Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 2

-an indication that she was not so herself. The very fact, indeed, that fairies "call themselves _spirits_, ghosts, or shadows, seems to be a proof of their immortality." Thus Puck styles Oberon "king of shadows,"

and this monarch a.s.serts of himself and his subjects-

"But we are spirits of another sort."

Fletcher, in the "Faithful Shepherdess," describes (i. 2)-

"A virtuous well, about whose flow'ry banks The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds, By the pale moonshine, dipping oftentimes Their stolen children, so to make them free From dying flesh, and dull mortality."

Ariosto, in his "Orlando Furioso" (book xliii. stanza 98) says:

"I am a fayrie, and to make you know, To be a fayrie what it doth import, We cannot dye, how old so e'er we grow.

Of paines and harmes of ev'rie other sort We taste, onelie no death we nature ow."

An important feature of the fairy race was their power of vanishing at will, and of a.s.suming various forms. In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"

Oberon says:

"I am invisible, And I will overhear their conference."

Puck relates how he was in the habit of taking all kinds of outlandish forms; and in the "Tempest," Shakespeare has bequeathed to us a graphic account of Ariel's eccentricities. "Besides," says Mr. Spalding,[23]

"appearing in his natural shape, and dividing into flames, and behaving in such a manner as to cause young Ferdinand to leap into the sea, crying, 'h.e.l.l is empty, and all the devils are here!' he a.s.sumes the forms of a water nymph (i. 2), a harpy (iii. 3), and also the G.o.ddess Ceres (iv. 1), while the strange shapes, masquers, and even the hounds that hunt and worry the would-be king and viceroys of the island, are Ariel's 'meaner fellows.'" Poor Caliban complains of Prospero's spirits (ii. 2):

"For every trifle are they set upon me; Sometimes like apes, that mow and chatter at me, And after bite me: then like hedgehogs which Lie tumbling in my bare-foot way, and mount Their p.r.i.c.ks at my footfall; sometime am I All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues Do hiss me into madness."

[23] "Elizabethan Demonology," p. 50.

That fairies are sometimes exceedingly diminutive is fully shown by Shakespeare, who gives several instances of this peculiarity. Thus Queen Mab, in "Romeo and Juliet," to which pa.s.sage we have already had occasion to allude (i. 4), is said to come

"In shape no bigger than an agate stone On the fore-finger of an alderman."[24]

[24] Agate was used metaphorically for a very diminutive person, in allusion to the small figures cut in agate for rings. In "2 Henry IV." (i. 2), Falstaff says: "I was never manned with an agate till now; but I will inset you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master, for a jewel." In "Much Ado About Nothing" (iii.

1) Hero speaks of a man as being "low, an agate very vilely cut."

And Puck tells us, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 1), that when Oberon and t.i.tania meet,

"they do square, that all their elves, for fear, Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there."

Further on (ii. 3) the duties imposed by t.i.tania upon her train point to their tiny character:

"Come, now a roundel and a fairy song; Then, for the third part of a minute, hence; Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings, To make my small elves coats."

And when enamoured of Bottom, she directs her elves that they should-

"Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes; Feed him with apric.o.c.ks and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; The honey bags steal from the humble-bees, And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes, To have my love to bed, and to arise; And pluck the wings from painted b.u.t.terflies To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes."

We may compare, too, Ariel's well-known song in "The Tempest" (v. 1):

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry, On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily, Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."

Again, from the following pa.s.sage in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv.

4) where Mrs. Page, after conferring with her husband, suggests that-

"Nan Page my daughter, and my little son, And three or four more of their growth, we'll dress Like urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white, With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads, And rattles in their hands"

it is evident that in Shakespeare's day fairies were supposed to be of the size of children. The notion of their diminutiveness, too, it appears was not confined to this country,[25] but existed in Denmark,[26] for in the ballad of "Eline of Villenskov" we read:

"Out then spake the smallest Trold; No bigger than an ant;- Oh! here is come a Christian man, His schemes I'll sure prevent."

[25] See Grimm's "Deutsche Mythologie."

[26] Thoms's "Three Notelets on Shakespeare," 1865, pp. 38, 39.

Again, various stories are current in Germany descriptive of the fairy dwarfs; one of the most noted being that relating to Elberich, who aided the Emperor Otnit to gain the daughter of the Paynim Soldan of Syria.[27]

[27] See Keightley's "Fairy Mythology," 1878, p. 208.

The haunt of the fairies on earth are generally supposed to be the most romantic and rural that can be selected; such a spot being the place of t.i.tania's repose described by Oberon in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii.

1):[28]

"a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps t.i.tania some time of the night, Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in."

[28] See also Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," 1852, vol. iii. p.

32, etc.

t.i.tania also tells how the fairy race meet

"on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, By paved fountain, or by rushy brook, Or in the beached margent of the sea."

In "The Tempest" (v. 1), we have the following beautiful invocation by Prospero:

"Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; And ye, that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back-"

Their haunts, however, varied in different localities, but their favorite abode was in the interior of conical green hills, on the slopes of which they danced by moonlight. Milton, in the "Paradise Lost" (book i.), speaks of

"fairy elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course, they, on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."

The Irish fairies occasionally inhabited the ancient burial-places known as tumuli or barrows, while some of the Scottish fairies took up their abode under the "door-stane" or threshold of some particular house, to the inmates of which they administered good offices.[29]

[29] Gunyon's "Ill.u.s.trations of Scottish History, Life, and Superst.i.tions," p. 299.

The so-called fairy-rings in old pastures[30]-little circles of a brighter green, within which it was supposed the fairies dance by night-are now known to result from the out-spreading propagation of a particular mushroom, the fairy-ringed fungus, by which the ground is manured for a richer following vegetation. An immense deal of legendary lore, however, has cl.u.s.tered round this curious phenomenon, popular superst.i.tion attributing it to the merry roundelays of the moonlight fairies.[31] In "The Tempest" (v. 1) Prospero invokes the fairies as the "demy-puppets" that

"By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime Is to make midnight-mushrooms."

[30] Chambers's "Book of Days," vol. i. p. 671.

[31] Among the various conjectures as to the cause of these verdant circles, some have ascribed them to lightning; others maintained that they are occasioned by ants. See Miss Baker's "Northamptonshire Glossary," vol. i. p. 218; Brand's "Pop.

Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 480-483; and also the "Phytologist," 1862, pp. 236-238.