Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844
Various

Various

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine – Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844

TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA

No. I

The Fairies’ Sabbath

What is a fairy?

Read!

[“A Wood near Athens.—Enter a Fairy on one side, and Puck on the other.[1 - Midsummer Night’s Dream.]]

“Puck. How now, Spirit! whither wander you?

Fairy. Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander ever where,
Swifter than the moones sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green:
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I’ll begone;
Our queen and all our elves come here anon.

Puck. The King doth keep his revels here to-night;
Take heed, the queen come not within his sight.
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling.
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild:
But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy:
Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove, or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,
Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.”

And there, then, they are!—The blithe and lithe, bright and fine darlings of your early-bewitched and for ever-enamoured fancy! There they are! The King and the Queen, and the Two royal Courts of shadowy,   gorgeous, remote, and cloud-walled Elf-land: The fairies of the vision once wafted, “by moon or star light,” upon the “creeping murmur” of the Avon!—The Fairies in England! Your fairies!

Nevertheless you, from of old, are discreet. And you mistrust information which discountenances itself, by borrowing the magical robe of verse! Or you misdoubt this medley of our English blood, which in the lapse of ages must, as you deem, have confounded, upon the soil, the confluent streams of primitively distinct superstitions! Or your suspicious inquisition rebels against this insular banishment of ours, which, sequestering us from the common mind of the world, may, as you augur, have perverted, into an excessive individuality of growth, our mythological beliefs: Or—Southwards then!

One good stride over salt water lands you amongst a people, who, from the old, have kept themselves to themselves; whose warm, bold, thorough-loyal hearts hereditarily believe, after the love and reverence owed from the children’s children to the fathers’ fathers. Here are—for good and for ill—and from a sure hand:—“The Fairies in Lower Britanny; alio nomine—The Korrigans.”

“Like these holy virgins, (the Gallicenæ or Barrigenæ of Mela,) our Korrigans predict the future. They know the skill of healing incurable maladies with particular charms; which they impart, it is affirmed, to magicians that are their friends. Ingenious Proteuses, they take the shape of any animal at their pleasure. In the twinkling of an eye they whisk from one end of the world to the other. Annually, with returning spring, they celebrate a high nocturnal festivity. A tablecloth, white as the driven snow, is spread upon the greensward, by the margin of a fountain. It is covered with the most delicious viands; in the midst sparkles a crystal goblet, which sheds such a splendour as serves in the stead of torches. At the close of the repast, this goblet goes round from hand to hand; it holds a miraculous beverage, one drop of which, it is averred, would make omniscient, like the Almighty. At any least breath or stir of human kind, all vanishes.

“In truth, it is near fountains that the Korrigans are oftenest met with; especially near such as rise in the neighbourhood of dolmens.[2 - Dolmen; literally, stone table. Remarkable structures, learnedly ascribed to the Druids; unlearnedly, to the dwarfs and fairies; and numerous throughout Western Britanny. One or more large and massive flat stones, overlaying great slabs planted edgeways in the ground, form a rude and sometimes very capacious chamber, or grotto. The superstition which cleaves to these relics of a forgotten antiquity, stamps itself in the names given to many of them by the peasantry:—Grotte aux fées, Roche aux fées, &c.] For in the sequestered spots whence the Virgin Mary, who is held for their chief foe, has not yet driven them, they still preside over the fountains. Our traditions bestow upon them a strong passion for music, with sweet voices; but do not, like those of the Germanic nations, make dancers of them. The popular songs of all countries frequently depict them combing their fine fair hair, which they seem daintily to cherish. Their stature is that of the other European fairies: they are not above two feet in height. Their shape, exquisitely proportioned, is as airy, slight, and pellucid as that of the wasp. They have no other dress than a white veil, which they wrap around their body. Seen by night, they are very beautiful: in the daytime, you perceive that their hair is grey—that their eyes are red—that their face is wrinkled. Accordingly, they begin to show themselves only at the shut of eve; and they loathe the light. Every thing about them denotes fallen intelligences. The Breton peasants maintain that they are high princesses, who, because they would not embrace Christianity when the apostles came to preach in Armorica, were stricken by the curse of God. The Welsh recognise in them, souls of Druids doomed to penance. This coincidence is remarkable.

“They are universally believed to   feel a vehement hatred for the clergy, and for our holy religion, which has confounded them with the spirits of darkness—a grand motive, as it appears, of displeasure and offence to them. The sight of a surplice, the sound of bells, scares them away. The popular tales of all Europe would, meanwhile, tend to support the church, in viewing them as maleficent genii. As in Britanny; the blast of their breath is mortal in Wales, in Ireland, in Scotland, and in Prussia. They cast weirds.[3 - Weirds. The French has—Lots. “Elles jettent des sorts.” For justifying the translation, see the fine old Scottish ballad of Kempion; or Kemp Owayne, at the beginning:—“Come here, come here, ye freely fede, (i. e. nobly born,)And lay your head low on my knee,A heavier weird I shall ye readThan ever was read to gay ladye.“I weird ye to a fiery beast:And released shall ye never be,Till Kempion the kinges sonCome to the crag and thrice kiss thee!”] Whosoever has muddied the waters of their spring, or caught them combing their hair, or counting their treasures beside their dolmen, (for they there keep, it is believed, concealed mines of gold and of diamonds,) almost inevitably dies; especially should the misencounter fall upon a Saturday, which day, holy to the Virgin Mother, is inauspicious for their kind,”[4 - From the preface to the exceedingly interesting collection by M. Th. de la Villemarqué, of the transmitted songs that are current amongst his Bas Breton countrymen.] &c. &c. &c.

