Katherine Munro, Lady Fowlis, by birth Katherine Ross of Balnagowan, of
high rank, both by her own family and that of her husband, who was the
fifteenth Baron of Fowlis, and chief of the warlike clan of Munro, had a
stepmother's quarrel with Robert Munro, eldest son of her husband, which
she gratified by forming a scheme for compassing his death by unlawful
arts. Her proposed advantage in this was, that the widow of Robert, when
he was thus removed, should marry with her brother, George Ross of
Balnagowan; and for this purpose, her sister-in-law, the present Lady
Balnagowan, was also to be removed. Lady Fowlis, if the indictment had a
syllable of truth, carried on her practices with the least possible
disguise. She assembled persons of the lowest order, stamped with an
infamous celebrity as witches; and, besides making pictures or models in
clay, by which they hoped to bewitch Robert Munro and Lady Balnagowan,
they brewed, upon one occasion, poison so strong that a page tasting of
it immediately took sickness. Another earthen jar (ScotticГЁ _pig_) of
the same deleterious liquor was prepared by the Lady Fowlis, and sent
with her own nurse for the purpose of administering it to Robert Munro.
The messenger having stumbled in the dark, broke the jar, and a rank
grass grew on the spot where it fell, which sheep and cattle abhorred to
touch; but the nurse, having less sense than the brute beasts, and
tasting of the liquor which had been spilled, presently died. What is
more to our present purpose, Lady Fowlis made use of the artillery of
Elfland in order to destroy her stepson and sister-in-law. Laskie
Loncart, one of the assistant hags, produced two of what the common
people call elf-arrow heads, being, in fact, the points of flint used
for arming the ends of arrow-shafts in the most ancient times, but
accounted by the superstitious the weapons by which the fairies were
wont to destroy both man and beast. The pictures of the intended victims
were then set up at the north end of the apartment, and Christian Ross
Malcolmson, an assistant hag, shot two shafts at the image of Lady
Balnagowan, and three against the picture of Robert Munro, by which
shots they were broken, and Lady Fowlis commanded new figures to be
modelled. Many similar acts of witchcraft and of preparing poisons were
alleged against Lady Fowlis.

Her son-in-law, Hector Munro, one of his stepmother's prosecutors, was,
for reasons of his own, active in a similar conspiracy against the life
of his own brother. The rites that he practised were of an uncouth,
barbarous, and unusual nature. Hector, being taken ill, consulted on his
case some of the witches or soothsayers, to whom this family appears to
have been partial. The answer was unanimous that he must die unless the
principal man of his blood should suffer death in his stead. It was
agreed that the vicarious substitute for Hector must mean George Munro,
brother to him by the half-blood (the son of the Katharine Lady Fowlis
before commemorated). Hector sent at least seven messengers for this
young man, refusing to receive any of his other friends till he saw the
substitute whom he destined to take his place in the grave. When George
at length arrived, Hector, by advice of a notorious witch, called Marion
MacIngarach, and of his own foster-mother, Christian Neil Dalyell,
received him with peculiar coldness and restraint. He did not speak for
the space of an hour, till his brother broke silence and asked, "How he
did?" Hector replied, "That he was the better George had come to visit
him," and relapsed into silence, which seemed singular when compared
with the anxiety he had displayed to see his brother; but it was, it
seems, a necessary part of the spell. After midnight the sorceress
Marion MacIngarach, the chief priestess or Nicneven of the company, went
forth with her accomplices, carrying spades with them. They then
proceeded to dig a grave not far from the seaside, upon a piece of land
which formed the boundary betwixt two proprietors. The grave was made as
nearly as possible to the size of their patient Hector Munro, the earth
dug out of the grave being laid aside for the time. After ascertaining
that the operation of the charm on George Munro, the destined victim,
should be suspended for a time, to avoid suspicion, the conspirators
proceeded to work their spell in a singular, impressive, and, I believe,
unique manner. The time being January, 1588, the patient, Hector Munro,
was borne forth in a pair of blankets, accompanied with all who were
entrusted with the secret, who were warned to be strictly silent till
the chief sorceress should have received her information from the angel
whom they served. Hector Munro was carried to his grave and laid
therein, the earth being filled in on him, and the grave secured with
stakes as at a real funeral. Marion MacIngarach, the Hecate of the
night, then sat down by the grave, while Christian Neil Dalyell, the
foster-mother, ran the breadth of about nine ridges distant, leading a
boy in her hand, and, coming again to the grave where Hector Munro was
interred alive, demanded of the witch which victim she would choose, who
replied that she chose Hector to live and George to die in his stead.
This form of incantation was thrice repeated ere Mr. Hector was removed
from his chilling bed in a January grave and carried home, all remaining
mute as before. The consequence of a process which seems ill-adapted to
produce the former effect was that Hector Munro recovered, and after the
intervention of twelve months George Munro, his brother, died. Hector
took the principal witch into high favour, made her keeper of his sheep,
and evaded, it is said, to present her to trial when charged at Aberdeen
to produce her. Though one or two inferior persons suffered death on
account of the sorceries practised in the house of Fowlis, the Lady
Katharine and her stepson Hector had both the unusual good fortune to be
found not guilty. Mr. Pitcairn remarks that the juries, being composed
of subordinate persons not suitable to the rank or family of the person
tried, has all the appearance of having been packed on purpose for
acquittal. It might also, in some interval of good sense, creep into the
heads of Hector Munro's assize that the enchantment being performed in
January, 1588, and the deceased being only taken ill of his fatal
disease in April, 1590, the distance between the events might seem too
great to admit the former being regarded as the cause of the latter.[35]

