and the witches of this strange realm of fancy constitute but a small part of the supernatural elements in the Shakespearean drama; and stand indeed in striking and purposed contrast to the wanderers from Fairyland, the creatures of the elements, or the like airy sprites: beings as unsubstantial as 'the air-drawn dagger' of Macbeth, and yet each with an individuality as distinct as that of the usurping thane.

CHAPTER X.

FAIRY FOLK-LORE.

Such sights as youthful poets dream

On summer eves by haunted stream.'-L'Allegro.

/HEN Puck is commanded by Oberon, 'the King

W

of Shadows,' who rules supreme in the Midsummer Night's Dream,' to amend the mischief he has wrought, by wilful knavery or mischance, upon the rival Athenian lovers, and to work new pranks for their undoing, that fairies and mortals alike may be at peace, he replies

'My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,

For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger:

At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards; damned spirits all,

That in crossways and floods have burial,

Already to their wormy beds are gone;

For fear lest day should look their shames upon,

They wilfully themselves exile from light,

And must for aye consort with black-brow'd night.'

In this the poet glances at those gloomier superstitions which are more or less characteristic of all rude conceptions of the invisible world. They constitute its predominating aspect in the savage mind, and were by no means wanting in English folk-lore. It is not to be supposed that the rude peasantry of England had fashioned out of the Feld-ælfen or Dvergar of their Saxon or Norsk fathers the airy haunters of their moonlit glades, devoid of all such repulsive features as survive in

the ballad-pictures of Scottish Elfland. To both they were objects of vague apprehension. But the English fairy, fashioned under more genial circumstances than the wild social life and the rugged landscape of their northern neighbours, was a tricksy and mischievous, but not a malignant sprite. In Chaucer's Rime of Sire Topas,' purposely written to ridicule the extravagances of the romancers, the knight sets forth in search of adventures, and, in 'the countree of Faerie' meets with the 'gret geaunt Sire Oliphant,' on whom his prowess is to be shown. But, though it is a land of wonders, where, as in Spenser's later visions, giants, dragons, and monsters of all sorts may be looked for, its true fairyfolk have no such repulsive characteristics; and of its elfin queen we learn :

:

Here is the Quene of Faerie,

With harpe, and pipe, and simphonie,
Dwelling in this place.'

The charms of Fairyland, which were left in Scotland to rude nameless ballad minstrels, who perpetuated without disguise the current superstitions of the people, thus early took the fancy of England's greatest poets; and hence whatever was coarse, gloomy, and fit only to 'consort with black-browed night,' was eliminated from its airy beings. But the gloom of this supernatural element clung to the northern folk-lore. The persecutions of the seventeenth century, and the grave aspects of their later religious belief and forms of worship, doubtless helped to beget that mood of mind in the Scottish peasantry which continued to find a charm in the darkest superstitions of their forefathers.

Burns, in his 'Halloween,' perpetuates, towards the close of the eighteenth century, with mingled humour and gravity, the unsophisticated superstitions of the

peasantry with reference to that grand anniversary of witches, fiends, and all the powers of evil, which by a curious association of ideas had been assigned to All Saints' Eve. Then also the fairies were reputed to hold high festival, and to be specially active in their good or evil doings for mankind. They had power to prosper or blight according to their humour. Household, flock and field were at their mercy; and they were believed never to overlook a slight or forget a favour. But though 'Halloween' is specially noted by the peasant bard as falling

Upon that night, when faeries light,

On Cassilis Downans dance,
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,
On sprightly coursers prance,'

yet the fairies are displaced by more prosaic and baneful agents of darkness, in the incidents of the night. They were already falling into disrepute ; while ghosts, witches, and the emissaries of Satan were denounced, but by no means discredited, by the ecclesiastical censors of the age. With a curious definiteness, unusual in relation to such shadowy beings as the fairies of Scottish Elfland, Allan Cunningham tells us, 'it is generally admitted that they left our land about seventy years ago. Their mournings and moanings among the hills on the Hallowmass night of their departure-according to the assertion of an old shepherd,-were melancholy to hear.' Allan Cunningham wrote thus in 1834; so that it is now a full century since the rocky downs of Cassilis, and the coves and moonlit valleys of Scotland, ceased to echo to the ringing of the fairies' bridle-reins and the music of their corn-pipes and bog-reeds.

But ere the last echoes of fairy music had died away, another peasant poet shaped their most favourite legend

ary prank into a rhyme of sweetest fancy and pathos. The dreaded mischief of the Scottish fairy was the transporting of children to Elfland, and leaving in their place the unsightly changeling which figures in many a village tale. But out of this rude superstition, common to the Scottish and Irish peasantry, the Ettrick Shepherd wrought his exquisite legend of 'Kilmeny,' a virgin pure, carried off to Fairyland, beyond the reach of sin and sorrow; and returning but for a month and a day, to charm all nature with a glimpse of perfect purity and peace.

'When seven lang years had come and fled,
When grief was calm, and hope was dead;
When scarce was remembered Kilmeny's name,
Late, late in a gloamin Kilmeny cam hame!'

But the vision of her return, though exceedingly beautiful, is wholly fancy-wrought, and need not detain us here. It is otherwise with Shakespeare's picturings of Fairyland. In his day the fairy held his unchallenged place in popular belief, and his bridle bells were still listened for in Charlecote chace. The poet accordingly pictured the actual Fairyland of his age, though whatever gloomy phantoms still haunted English glades and dells were banished from his poetic vision. Hence when the lord of Fairyland responds to the exhortation of Puck for needful haste, since night's fitting time, when ghosts and damned spirits alone venture abroad, is almost past, it is to disown all such affinities. He acknowledges no such restraints as those which made the ghost of buried Denmark haunt 'the dead vast and middle of the night,' and start 'like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons,' at the first morning cock-crow; and hence he thus repels Puck's reasons for haste, as wholly inapplicable to spirits such as they are. From choice they