Here, in the stead of the joyously-sociable monarchal hive, you behold a republic of solitarily-dwelling, and not unconditionally beautiful, naiads! No dancing! And a stature, prodigiously disqualifying for the asylum of an acorn cup! You are unsatisfied. Shakspeare has indeed vividly portrayed one curiously-featured species, and M. De la Villemarqué another, of the air-made inscrutable beings evoked by your question; but your question, from the beginning, struck at the Generic notion in its purified logical shape—at the definition, then—of the thing, a fairy.

Sir Walter Scott,[5 - Essay on The Fairies of Popular Superstition, in “The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.”] writing—the first in time of all men who have written—at large and scientifically upon the fairies of Western Europe, steps into disquisition by a description, duly loose for leaving his own foot unentangled. “The general idea of Spirits, of a limited power and subordinate nature, dwelling among the woods and mountains, is perhaps common to all nations.”

A little too loose, peradventure!

Dr James Grimm, heroically bent upon rescuing from the throat of oblivion and from the tooth of scepticism, to his own Teutons—yet heathen—a faith outreaching and outsoaring the gross definite cognisances of this fleshly eye and hand, sets apart one—profoundly read and thought—chapter, to Wights and Elves.[6 - Deutsche Mythologie, von Jacob Grimm. Chap. xiii. Ed. 1. 1835, and xvii. Ed. 2. 1843.]

These terms, Wight and Elf, are presented by Dr Grimm as being, after a rough way, synonymous; and you have above seen another Germanic writer—a native of Warwickshire—take Elf for equivalent, or nearly so, with Fairy.

Of his many-natured Teutonic wights and elves, then, but with glances darted around, northwards and westwards, and southwards and eastwards, Dr Grimm begins with speaking thus:—

“From the deified and half-divine natures [investigated by this author in several of his antecedent chapters] a whole order of other beings is especially herein distinguished, that whilst the former either proceed of mankind,   or seek human intercourse, these form a segregated society—one might say, a peculiar kingdom of their own—and are only, by accident or the pressure of circumstances, moved to converse with men. Something superhuman, approximating them to the gods, is mingled up in them: they possess power to help and to hurt man. They are however, at the same time, afraid of him, because they are not his bodily match. They appear either far below the human stature, or misshapen. Almost all of them enjoy the faculty of rendering themselves invisible.”

You turn away your head, exclaiming that the weighty words of our puissant teacher are, for your proficiency, somewhat bewildering, and for your exigency by much too—Teutonic.

Have a care!

However, “Westward Hoe!” Put the old Rhine between the master of living mythologists and yourself, and listen to Baron Walckenaer unlocking the fountains of the fairy belief, and showing how it streams, primarily through France, and secondarily through all remaining Western Europe. “If there is a specifically characterized superstition, it is that which regards the fairies: those female genii,[7 - “Ces génies femelles.”] most frequently without name, without descent, without kin, who are incessantly busied subverting the order of nature, for the weal or the woe of mortals whom they love and favour without a motive, or, as causelessly, hate and persecute.”[8 - From Walckenaer’s Dissertation on the Origin of the Fairy Belief; last printed, in an abridged form, by Jacob, in his edition of the Contes des Fées, par Perrault, (Paris, 1842.)]

What, female only? Where are Oberon and Puck? Without a name? Where Titania?—Mab? Without a motive? Where the godmother of the sweet-faced and sweet-hearted Cinderella? Partial, and without a distinct type in your own recollections, you guessingly pronounce the characterization of the perpetual secretary too–French. Driven back, disappointed on all sides, you turn round upon your difficulties, and manfully project beating out a definition of your own; to which end, glancing your eye back affectionately, and now, needle-like, northwards across the Channel, you “at one slight bound” once more find yourself at your own fireside, and on your table The Midsummer Night’s Dream, open at the second scene of the first act.

Inquirer whosoever! A problem lies large before us—complicated, abstruse even, yet—suitably to the subject—a delicate one! To hunt down an elusive word, and a more elusive notion! It is to find a set of determinings which, laid together, shall form a circle fitted to confine that inconfinable spirit—a Fairy; or, if you better like plain English, to find the terms needed for signifying, describing, expounding the Thought which, lurking as at the bottom of your mind, under a crowd of thoughts, rises up, in all circumstances, to meet and answer the name–a fairy; the Thought, which when all accidental and unessential attributes liable to be attracted to the fairy essence have been stripped away, remains; the substrate, absolute, essential, generic notion, therefore—a fairy; that Thought, which whencesoever acquired, and held howsoever, enables you to deal to your satisfaction with proposed fairies, acknowledging this one frankly;—this, but for a half-sister; shutting the door upon another. You may distinguish these terms at your pleasure, by sundry denominations: for example, you may call them Elements of the notion—a fairy—or circumscriptive Lines of such a notion, or indispensable Fairy-marks, or elfin Criteria, or by any other name which you may happen to like as well or better; but when found, call them as you will, they must reveal in essence, the thing which we look for—the answer to the question with which we first started, and to which we have as yet found no satisfactory solution.

As for the process of the finding.   This notion is to be tracked after widely, and in intimate recesses; more hopefully, therefore, according to a planned campaign than a merely wild chance expatiation. The chase ranges over a material and an intellectual ground. Of either—a word.

I. The material—is a geographical—region, and may be called, summarily—The western half of Europe. Let us regard it as laid out by languages at this day spoken. Here is a map, roughly sketched:—

A.—Aboriginal

1. North-Western CELTS.—Ireland, Highlands of Scotland, and the interjacent Isle of Man.

2. South-Western CELTS.—Wales, Britanny, and the, till lately, Celtic-speaking Cornwall.

3. Northern GERMANS, or Germans beyond the Eider, or Scandinavians.—Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland.