Part 1

The Canterbury Poets. EDITED BY WILLIAM SHARP.

ELFIN MUSIC.

ELFIN MUSIC: AN ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH FAIRY POETRY. SELECTED AND ARRANGED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE.

“O, list the mystic lore sublime Of fairy tales of ancient time.”

_The Ettrick Shepherd._

LONDON WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE NEW YORK: THOMAS WHITTAKER TORONTO: W. J. GAGE AND CO. 1888

CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION—Revival of the Romantic element in modern poetry—Origin of the term “Fairy”—Fays of early French literature—Source of the conceptions at the base of English fairy poetry—Huon de Bordeaux—Oberon—Spiritual traditions of Gothic and Celtic nations—Lineage of the fairies—Romance of Orfeo and Heurodis—Stature of the fairies—Their religious faith—The Fairy Queen—Robin Goodfellow—The elfin hierarchies—Romaunt of the Knight Launfal—Value of English fairy poetry—Plan of the present anthology ix

THE FOREVIEW.

EDGAR ALLAN POE—Fairyland 3

PRELUDE.

FELICIA HEMANS—Fairies’ Recall 7

THE FAIRY FAMILY.

EDMUND SPENSER—The Rolls of Elfin Emperours 11

SIR SIMEON STEWARD—The Faery King 13

BEN JONSON—Queen Mab 15

OLD POEM—The Fairy Queen 16

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE—Queen Mab; Lullaby for Titania 18, 19

L. E. L.—The Fairy Queen Sleeping 20

OLD POEM—Robin Good-fellow 22

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE—Puck’s Song 26

ROBERT HERRICK—The Fair Temple; Oberon’s Feast; Oberon’s Palace 27, 31, 32

THOMAS HOOD—The Water Lady 36

SAMUEL MINTON PECK—The Pixies 37

ANDREW JAMES SYMINGTON—Song of the Water Sprite 38

MARGARET DIXON—A Legend of the Water-Spirit, called Neckan 40

JAMES HOGG—The Mermaid 42

SARAH WILLIAMS—Song of the Water Nixies 46

PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON—Flower Fairies 47

THOMAS LAKE HARRIS—Song of the Twilight Fairies 49

L. E. L.—Fairies on the Sea-shore 50

CHRONICLES OF FAIRYLAND.

MICHAEL DRAYTON—Nymphidia: The Court of Fairy 55

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM—Prince Brightkin 77

J. RODMAN DRAKE—The Culprit Fay 92

TRAVELS IN FAIRYLAND.

SIR WALTER SCOTT—Thomas the Rhymer 115

JAMES HOGG—Kilmeny 126

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY—A Fairy Tale 136

A. MARY F. ROBINSON—The Conquest of Fairyland 149

MEN AND FAIRIES.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE—The Approach of Titania 159

THOMAS PARNELL—A Fairy Tale 161

JOHN LEYDEN—The Elfin King 167

OLD BALLAD—The Young Tamlane 175

WILLIAM NICHOLSON—The Brownie of Blednock 185

JOHN KEATS—La Belle Dame Sans Merci 189

THOMAS MOORE—The Mountain Sprite 192

SAMUEL LOVER—The Fairy Boy 193

SAMUEL LOVER—The Fairy Tempter 194

MARY HOWITT—The Fairies of the Caldon-Low 195

CLARENCE MANGAN—The Fairies’ Passage 198

JAMES TEELING—Thubber-na-Shie; or, The Fairy Well 202

SAMUEL LOVER—The Haunted Spring 205

CLARENCE MANGAN—The Romance of the Fairy Cure 207

EDWARD WALSH—The Fairy Nurse 209

SAMUEL FERGUSON—The Fairy Thorn; The Fairy Well of Lagnanay 210, 213

CHARLES MACKAY—Kelpie of Corrievreckan 216

R. H. HORNE—The Elf of the Woodlands 221

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM—Two Fairies in a Garden 239

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN—Elfin Song 245

GRAHAM R. TOMSON—The Ferlie 248

MISCELLANEOUS.