[Footnote 35: Pitcairn's "Trials," vol. i. pp. 191-201.]

Another instance of the skill of a sorcerer being traced to the
instructions of the elves is found in the confession of John Stewart,
called a vagabond, but professing skill in palmistry and jugglery, and
accused of having assisted Margaret Barclay, or Dein, to sink or cast
away a vessel belonging to her own good brother. It being demanded of
him by what means he professed himself to have knowledge of things to
come, the said John confessed that the space of twenty-six years ago, he
being travelling on All-Hallow Even night, between the towns of Monygoif
(so spelled) and Clary, in Galway, he met with the King of the Fairies
and his company, and that the King of the Fairies gave him a stroke with
a white rod over the forehead, which took from him the power of speech
and the use of one eye, which he wanted for the space of three years. He
declared that the use of speech and eyesight was restored to him by the
King of Fairies and his company, on an Hallowe'en night, at the town of
Dublin, in Ireland, and that since that time he had joined these people
every Saturday at seven o'clock, and remained with them all the night;
also, that they met every Hallow-tide, sometimes on Lanark Hill
(Tintock, perhaps), sometimes on Kilmaurs Hill, and that he was then
taught by them. He pointed out the spot of his forehead on which, he
said, the King of the Fairies struck him with a white rod, whereupon the
prisoner, being blindfolded, they pricked the spot with a large pin,
whereof he expressed no sense or feeling. He made the usual declaration,
that he had seen many persons at the Court of Fairy, whose names he
rehearsed particularly, and declared that all such persons as are taken
away by sudden death go with the King of Elfland. With this man's
evidence we have at present no more to do, though we may revert to the
execrable proceedings which then took place against this miserable
juggler and the poor women who were accused of the same crime. At
present it is quoted as another instance of a fortune-teller referring
to Elfland as the source of his knowledge.

At Auldearne, a parish and burgh of barony in the county of Nairne, the
epidemic terror of witches seems to have gone very far. The confession
of a woman called Isobel Gowdie, of date April, 1662, implicates, as
usual, the Court of Fairy, and blends the operations of witchcraft with
the facilities afforded by the fairies. These need be the less insisted
upon in this place, as the arch-fiend, and not the elves, had the
immediate agency in the abominations which she narrates. Yet she had
been, she said, in the Dounie Hills, and got meat there from the Queen
of Fairies more than she could eat. She added, that the queen is bravely
clothed in white linen and in white and brown cloth, that the King of
Fairy is a brave man; and there were elf-bulls roaring and _skoilling_
at the entrance of their palace, which frightened her much. On another
occasion this frank penitent confesses her presence at a rendezvous of
witches, Lammas, 1659, where, after they had rambled through the country
in different shapes--of cats, hares, and the like--eating, drinking, and
wasting the goods of their neighbours into whose houses they could
penetrate, they at length came to the dounie Hills, where the mountain
opened to receive them, and they entered a fair big room, as bright as
day. At the entrance ramped and roared the large fairy bulls, which
always alarmed Isobel Gowdie. These animals are probably the
water-bulls, famous both in Scottish and Irish tradition, which are not
supposed to be themselves altogether _canny_ or safe to have concern
with. In their caverns the fairies manufactured those elf-arrow heads
with which the witches and they wrought so much evil. The elves and the
arch-fiend laboured jointly at this task, the former forming and
sharpening the dart from the rough flint, and the latter perfecting and
finishing (or, as it is called, _dighting_) it. Then came the sport of
the meeting. The witches bestrode either corn-straws, bean-stalks, or
rushes, and calling, "Horse and Hattock, in the Devil's name!" which is
the elfin signal for mounting, they flew wherever they listed. If the
little whirlwind which accompanies their transportation passed any
mortal who neglected to bless himself, all such fell under the witches'
power, and they acquired the right of shooting at him. The penitent
prisoner gives the names of many whom she and her sisters had so slain,
the death for which she was most sorry being that of William Brown, in
the Milntown of Mains. A shaft was also aimed at the Reverend Harrie
Forbes, a minister who was present at the examination of Isobel, the
confessing party. The arrow fell short, and the witch would have taken
aim again, but her master forbade her, saying the reverend gentleman's
life was not subject to their power. To this strange and very particular
confession we shall have occasion to recur when witchcraft is the more
immediate subject. What is above narrated marks the manner in which the
belief in that crime was blended with the fairy superstition.

