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are called "faeries" or illusive visions; and it will easily be
felt, that the use of a common name to denote their respective
actions, might eventually lead to the notion of a community
of character.

In olde dayes of the king Artour—
All was this lond ful filled of faerie;
The elf-quene with her joly compaynie,
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede.
But now can no man see non elves mo,
For the grete charitee and prayeres

Of limitoures, and other holy freres,

That serchen euery land, and euery streme-
This maketh that ther ben no faeries.

For ther as wont to walken as an elf

Ther walketh now the limitour himself.

WIFE OF BATH'S TALE.

However this may be, there can be little doubt that at one period the popular creed made the same distinctions between the queen of Faerie and the Elf-queen, that were observed in Grecian mythology, between their undoubted parallels, Artemis and Persephone. At present the traces of this division are only faintly discernible; and in the Scottish ballad of Tamlane, (Minstrelsy, vol. ii.) the hero, though “a wee wee man," declares himself a fairy both in "lyth and limb,” a communication which leaves us at no loss to divine the size of the fairy queen who had "borrowed him." The beautiful ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, and even the burlesque

The editor has already sinned too deeply against the fame of true Thomas, (see vol. i. p. 181.) to make the concealment of his opinion respecting this mysterious personage a saving condition on which he might build a hope of forgiveness for his previous indiscretion, He will therefore further state that,

after contrasting the little we know of
the real, with the fictitious history of
"auld Rymer," he has arrived at that
conviction, which is easier felt than ac-
counted for, that the laird of Erceldoun
has usurped the honours and reputation
of some earlier seer, and gathered round
his name the local tradition of his birth-

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imitation of some forgotten romance by Chaucer in his Rhyme of Sir Thopas," make the Elf-queen either joint or sole sovereign of fairy-land, while the locality, scenery and inhabitants of the country prove it to be the same district described in Sir Orfeo. In the former fiction she is represented, as only quitting the court of her grisly spouse, to chase the "wild fee" upon earth; her costume and attributes are of the same sylvan cast with those which distinguished the huntressqueen of antiquity; and the fame of her beauty inspires the lovelorn Sir Thopas with the same rash resolves which from a similar cause were said to have fired the bosom of Pirithous. In the remaining details of Thomas the Rhymer, she is clearly identified with the daughter of Demeter; and the description of the journey to Elf-land will remind the reader of a story in Ælian respecting the fabled Anostos, or that country whose expressive name has been so aptly paraphrased,

The bourne from whence no traveller returns.

In the Grecian fiction, "the blude that's shed on earth" seems rather to have impregnated the atmosphere, than dyed "the springs of that countrie:" but the rivers that flowed around it,

place. The strong power of local as sociation has been sufficiently manifested in the character acquired by a recent resident at Erceldoune. See preface to Sir Tristram.

A very veracious gentleman in one of Lucian's dialogues, has borne testimony to the hunting propensities of the Queen of Hell, whom he calls Hecate. (Philops. c. 17.) The account of the elf-queen and her followers while engaged in the chase may be compared with Od. vii. 101. and Virgil's imitation of the same passage, Æn. i. 498.

Three days they travel through darkness, up to their knees in water, and only hear the "swowyng of the flode." In this we have the ocean stream and Cimmerian darkness, Od. xi. 13. The spot where Thomas laid his head in the

lady's lap, is the same cross-way in which Minos, Rhadamanthus, and

acus, held their tribunal; one of whose roads led to the isles of the blest, and the other to Tartarus. Plat. Gorg. p. 524. The forbidden fruit, whose taste cut off all hope of return, is another version of the pomegranate-apple which figures so mysteriously in the history of Proserpine.

See Ælian, Var. Hist. iii. 18. In Lucian's Ver. Hist. ii. 3. (and which contains only exaggerated statements of popular opinion), one of the rivers encompassing his region of torment flows with blood. The bloody Acherousian rock in Aristophanes (Frogs, 474.) appears to be connected with a similar notions

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the waters of joy and grief, each produced a tree, whose fruits were as marvellous in their effects as the apple bestowed on "true Thomas." Nor is the prophetic power acquired by the Rhymer in consequence of his visit to this unearthly region, a novel feature in the history of such fictions. In one of Plutarch's tracts 70, a certain Cleombrotus entertains the company with an account of an eastern traveller, whose character and fortunes are still more remarkable than those of the Scottish seer. Of this man we are told, that he only appeared among his fellow mortals once a year. The rest of his time was spent in the society of the nymphs and demons, who had granted him an unusual share of personal beauty, had rendered him proof against disease, and supplied him with a fruit, which was to satisfy his hunger, and of which he partook only once a month. He was moreover endowed with a miraculous gift of tongues, his conversation resembled a spontaneous flow of verse, his knowledge was universal, and an annual visitation of prophetic fervor enabled him to unfold the hidden secrets of futurity.

