The Elusive Fairies
HOW elusively the fairies, the elves and all their kin flit through the pages of our literature 1 The veil which separates us from them is rarely lifted and we are afforded glimpses, all too fleeting, of a busy, happy little people, as interested, apparently, in us as we in them. It is a curious fact that in all ages there has been the belief that though fairies were seen in former days, they could no longer be seen by mortal eyes. Chaucer tells us that in King Arthur's days all this land was filled with fairy folk and that the elf queen and her merry court danced often in our green meadows, but that was many hundred years ago, and " now can no man see non elves me." Yet two centuries later the same fairy queen and her train were known and loved by one greater than Chaucer.
Though immortal, the fairies have changed as the human race has changed. The fairies who dance in our meadows, disport themselves in our gardens and warm themselves by our firesides, bear little resemblance to the elves who peopled the trackless wastes of heath and moor, the terror-infested bogs and the impenetrable forests of Saxon days. These elves were mighty in stature, fearsome, and characteristic of an age when Man fought with Nature, wresting from her the land, and when unseen powers resented this loss of their domains. Place-names in the more remote parts of ouv islands still recall the memory of the supernatural terror with which the water elves of the dark mere pools, " the rauckle mark steppers " of the lonely moors and the fiends of the mists, inspired our ancestors. The sea elves were impersonations of the fury of the waves, and the wolf- haunted mark was a resort of creatures, not of sun, but of darkness, akin to the Formon in Irish mythic history, and the Mallt-y-nos, the huge uncouth creatures immor- talized by the Welsh bards. Yet even in those days there were elves of surpassing beauty, " sheen bright elves," of whom in later days Shakespeare and Shelley had rare visions. Indeed, our Saxon ancestors would have understood Ariel as few of us understand him, for he is the old English " bright elf." As for that mischievous elf, Puck, he and all his kind were continually about their ways.
Even before the twelfth century the dark, monstrous elves had begun to disappear, for the learned Gervase of Tilbury tells us of creatures more akin to our Brownies, impish creatures " making sport of man's simplicity." In mediawal and Tudor days the fairies we know and love disported themselves in our fields and gardens, tripped about in our houses, and held their midnight revels, with grasshopper, gnat, and fly serving them for ministrelsy :
" Round about, round about in a fine ring—a : Thus we dance, thus we dance, and thus we sing—a ; Trip and go, to and fro, over this green—a, All about, in and out, for our brave queon—a."
We have glimpses of fairy feasts, concerts, and revels and even of preparations for a fairy wedding and the bride's gown of pansy, pink and primrose leaves, embroid- ered with flowers of rosemary, her head-dress :
" Of the yellows in the full-blown rose Which in the top it doth enclose Like drops of gold ore shall be hung,"
and the canopy to be borne aloft over her of " moons from the peacock's tail " and pheasants' head feathers ; we read of a dowry in fairyland, consisting of a house of mother of pearl, an ivory tennis court, a nut-meg parlour, a sapphire dairy, chambers of agate, kitchens all of crystal, walks of amber, orchards bearing fruit throughout the year, groves filled with birds, fish ponds full of nectar and, above all, " an abundance of lady- birds." Glimpses of Oberon and his queen enchant us. What more attractive than the picture of the fairy king and queen taking refuge from the rain under a mushroom, " fretted over head with glow wormes " and giving such glimmering light " as stars doe in a frosty night," their supper furnished by their " nimble footed trayne " bringing the choicest dainties—one little fairy making his way through the ,crowd loaded with an ear of wheat " the whitest and the fairest hee cann gett " ? What more appealing than the " Beggar's Petition to the Fairy Queen " ? Yet even in those days there were people who did not believe in fairies. For according to Bishop Corbet, " since of late Elizabeth and late James came in " the fairies had vanished, though one cannot help wondering whether the worthy Bishop really disbelieved in them when one reads the full title of the ballad in which he deplored their departure -7" A proper new ballad entitled ' The Fairies Farewell, or God a mercy will,' to be sung or whistled to the tune of the Medow Brow,' by the learned, by the unlearned to the tune of Fortune.' "
Rarest of all are those glimpses of a race of beings older and more beautiful even than the fairies, to be found in all literature and notably in ancient Celtic poetry, embodying folk-memories of an age lost in the mists of antiquities and possibly of beings who inhabited this planet before man :
" From thence we see, though we be not seen We know what has been and shall be again, • And the cloud that was raised by the first man's fall ; Has concealed us all from the eyes of man."
Was " La Belle Dame sans Merci " the last exquisite vision vouchsafed of this race ?.
I think that the fairies we all love most are the flower fairies, the fairies who play about in the scent of thyme and in and out of the foxgloves, swing themselves in the bluebells and ring the exquisite little bells of the wood-sorrel to summon Oberon and Titania's court to their midnight revels. The pixies use the tulip flowers as cradles, and there is a charming west-country tale of an old woman who grew tulips in her cottage garden and never allowed them to be gathered because of the pixies. They could be heard at night singing their babies to sleep and these tulips lasted longer than any others, and their scent was sweeter than the scent of roses. When the old woman died the tulips were dug up and the garden left desolate, but the pixies tended her grave and in springtime planted it with wild flowers. And what of the fairies' sea gardens ? The little rocks which they plant so lovingly with tiny seaweeds, anemones and coralline, and the green " Mermaid's lace " we see on our Western shores. What of St. Brandan's Fairy Isle which on summer evenings on our western shores we behold bathed in the golden splendour of the sunset ? And we all know the little fairy gardens, the tiny patches of green-sward starred with minute sea-pinks in the shel- tered pockets of our rocky coasts. It is easy to believe the old tales of the fairy music heard at night, the hundreds of little lights moving about and the sweet perfume wafted far out to sea from the small people's gardens. In our own gardens do we not every summer morning see the fairies' handiwork—the long hanging bridges and palaces we call cobwebs, and which are amongst the loveliest and least earthly of earthly things ? And who but the fairies deck the flowers and leaves with dewdrops ?
" The light fairies danced upon the flowers Hanging on every leaf an orient pearl ; Which struck together with the silken wind Of their loose mantles made a silver chime."
But, alas ! the little people themselves we do not see. " Methinks we walk in Dreams in Fairyland." There are many roads leading to Fairyland and at first the way seems as simple as the little people themselves, but how soon mists arise and we find ourselves in a pathless waste. For as Spenser told us long ago :
"None that breatheth living sire does know Where is that happy land of Faeric."
ELEANOCR SINCLAIR ROHDE.
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