ROBERT SOUTHEY—The Fountain of the Fairies 253

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE—Songs of the Pixies 254

FELICIA HEMANS—Fairy Favours; Water Lilies: A Fairy Song 258, 260

L. E. L.—Fantasies 261

ANONYMOUS—The City of Gold 262

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM—The Fairies; The Maids of Elfin Mere 263, 265

EPILOGUE.

RICHARD CORBET—Farewell to the Fairies 269

FELICIA HEMANS—Fairy Song 270

PHILIP DAYRE—An Invocation 271

INTRODUCTION.

This volume appears, I trust opportunely, during the initial signs of a revival of that romantic or supernatural element which is the first characteristic of primitive song-craft in every nation, and is, by a select section of discriminating literary critics, now welcomed as the salvation of modern poetry. Independently of this fact, there can be no need for apology in presenting for the first time to the lovers of phantasy an anthology of the fairy poetry which during six centuries has made beautiful by its gracious melody the minor paths of English song. I propose in this brief introduction to consider the Elfin mythology in its connection with poetry, without attempting an actually critical estimate of the literary value of the fairy flights which follow it; their poetic merit is, for the most part, sufficiently guaranteed by the names which are attached to them—Chaucer and Spenser in the aurora or day-spring of our literature; Shakespeare, Drayton, Herrick, and other masters of melody in the splendour of its meridian light; Hogg, Horne, and Allingham at our own epoch of inspired imaginings.

From the days of Casaubon to Keightley, many conflicting derivations of the word fairy have been proposed by rival etymologists. It is now fairly established that it has come to us from the Latin _fatum_, through the Romance languages. A debased Latin verb, _fatere_, to enchant, was common in mediæval times, and was naturalised in Spain, Italy, and Provence. The French form was _faer_, _féer_. Of this verb, says Keightley, in his masterly _Fairy Mythology_, the past participle is _faé_, _fé_; hence in the romances we continually meet with _les chevaliers faés_, _les dames faées_, etc. From the verb _faér_, _féer_, to enchant, we are told by the same authority that the French made a substantive, _faerié_, _féerie_, illusion, enchantment, a word which was considerably extended in its meaning both before and after its assimilation into the English language, and which came to be employed, not only for illusion, but for the land which was _par excellence_ the home of all gramary, illusion, and _envoutement_, namely, the Land of the Fairies, for the people who dwell therein, and for every individual member of the elfin tribe.

It is also established, and by this etymology itself, that the original fairy of Frankish poetry and fiction was simply a female initiated into the mysteries and marvels of magic. Such was the mighty Morgue la Fay, the mystic sister of King Arthur, and such, in unconscious accordance with the original tradition, were those fairies of later French romance who delighted our childhood in the graceful and beautiful stories of Perrault and the Countess d’Aulnoy.

The immediate source of the conceptions which are at the base of English fairy poetry must be evidently sought in the romances and legends of early French chivalry, in such delightful, though comparatively unknown, stories as that of the Paladin Huon de Bordeaux, who was protected in direst extremity, and assisted in the successful prosecution of an almost impossible quest by the divine child Oberon, and then in a glade of dews and sunshine, fenced by the mystic darkness of a Syrian forest, was anointed with supernatural chrism, and instructed in the magical sentences which compel the obedience of elf and gnome and _lutin_, and “crowned King of all Faërie.”

Oberon himself, it is true, has a Teutonic origin, and is known to the early Germanic folk-lore by the names of Alberich, Alberon, etc., but the original inspiration of English fairy poetry is derived, as I have said, through the fairy imaginings of the French metrical romancers. By these, the supreme monarch of Elfland, who, despite the supposititious succession of Huon and his own translation to Paradise, continued to spread wide his golden rule as in pre-Provençal days, is represented as a child of four to five years, indescribable in his beauty, sirenian in voice and manner, clothed in a robe which sparkled with all manner of precious stones, and aërially conveyed in a superb, swan-drawn chariot. His palace, with its golden roof and diamond spires, seems to have followed him in his travels, and thus the Land of Faërie was substantially and for the time being in that spot wheresoever which was the tarrying-place of the Grand Master of the Elfin World.

