest mortal because of his superior strength and size; they came to him to borrow food and medicine, and even to ask the loan of his house for their revels. They rendered themselves invisible, but he had always at his feet the fern-seed, the talisman of four-leaved clover (or, as in Scotland, the leaf of the ash or rowan-tree), with which he could defeat their design, and protect himself against the attacks of any witch, imp, or fairy whatsoever.

Their government was a happy-go-lucky affair. The various tribes of fairies had no common interests which would make them sigh for post-offices, or cables, or general synods. Each set of them got along, independent of the rest. Once in a while a mine-man would live alone with his wife, pegging away at his daily work, without any idea of hurrahing for his King or, more likely, his Queen; or even of hunting up his own cousins in the next county.

If we had elves in the United States nowadays, they would no doubt be American enough to elect a President and have him as honest, and steady, and sound-hearted as needs be. But dwelling as they did in feudal days, they set up thrones and sceptres all over Fairydom.

According to the poets, Mab and Oberon are the crowned rulers of the little people. In reality, they had no supreme head. Among many parties and factions, each small agreeing community had its own chief, the tallest of his race, who was no chief at all, mind you, to the fairy neighbors a mile east. The delicate yellow Chinese fairy-mother was Si w.a.n.g Mu; and in the Netherlands, the elf-queen, who was also queen of the witches, was called Wanne Thekla.

We s.n.a.t.c.h an item here and there of the royal histories. We find that the sweet-natured Elberich in the Niebelungen is the same as Oberon. In Germany was a dwarf-king named Goldemar, who lived with a knight, shared his bed, played at dice with him, gave him good advice, called him Brother-in-law very fondly, and comforted him with the music of his harp. But Goldemar, though the knight loved him and could touch and feel him, was unseen. He was like a wreath of blue smoke, or a fragment of moonlight, and you could run a sword through him, and never change his kind smile. His royal hands were lean, and soft, and cold as a frog's.

After three years, perhaps when Brother-in-law was dead, or when he was married, and needed him no longer, the gentle dwarf-king disappeared.

Sinnels, Gubich, and Heiling were other dwarf-princes, probably rivals of Goldemar, and ready to have at him till their breath gave out. Their little majesties were quarrelsome as c.o.c.k-sparrows. The elf-monarch Laurin was once conquered by Theodoric; and because he had been treacherous in war (which was not "fair" at all, despite the proverb), he got a very sad rebuff to his dignity, in being made fool or buffoon at the court of Bern.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ELF-MONARCH WHO WAS MADE COURT-FOOL.]

We are told in the Mabinogion how the daughter of Llud Llaw Ereint was "the most splendid maiden in the three islands of the mighty," and how for her Gwyn ap Nudd, the Welsh fairy-king, battles every May-day from dawn until sunset. Gwyn once carried her off from Gwythyr, her true lord; and both lovers were so furious and cruel against each other that blessed King Arthur condemned them to wage bitter fight on each first-of-May till the world's end; and to whomsoever is victorious the greatest number of times, the fair lady shall then be given. Let us hope the reward will not fall to thieving Gwyn.

We have said that we should do pretty much as we pleased in ranging the myriad fairy-folk into ranks and species. If, as we prowl about, we see a baby in the house of the Elfsmiths, who has a look of the Elfbrowns, we will immediately kidnap him from his fond parents, and add him to the family he resembles. Now that might make wailing and confusion, and bring down vengeance on our heads, if there were any Queen Mab left to rap us to order; but as things go, we shall find it a very neat way of smoothing difficulties.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ISLE OF RuGEN DWARVES THAT GIVE PRESENTS TO CHILDREN.]

Of course there are certain pigwidgeons too accomplished, too slippery, too many things in one, to be ticketed and tied down like the rest; such versatile fellows as the Brown Dwarves of the Isle of Rugen, for instance. They lived in what were called the Vine-hills, and were not quite eighteen inches high. They wore little snuff-brown jackets and a brown cap (which made them invisible, and allowed them to pa.s.s through the smallest keyhole), with one wee silver bell at its peak, not to be lost for any money. But they did some roguish things; and children who fell into their hands had to serve them for fifty years! With caprice usual to their kin, they will, on other occasions, befriend and protect children, and give them presents; or plague untidy servants, like Brownie, or lead travellers astray by night into bogs and marshes, like the Ellydan and the Fir-Darrig, and mischievous double-faced Robin Goodfellow himself.

An ancient tradition says that while the gra.s.s-blades are sprouting at the root, the earth-elves water and nourish them; and the moment the growth pierces the soil, affectionate air-elves take it in charge.

Therefore we borrow a hint from the gra.s.s; and after first going down among the swarthy fairies who burrow underground, we shall pa.s.s up to companionship with little beings so beautiful that wherever they flock there is starlight and song.

CHAPTER III.

THE BLACK ELVES.

ACCORDING to the very old Scandinavian notion, land-fairies were of two sorts; the Light or Good Elves who dwelt in air, or out-of-doors on the earth, and the Black or Evil Elves who dwelt beneath it.

We will follow the Norse folk. If we were required to group human beings under two headings, we should choose that same Good and Evil, because the division occurs to one naturally, because it saves time, and because everybody comprehends it, and sees that it is based upon law; and so do we deal with our wonder-friends, who have the strange moral sorcery belonging to each of us their masters, to help or to harm.

The evil fairies, then, were the scowling underground tribes, who hid themselves from the frank daylight, and the open reaches of the fields.