The Elves and Fairies of rural tradition who "dance their ringlets to the whistling wind," and the traces of whose midnight revels are still detected on the sward, seem originally to have been distinguished from the Fairies of romance, by their diminutive stature and the use of a common livery. In the former circumstance popular fiction has only been faithful to the earliest creed of nations, respecting the size and form of their domestic and inferior deities; and of which examples are to be found in the household gods of Laban, the Pataci of Phenicia, the Cabiri of Egypt and Samothrace, the Idæan Dactyli of Crete, the Anaces of Athens, the Dioscuri of Lacedæmon, the earth-god Tages of Etruria, and the Lares of La

70 De Defectu Oraculorum, c. 21. Lucian plays upon the supposed knowledge of future events gained by a visit to the infernal regions, in his Ver.

Hist. ii. and Philops. For the use made of it by modern poets see Heyne's fourteenth Excursus to the sixth book of the Æneid.

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tium. It would be out of place to enter here upon the probable causes which have led to this community of opinions as to the stature of these subordinate divinities; and it will be sufficient to remark, that the practice of romance in elevating them to the standard of "human mortals"," has only followed an ancient precedent already noticed in speaking of the dwarfs. There is even reason to believe, that the occasional adoption of a larger form, was not wholly inconsistent with the popular belief on the subject; since the fairy of Alice Pearson once appeared to her in "the guise of a lustie man," and the ballad of Tamlane admits a change of shape to be a leading characteristic of the whole fairy race:

Our shape and size we can convert

To either large or small;

An old nutshell's the same to us
As is the lofty hall."

But the stature of the Elves and Fairies who presided over
the mountain-heath, will find a parallel in a kindred race,
the rural Lars of Italy; while their attributes, their habita-
tions, their length of life, and even their name, will establish
their affinity with the Grecian Nymphs.
“Their drinking-
cup or horn," which was "to prove a cornucopia of good
fortune to him who had the courage to seize it," is the
sacred chalice of the Nymphs, whose inexhaustible resources

A distinction used by Titania in the Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii. Sc. 2.

"The minor details of this ballad

wear too modern an aspect to make it of authority, unless supported by other testimony. The story however is indisputably ancient. The same power has been already noticed in the Russian Leschies, and is also ascribed to king Laurin in the Little Garden of Roses, P. 158.

Little was king Laurin, but from many a precious gem

His wondrous strength and power and his bold courage came;

Tall at times his stature grew, with

Then to the noblest princes fellow might spells of grammary,

he be.

73 See the Essay on the Fairies, &c. where mention is made of the goblet preserved in Eden-hall in Cumberland, on which the prosperity of the Musgrave

are so frequently noticed in Grecian fable, and to which we shall again have occasion to refer. The places of their abode,the interior of green hills, or the islands of a mountain-lake, with all the gorgeous decorations of their dwellings,-are but a repetition of the Dionysic and Nymphæic caves described by Plutarch and Diodorus"; and their term of life, like the existence of the daughters of Ocean, though extending to an immeasurable length 75 when compared with that of the human race, had still its prescribed and settled limits. To this it may be added, that the different appellations assigned them in Hellas and Northern Europe, appear to have arisen from a common idea of their nature; and that in the respective languages of these countries the words elf and nymph convey a similar meaning.

76

After this brief review of a most important subdivision of the elements of popular fiction, it will not be too much to affirm, that if their introduction into Europe, and their application to the embellishment of romantic poetry, had been dependent upon foreign agency, the national creed of Greece has the fairest claim to be considered as the parent source. But in this, as in so many other points of public faith com

family depended. Prætorius informs us, that a member of the house of Alveschleben received a ring from a Nixe, to which the future fortunes of his descendants were said to be attached. Anthropodemus Plutonicus, i. p. 113. Another German family, the Ranzaus, held their prosperity by the tenure of a fairy spindle. Ib. p. 115. The Scholiast to Lucian's Rhet. Præcept. says, that every prosperous person was supposed to have Amalthæa's horn in his possession.

74 See Plutarch de Sera Num. Vind., and Diod. Sic. lib. iii. c. 68.

75 For the lives of the fairies, see Mr. Reed's note to the Midsummer Night's Dream, in the variorum edition of Shakspeare; for that of the Nymphs (which Hesiod makes equal to nine

thousand seven hundred and twenty years), Plutarch De Defectu Oraculor. c. xi. Pindar gives the Dryads a much shorter term, or a life equivalent to that of the trees they inhabit. Ib.

26 In the Northern languages elf means a stream of running water, and hence the name of the river Elbe. The Grecian von has the same import with the Latin lympha, an idea which is also preserved in the Roman name for the disease called Nympholepsy.

'Vulgo autem memoriæ proditum est, quicumque speciem quandam e fonte, id est, effigiem nymphæ viderint, furendi non fecisse finem, quos Græci vuuponTous, Latini lymphatos appellant." Festus, ap. Salm. Exercit. Plin. 765.

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