Side by side with the fays of poetry and chivalrous history there persisted, in spite of the general diffusion of Christianity, the old spiritual traditions of the Gothic and Celtic nations, concerning the Elves, Trolls, Brownies, malignant or benevolent dwarfs, gnomes, and generally diminutive beings gifted with supernatural powers and of an other than mortal origin. These two hierarchies of supernal beings were confused in the popular imagination; the magical abilities which could only be painfully acquired by humanity were identified with the magical prerogatives which were inherent in the natures of Kelpie, Elf, and Ghoul, and the mystical combination produced that new, glorious, and beautiful hierarchy of semi-spiritual essences which was governed by the elfin Oberon.

The discrepancies in fairy traditions, as preserved in English poetry, may be partly accounted for by the fact of this confusion. We find the most eminent fairy authorities in distinct disagreement on several important points. Spenser, the poet of the elfin world _par excellence_, in his account of the “Rolls of Elfin Emperours,” deduces all Faërie from the man-monster created by Prometheus. Shakespeare, on the other hand, refers them to an Indian origin, and the dictionaries of Fairy Mythology, in accordance with this supposition, fix his abode in India, and represent him nightly crossing the intervening seas with inconceivable rapidity to dance in the western moonlight. The oriental origin of magic was generally recognised at a very early period of European gramary; the original fairies of romance received their wisdom from Persia and from India, and after the transfiguration of the elfin world by the confusion of the several spiritual conceptions already noticed, it is easy to see how an eastern source was attributed to the later fairy lineage. But on this point it must also be remembered that the Crusades were undoubtedly the means of acquainting western poets with the rich fountains of oriental romance, and that the general similarity between the Persian Peri and our own fairy, as well as the substantial identity of many supernatural fictions which are popular both in the West and in the East, are a sufficient warrant for attributing a part of this very transformation to the glamorous influence of Arabian imaginations.

The classical alternative which is offered by the poet-chronicler of Fairydom has also a base in fact. The Elizabethan age commonly identified the fairies of Gothic superstition with the classic nymphs who attended Diana, while the elfin queen was Diana herself, and was called by one of the names of that goddess, that is, Titania, which is found in the metamorphoses of Ovid as a title of the uranian queen. The opinion originated with the romance writers. Chaucer identifies the fairies with the inhabitants of the Latin Infernus—

Pluto that is King of fayrie ... Proserpine and all her fayrie, etc.

The tradition spread wildly, and found during the early part of the fourteenth century a voice of poetic beauty in the lovely Scotch fairy-tale of “Orfeo and Heurodis,” which represents the Greek master of mystical song-craft as a “Kinge in Inglond, who abode in Traciens, or Winchester”—

The King hadde a quen of priis That was y cleped dame Herodis, That finest leuedi for the nones That might gon on bodi and bones, Full of love and of godinesse Ac no man may tell hir fairnesse.

On a certain morn of May, Heurodis, Eurodis, or Eurydice repaired with two of her maidens “to play bi an orchard side,” in the neighbourhood of the palace—

To se the floures sprede and spring, And to hear the foules sing.

She fell asleep on the green, and when she awoke it was in a state of frenzy which frightened her virgins away, and they ran back to alarm the whole palace.

