Elizabethan Fairies



Elizabethan Fairies

By Luceta di Cosimo, BMDL, Aethlemearc.

©2006-2016

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During the reign of Elizabeth I, most educated people would consider fairies either a thing of the past or non-existent. However, the fairies were quite in vogue – on stage, in books, masques, etc.

Fairy belief was always regarded as something very British, if slightly outdated, and pertaining to the rural or uneducated. Multiple sources, including Chaucer, mention fairy belief as a part of not too distant past. The belief in fairies varied depending on time and place. For example, in England, in early 16th c., the fairies were alsmost never mentioned, while at the same time in Scotland, there were multiple accounts of fairies, both in literature and in witch trials. Later in the century, the fairies were common in translated literature, where the creatures of Greek and Roman mythology, such as nymphs, dryads, and satyrs, were equated with elves and fairies. Later writers, such as Shakespeare, further removed the literary fairies from the fairies of folklore, by shrinking them, giving them wings, and making them benevolent.

Here is a look at the “fairy perceptions” of the Elizabethan times, as gleaned from the folk traditions, eyewitness accounts, and witchcraft trials:

Traditional (folk) fairies

Origins of fairies:

- Fallen angels

- Departed souls

- Separate entity in between Men and Angels, belonging to neither Heaven, Earth, or Hell, but a separate kingdom

- Corruption of the names of two warring houses in Florence, Italy (Guelfes and Gibbelines became Elfes and Goblins)

- Represent Diana and her court

Nature of fairies:

- Equated to nymphs, dryads, satyrs in translations of classical texts

- Equated to lamiae, stregae, and other monsters of antiquity

- Considered devils or associated with the devil

- Terrestrial spirits

- Water spirits

- Domestic spirits and devils

- Overall, undisputedly evil and wicked beings

Characteristics and appearances:

- Fairies were believed to be of human size or slightly smaller

- Were thought to possess extraordinary beauty

- Came in different colors, white, green, grey, and, quite commonly black

- Like dressing in green and white, and, especially, silk

- Were generally well dressed

- Tended to wear clothing of the region and period, liked high-crowned hats (at least in 17th c.)

- Were addicted to dancing, for both ritual and entertainment, and sometimes dancing was “the mode of locomotion”

- Sang to their dancing in “clear high voices”

- Incessant dancing led to formation of fairy rings

- Dancing was accompanied by music, especially bells and whistles

- Fairies could make mortals who hear their music dance, quite often with detrimental results.

- Modes of locomotion:

-Dancing more common in England

-Riding more common in Scotland (horses, their own or stolen, or hempen stalks magically turned into horses)

Habitats:

-Outdoors, usually forests, sometimes lakes, streams, etc.

-Would visit houses rarely, primarily to steal human children

Dwellings:

- Rooms and halls in hills and mountains

- Hell (especially in literary interpretations)

Time of Appearances:

- Most commonly in the summer

- Halloween would be the latest appearance in the year

- No appearances in winter

- Were told to have no power during Christmas season

- Would appear mostly at night, occasionally at twilight or in daytime

Numbers:

- Usually appeared “en masse”, rarely individually (faerie queen is an exception), which distinguished them from other ghosts or spirits, which usually appear “individually”

Faerie Royalty:

- Always female, and always nameless, going by “the Queen of Faerie”. Names like Mab, Titania, Oberon, Diana, Proserpina, are later literary inventions or crossovers from classical mythology.

