Folk-Lore and Legends: English — Background and Themes

oures and other holy freres, That serchen every land, and every streme, As thickke as motes in the sunnebeme, Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures, Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures, Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies, This maketh that ther ben no faeries.”

(_Wif of Bathes Tale._)

The fairy may be defined as a species of being partly material, partly spiritual, with a power to change its appearance, and be, to mankind, visible or invisible, according to its pleasure. In the old song, printed by Peck, Robin Goodfellow, a well–known fairy, professes that he had played his pranks from the time of Merlin, who was the contemporary of Arthur.

Chaucer uses the word _faërie_ as well for the _individual_ as for the _country_ or _system_, or what we should now call _fairy–land_, or _faryism_. He knew nothing, it would seem, of _Oberon_, _Titania_, or _Mab_, but speaks of—

“Pluto, that is the King of Faerie, And many a ladie in his compagnie, Folwing his wif, the quene Proserpina, etc.”

(_The Marchantes Tale_, i. 10101.)

From this passage of Chaucer Mr. Tyrwhitt “cannot help thinking that his _Pluto_ and _Proserpina_ were the true progenitors of _Oberon_ and _Titania_.”

In the progress of _The Wif of Bathes Tale_, it happed the knight,

“——in his way ... to ride In all his care, under a forest side, Whereas he saw upon a dance go Of ladies foure–and–twenty, and yet mo. Toward this ilke dance, he drow ful yerne, In hope that he som wisdom shulde lerne, But, certainly, er he came fully there, Yvanished was this dance, he wiste not wher.”

These _ladies_ appear to have been _fairies_, though nothing is insinuated of their size. Milton seems to have been upon the prowl here for his “forest–side.”

In _A Midsummer–Night’s Dream_, a fairy addresses Bottom the weaver—

“Hail, _mortal_, hail!”

which sufficiently shows she was not so herself.

Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, in the same play, calls Oberon,

“——King of _shadows_,”

and in the old song just mentioned,

“The King of _ghosts_ and _shadows_,”

and this mighty monarch asserts of himself, and his subjects,

“But we are _spirits_ of another sort.”

The fairies, as we already see, were male and female. Their government was monarchical, and Oberon, the King of Fairyland, must have been a sovereign of very extensive territory. The name of his queen was Titania. Both are mentioned by Shakespeare, being personages of no little importance in the above play, where they, in an ill–humour, thus encounter:

Obe. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

Tita. What, jealous Oberon? Fairy, skip hence; I have forsworn his bed and company.

That the name [Oberon] was not the invention of our great dramatist is sufficiently proved. The allegorical Spenser gives it to King Henry the Eighth. Robert Greene was the author of a play entitled “The Scottishe history of James the Fourthe ... intermixed with a pleasant comedie presented by _Oberon, king of the fairies_.” He is, likewise, a character in the old French romances of _Huon de Bourdeaux_, and _Ogier le Danois_; and there even seems to be one upon his own exploits, _Roman d’ Auberon_. What authority, however, Shakespeare had for the name Titania, it does not appear, nor is she so called by any other writer. He himself, at the same time, as well as many others, gives to the queen of fairies the name of Mab, though no one, except Drayton, mentions her as the wife of Oberon:

“O then, I see, queen Mab hath been with you, She is the fairy’s midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate–stone On the fore–finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep; Her waggon–spokes made of long spinner’s legs; The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; The traces, of the smallest spider’s web; The collars, of the moonshine’s wat’ry beams: Her whip, of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film: Her waggoner, a small grey–coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid: Her chariot is an empty hazel–nut, Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, Time out of mind the fairies’ coachmakers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love! ... This is that very Mab, That plats the manes of horses in the night; And bakes the elf–locks in foul sluttish hairs, Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.”

(_Romeo and Juliet._)