She was borne from the orchard to her bed by a long train of knights and ladies, and was visited by the distressed king, whom she informed, amidst great lamentations, that she must go from him—

As Ich lay this under tide, And slepe under an orchard side, There come to me to fair knightes Wele y armed al to rightes, And bad me comen an heighing, And speke with her lord the king; And Ich answered at wordes bold, Y durst nought, no y nold: Thai pinkd oghain as thai might driue, Ther com her king also bliue, With an hundred knightes and mo, And damissels an hundred al so; Al on snowe white stedes, As white as milke were her wedes, Y no seighe yete bifore So fair creatours y core! The king hadde a crown on hed, It nas of silver, no of gold red, Ac it was of a precious ston; As bright as the sonne it schon: And as son as he to me cam, Wold Ich, nold Ich, he me nam, And made me with him ride, Opon a palfrey by his side, And brought me to his pallays, Wele attired in ich ways; And schewd me castels and tours, Rivers, forestes, frith with flours; And his riche stedes ichon, And sith then me brought oghain hom, Into an owhen orchard, And said to me afterward: Loke dame! to morowe that av be Right here under this ympe tree; And than thou schalt with ous go, And live with us ever mo, And yif thou makest ous y let, Where thou be, thou worst y set, And to tore thine limes al, That nothing help the no schal, And thei thou best so torn, Yete thou worst with ous y born.

The power of the Fairy King over the royal lady of earth appears to have been given him in virtue of her slumber beneath an elvish tree, which, though growing in her husband’s orchard, made the surrounding grass-plot the property of the elvish world. Orfeo repaired on the morrow to the “ympe-tree,” accompanied by a thousand knights, resolved one and all to die, if it were necessary, ere the queen should go from home; but on reaching the fay-bound place Heurodis, in the midst of the whole company, was spirited suddenly away. The king in his misery vowed never again to look upon the face of a woman, and retired into the wilderness with his harp, which subdued by its magical melody the fierce beasts that abounded on every side. This wilderness eventually proves to be a summer resort of the Fairy King, where Orfeo beholds distant visions of elfin hunters, elfin knights, and ladies at the dance, and then on a certain day of supreme election he falls into the hands of a joyous bevy of elfin damsels, among whom he recognises his own Heurodis. Their mutual emotion betrays him, and she is carried swiftly away by her companions. Orfeo pursues the bright band with lyre and lamentations; a rock opens before them; he follows them into it, and thus reaches Fairy Land.

He com into a fair countray, As bright soonne somers day, Smothe and plain and al grene, Hill no dale was none ysene. Amiddle the lond a castel he seighe, Rich and reale and wonder heighe; Al the utmust wal Was cler and schine of cristal; An hundred tours ther were about, Degiselich and bataild stout; The butrass come out of the diche Of rede gold y arched riche; The housour was anowed al, Of ich maner divers animal; Within there wer wide wones Al of precious stones, The worss piles on to biholde, Was al of burnist gold: Al that lond was ever light, For when it schuld be therk and night, The riche stonnes light gonne, Bright as doth at none the sonne: No man may tel no thenke in thought The riche werk that ther was wrought.

This description corresponds on the whole with the general drift of legend, which represents the Land of Faërie to be situated beneath the ground, so that the true elfin court is a subterranean pageantry—a point which is commonly ignored by modern fanciful writers.

The castle which Orfeo entered appears to have been a general receptacle for things and persons who had been spirited away from earth, or had in any way suddenly disappeared.

Ther he seize his owhen wiif, Dame Heurodis, his liif liif, Slepe under an ympe-tree; Bi her clothes he knewe that it was sche.

He did not, however, at once claim his bride, but repaired to the royal hall where the king and queen of fairyland were seated in a bright and blissful tabernacle, their crowns and vestures almost blinding him by their splendour. Orfeo performs in their presence on his harp, and wins such admiration from the king, that, with Herodian prodigality, he is promised whatever he may demand. The restitution of Heurodis is, of course, the favour in question, and the musician-monarch returns out of Fairyland with a wife beautified more than ever by the gramary of the elfin atmosphere, and, unlike the classical hero, successfully closes his quest by resuming his royal authority.

