Folk-lore of Shakespeare - Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (ereader iphone txt) 📗
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Again, fairies are generally represented as great lovers and patrons of cleanliness and propriety, for the observance of which they were frequently said to reward good servants, by dropping money into their shoes in the night; and, on the other hand, they were reported to punish most severely the sluts and slovenly, by pinching them black and blue.[35] Thus, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), Puck says:
To sweep the dust behind the door.”
In “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), Pistol, speaking of the mock fairy queen, says:
and the fairies who haunt the towers of Windsor are enjoined:
Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out:
Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room:
*****
The several chairs of order look you scour
With juice of balm and every precious flower.”
In Ben Jonson’s ballad of “Robin Goodfellow”[36] we have a further illustration of this notion:
I pinch the maidens black and blue,
The bed clothes from the bed pull I,
And lay them naked all to view.
’Twixt sleep and wake
I do them take,
And on the key-cold floor them throw;
If out they cry,
Then forth I fly,
And loudly laugh I, ho, ho, ho!”
In “Round About our Coal Fire,” we find the following passage bearing on the subject: “When the master and mistress were laid on the pillows, the men and maids, if they had a game at romps, and blundered up stairs, or jumbled a chair, the next morning every one would swear ’twas the fairies, and that they heard them stamping up and down stairs all night, crying, ‘Waters lock’d, waters lock’d!’ when there was no water in every pail in the kitchen.” Herrick, too, in his “Hesperides,” speaks of this superstition:
Set each platter in his place;
Rake the fire up, and set
Water in, ere sun be set,
Wash your pales and cleanse your dairies,
Sluts are loathesome to the fairies:
Sweep your house; who doth not so,
Mab will pinch her by the toe.”
While the belief in the power of fairies existed, they were supposed to perform much good service to mankind. Thus, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), Oberon says:
Every fairy take his gait;
And each several chamber bless,
Through this palace, with sweet peace;
And the owner of it blest,
Ever shall in safety rest”—
the object of their blessing being to bring peace upon the house of Theseus. Mr. Douce[37] remarks that the great influence which the belief in fairies had on the popular mind “gave so much offence to the holy monks and friars, that they determined to exert all their power to expel these imaginary beings from the minds of the people, by taking the office of the fairies’ benedictions entirely into their own hands;” a proof of which we have in Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath:”
But now can no man see non elves mo,
For now the grete charitee and prayeres
Of limitoures and other holy freres
That serchen every land and every streme,
As thikke as motes in the sonne beme,
Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,
Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures,
Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies,
This maketh that ther ben no faeries:
For ther as wont to walken was an elf
Ther walketh now the limitour himself.”
Macbeth, too (v. 8), in his encounter with Macduff, says:
To one of woman born.”
In the days of chivalry, the champion’s arms were ceremoniously blessed, each taking an oath that he used no charmed weapon. In Spenser’s “Fairy Queen” (book i. canto 4) we read:
And eke enchanted arms, that none can pierce.”
Fairies were amazingly expeditious in their journeys. Thus, Puck goes “swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow,” and in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” he answers Oberon, who was about to send him on a secret expedition:
In forty minutes.”
Again, the same fairy addresses him:
I do hear the morning lark.
Trip we after the night’s shade:
We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wand’ring moon.”
Once more, Puck says:
For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger,” etc.
It was fatal, if we may believe Falstaff in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5) to speak to a fairy: “They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die.”
Fairies are accustomed to enrich their favorites; and in “A Winter’s Tale” (iii. 3) the shepherd says: “It was told me I should be rich by the fairies;”[38] and in “Cymbeline” (v. 4), Posthumus, on waking and finding the mysterious paper, exclaims:
Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment
Nobler than that it covers,” etc.
At the same time, however, it was unlucky to reveal their acts of generosity, as the shepherd further tells us: “This is fairy gold, boy; and ’twill prove so; up with’t, keep it close, home, home, the next way. We are lucky, boy; and to be so still requires nothing but secrecy.”
The necessity of secrecy in fairy transactions of this kind is illustrated in Massinger and Field’s play of “The Fatal Dowry,” 1632 (iv. 1),[39] where Romont says:
Which, but reveal’d, brings on the blabber’s ruin.”
Among the many other good qualities belonging to the fairy tribe, we are told that they were humanely attentive to the youthful dead.[40] Thus Guiderius, in “Cymbeline,” thinking that Imogen is dead (iv. 2), says:
And worms will not come to thee;”[41]
there having been a popular notion that where fairies resorted no noxious creature could be found.
In the pathetic dirge of Collins a similar allusion is made:
No goblin lead their nightly crew;
The female fays shall haunt the green,
And dress thy grave with pearly dew.”
It seems, however, that they were also supposed to be malignant; but this, “it may be,” says Mr. Ritson, “was merely calumny, as being utterly inconsistent with their general character, which was singularly innocent and amiable.” Thus, when Imogen, in “Cymbeline” (ii. 2), prays on going to sleep,
Guard me, beseech ye,”[42]
it must have been, says Mr. Ritson,[43] the incubus she was so afraid of.
Hamlet, too, notices this imputed malignity of the fairies (i. 1):
Nor fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm.”[44]
That the fairies, however, were fond of indulging in mischievous sport at the expense of mortals is beyond all doubt, the merry pranks of Puck or Robin Goodfellow fully illustrating this item of our fairy-lore. Thus, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1) this playful fairy says:
I jest to Oberon and make him smile,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab;
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough.”
A fairy, in another passage, asks Robin:
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
*****
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?”
We have already mentioned how Queen Mab had the same mischievous humor in her composition, which is described by Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4):
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.”
Another reprehensible practice attributed to the fairies was that of carrying off and exchanging children, such being designated changelings.[45] The special agent in transactions of the sort was also Queen Mab, and hence Mercutio says:
And “she is so called,” says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, “because it was her supposed custom to steal new-born babes in the night and leave others in their place.” Mr. Steevens gives a different interpretation to this line, and says, “It does not mean that she was the midwife to the fairies, but that she was the person among the fairies whose department it was to deliver the fancies of sleeping men in their dreams, those children of an idle brain.”
[1] “Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of ‘A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,’” 1845, p. xiii.
[2] “Fairy Mythology,” p. 325.
[3] Aldis Wright’s “Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” 1877, Preface, pp. xv., xvi.; Ritson’s “Fairy Mythology,” 1875, pp. 22, 23.
[4] Essay on Fairies in “Fairy Mythology of Shakspeare,” p. 23.
[5] “Fairy Mythology,” 1878, p. 325.
[6] Notes to “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” by Aldis Wright, 1877, Preface, p. xvi.
[7] “Three Notelets on Shakespeare,” pp. 100-107.
[8] See Croker’s “Fairy Legends of South of Ireland,” 1862, p. 135.
[9] “Fairy Mythology,” 1878, p. 316.
[10] Wirt Sikes’s “British Goblins,” 1880, p. 20.
[11] This is reprinted in Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales, Legends, and Romances, illustrating Shakespeare and other English Writers,” 1875, p. 173.
[12] “Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of the Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” printed for the Shakespeare Society, p. viii.
[13] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. ii. pp. 508-512.
[14] Thoms’s “Three Notelets on Shakespeare,” p. 88.
[15] See Nares’s Glossary, vol. ii. p. 695.
[16] Mr. Dyce considers that Lob is descriptive of the contrast between Puck’s square figure and the airy shapes of the other
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