What do they do, or Fairies interactions with people

- Need or like mortal food and drink

- Demand bread and milk, will steal if not given

- Demand clean water for baths

- Are known to bake their own bread and make their own food, which is quite delicious, and is sometimes given to mortals

- Have fairy cattle, which mortals can acquire as a dowry with a fairy bride

- Are known to steal regular cattle

- Shoot cattle and people with “elf-shots” (stone arrowheads)

- Lead travelers astray

- Send blight and diseases to both people and cattle

- Can cure disease, physical deformities and predict future

- Can give gift of “second sight” to some humans

- Can give money/treasure to people

Punishments for not treating the fairies right:

- Death

- Abduction (by a previous abductee as an intermediary, by gifts and promises from the Faerie Queen, and by unspecified supernatural power)

- Pinching (unique for Elizabethan times)

- Blight and disease

To avoid fairy punishment:

- Avoid fairy circles at all costs

- Avoid looking/staring/spying at fairies

- Avoid speaking to them

- Fairies dislike dirt and disorder

- Dislike lust and lechery (in humans)

The above are more representative of the folk belief. However, many others, more sophisticated and literary version of fairy existed at the same time, often intermingled with reinterpretation of classical mythology.

Non-traditional faeries

Fay romances – widely popular in the Middle Ages and Elizabethan times. Fays were often female enchantresses, humans with extraordinary skills and powers, rather than members of a different race.

Fairies (and especially the fairy queens) were frequently part of elaborate entertainment and masques staged for Elizabeth since 1570’s. Often, the Queen of Faerie was a thinly veiled disguise for the Queen herself. The themes explored in this plays were the royal marriage, duty, love, etc. The plays themselves were extravagantly staged, with elaborate dancing numbers, costumes, flowers, etc.

Spencer and the faerie Queen: The book is the allegory of Elizabeth’s rule of England, with Elizabeth cast as Fairy Queen Gloriana. As such, Spencer does not really concern himself with fairy taxonomy or origins. He portrays faeries quite similar to humans; Faeries in his text possess no distinguishing features to separate them from humans. Often, characters are of mixed human/faerie descent, or changelings.

Thus, fairies in the royal presence were quite different – they became good tame fairies, almost indistinguishable from humans.

16th century saw a general decline in folk belief in fairies. Shakespeare was familiar with the believes and superstitions of the time, but reinvented the fairies for the stage. He made several drastic changes to the fairies, as best seen in “Midsummer’s Night Dream”:

1. Shakespeare made fairies more benevolent, less wicked.

2. Fairies still acquire human children, but only to care for them and bring them up, not as a tribute to Hell, or slaves

3. He closely associated them with flowers and insects

4. Drastically reduced them in size – from human or near human – into diminutive homunculi. Titania and Oberon remained full sized in this play. However, in Romeo and Juliet Mercutio’s Mab is depicted as tiny

5. Portrayed fairies as comic and ridiculous, and ineffectual. (The person who does all the dirty work for the fairies is Robin Goodfellow, who, is not actually of fairy origin)

1594 - Midsummer’s Nights dream is written

1595 – Mab is described as a diminutive fairy in Romeo and Juliet – first time the faerie Queen is described as tiny!

1600 - multiple plays depict fairies as tiny people with botanical interests

1603 – ascension of James I, and publishing of Daemonology. New laws against witchcraft are enacted, fairies are equated to witches’ familiars, and the fairy vogue wanes somewhat.

By 1625 or so the terrible wicked faeries of 16th century folk belief are replaced by tiny comic people with obsession for microscopic minutiae of flora and fauna.

1628 – Robin Goodfellow: his mad pranks and merry gests” describes fairies as “harmless spirits called fairies”

1630-1634 – eyewitness accounts describing fairies as diminutive

1651 – Shakespearean fairies are firmly established as English faeries.

Bibliography:

M. W. Latham, Elizabethan Fairies, The Fairies of Folklore and the Fairies of Shakespeare, Columbia University Press, New York, 1930.

M. Woodcock, Fairy in the Fairy Queen: Renaissance Elf-Fashioning and Elizabethan Myth Making, Ashgate Publishing Company, England, 2004.

R. J. Stewart, Robert Kirk - Walker Between Worlds, A New Edition of “The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, with Edited Modern English text, Web edition, 2001.

K. Briggs, The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature. Bellew Publishing, London, 1989.

K. Briggs, The anatomy of Puck, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Bristol, 1959.

L. Spence, The fairy Tradition in Britain, Rider and company, London, 1948.

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