Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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      Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out:

      Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room:

      In Ben Jonson’s ballad of “Robin Goodfellow”36 we have a further illustration of this notion:

      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:

      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:

      the object of their blessing being to bring peace upon the house of Theseus. Mr. Douce37 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:”

      Macbeth, too (v. 8), in his encounter with Macduff, says:

      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:

      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:

      Again, the same fairy addresses him:

      Once more, Puck says:

      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:

      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:

      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:

      there having been a popular notion that where fairies resorted no noxious creature could СКАЧАТЬ