* * * * *

The entrance of several elements all foreign to each other into the later conception of Fairyland has assisted in the creation of other confusions besides the conflicting accounts of the elfin lineage. “Most spirits,” says a writer in _Chambers’s Journal_, “could contract and diminish their bulk at will, but the fairy alone seems to have been regarded as essentially small in size. The majority of other spirits, such as dwarfs, genii, etc., are represented as deformed creatures, whereas the fairy has almost uniformly been described as a beautiful miniature of the human being, perfect in face and form.” This statement, however, is not even generally correct; it is contradicted continually in legends and poetry alike. It is evident, for instance, that the “Queene of Faire Elfland,” with whom the immortal Rhymer of “bonny Ercildoune” performed his “mirk night” journey into Fairyland, was a spirit, at any rate, approaching the common stature of humanity. Such also were the elfin emperors of Spenser, and such the fay ladies whom Dryden celebrates in his magnificent modernised version of Chaucer’s “Flower and the Leaf,” and who were simply departed human beings in a certain state of bondage. The inhabitants of the Elfin World, and generally all classes of nature-spirits, are poetically depicted in all forms and sizes at the will of the bard or romancer, and are sometimes identical with the original human fairy of the Arthurian and Charlemagne cycles, sometimes with the diminutive good people of Gothic lore. These formal discrepancies originated in time a harmonising tradition which well enters into the spirit of fairy mythology. In the fine ballad of “The Young Tamlane,” that elfin knight, who had passed from mortality into fairyhood, informs his mistress that he can quit his body when he pleases, and inhabit either earth or air.

Our shapes and size we can convert To either large or small; An old nut-shell’s the same to us As is the lofty hall.

The religion professed in the elfin world is another debated point. According to Chaucer, the book, and bell, and holy water, the matins and other prayers of monks and limitours, had, even in his day, thoroughly exorcised the fairies, and improved them off the face of the earth, a statement which may be true enough in the case of the trolls and the brownies, and other survivals of heathen times.

In olde dayes of the King Artour, Of which that Bretons speken gret honour, All was this lond fulfilled of faerie; The elf-quene, with hire joly compagnie Danced ful oft in many a grene mede. This was the old opinion as I rede; I speke of many hundred yeres ago; 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 high, and toures, Shropes 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, In undermeles and in morweninges, And sayth his matines and his holy thinges, As he goth in his limitatioun. Women may now go safely up and doun, In every bush, and under every tree, Ther is non other incubus but he, And he ne will don hern no dishonour.

But Bishop Corbet, writing in the days of the Restoration, testified that the fairies “were of the old religion,” and that since the advent of Protestantism and Elizabethan glories they had departed hence. Herrick, however, adopts a middle course.

Now, this the fairies would have known, Theirs is a mixed religion: And some have heard the elves it call Part Pagan, part Papisticall.

Intimately associated with the reigning Potentate of Fairyland, the monarch Oberon, and a person of, in some respects, more considerable importance, was the moonlight queen of elves, who is more or less identified by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the romance of “Orfeo and Heurodis” with the queen of the classical Avernus, Prosperine, but who is distinguished by Drayton from that goddess in his poetic romance of “Nymphidia,” and who, as a matter of actual fact, is a combination of several mythological elements.

In the most ancient traditions we have glimpses of a time when this fair and glorious lady alone occupied the faëry throne, and, as in the case of Sire Thopas, was occasionally sought by human lovers. Shakespeare gives her the classical name of Titania, who is commonly identified with Mab, but their characters are sufficiently distinct. The latter, according to Keightley, has completely dethroned Titania, a statement which is scarcely borne out by the facts, for Mab was a person of general celebrity long before the appearance of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which contains the first mention of the rival sovereign. The herald and messenger of the royal pair was the tricksy sprite indifferently known as Puck, Hobgoblin, and Robin Goodfellow, and who must also perhaps be identified with “the illusory candle-holder,” Jack o’ Lantern, or Will o’ the Wisp, whose fatal phosphorescent light is, in “Paradise Lost,” described as