To proceed to more modern instances of persons supposed to have fallen
under the power of the fairy race, we must not forget the Reverend
Robert Kirke, minister of the Gospel, the first translator of the Psalms
into Gaelic verse. He was, in the end of the seventeenth century,
successively minister of the Highland parishes of Balquidder and
Aberfoyle, lying in the most romantic district of Perthshire, and within
the Highland line. These beautiful and wild regions, comprehending so
many lakes, rocks, sequestered valleys, and dim copsewoods, are not even
yet quite abandoned by the fairies, who have resolutely maintained
secure footing in a region so well suited for their residence. Indeed,
so much was this the case formerly, that Mr. Kirke, while in his latter
charge of Aberfoyle, found materials for collecting and compiling his
Essay on the "Subterranean and for the most part Invisible People
heretofore going under the name of Elves, Fawnes, and Fairies, or the
like."[36] In this discourse, the author, "with undoubting mind,"
describes the fairy race as a sort of astral spirits, of a kind betwixt
humanity and angels--says, that they have children, nurses, marriages,
deaths, and burials, like mortals in appearance; that, in some respect,
they represent mortal men, and that individual apparitions, or
double-men, are found among them, corresponding with mortals existing on
earth. Mr. Kirke accuses them of stealing the milk from the cows, and of
carrying away, what is more material, the women in pregnancy, and
new-born children from their nurses. The remedy is easy in both cases.
The milk cannot be stolen if the mouth of the calf, before he is
permitted to suck, be rubbed with a certain balsam, very easily come by;
and the woman in travail is safe if a piece of cold iron is put into the
bed. Mr. Kirke accounts for this by informing us that the great northern
mines of iron, lying adjacent to the place of eternal punishment, have a
savour odious to these "fascinating creatures." They have, says the
reverend author, what one would not expect, many light toyish books
(novels and plays, doubtless), others on Rosycrucian subjects, and of an
abstruse mystical character; but they have no Bibles or works of
devotion. The essayist fails not to mention the elf-arrow heads, which
have something of the subtlety of thunderbolts, and can mortally wound
the vital parts without breaking the skin. These wounds, he says, he has
himself observed in beasts, and felt the fatal lacerations which he
could not see.

[Footnote 36: The title continues:--"Among the Low Country Scots, as
they are described by those who have the second sight, and now, to
occasion farther enquiry, collected and compared by a circumspect
enquirer residing among the Scottish-Irish (_i.e._, the Gael, or
Highlanders) in Scotland." It was printed with the author's name in
1691, and reprinted, Edinburgh, 1815, for Longman & Co.]

It was by no means to be supposed that the elves, so jealous and
irritable a race as to be incensed against those who spoke of them under
their proper names, should be less than mortally offended at the
temerity of the reverend author, who had pryed so deeply into their
mysteries, for the purpose of giving them to the public. Although,
therefore, the learned divine's monument, with his name duly inscribed,
is to be seen at the east end of the churchyard at Aberfoyle, yet those
acquainted with his real history do not believe that he enjoys the
natural repose of the tomb. His successor, the Rev. Dr. Grahame, has
informed us of the general belief that, as Mr. Kirke was walking one
evening in his night-gown upon a _Dun-shi,_ or fairy mount, in the
vicinity of the manse or parsonage, behold! he sunk down in what seemed
to be a fit of apoplexy, which the unenlightened took for death, while
the more understanding knew it to be a swoon produced by the
supernatural influence of the people whose precincts he had violated.
After the ceremony of a seeming funeral, the form of the Rev. Robert
Kirke appeared to a relation, and commanded him to go to Grahame of
Duchray, ancestor of the present General Graham Stirling. "Say to
Duchray, who is my cousin as well as your own, that I am not dead, but a
captive in Fairyland, and only one chance remains for my liberation.
When the posthumous child, of which my wife has been delivered since my
disappearance, shall be brought to baptism, I will appear in the room,
when, if Duchray shall throw over my head the knife or dirk which he
holds in his hand, I may be restored to society; but if this opportunity
is neglected, I am lost for ever." Duchray was apprised of what was to
be done. The ceremony took place, and the apparition of Mr. Kirke was
visibly seen while they were seated at table; but Grahame of Duchray, in
his astonishment, failed to perform the ceremony enjoined, and it is to
be feared that Mr. Kirke still "drees his weird in Fairyland," the Elfin
state declaring to him, as the Ocean to poor Falconer, who perished at
sea after having written his popular poem of "The Shipwreck"--

"Thou hast proclaimed our power--be thou our prey!"

Upon this subject the reader may consult a very entertaining little
volume, called "Sketches of Perthshire,"[37] by the Rev. Dr. Grahame of
Aberfoyle. The terrible visitation of fairy vengeance which has lighted
upon Mr. Kirke has not intimidated his successor, an excellent man and
good antiquary, from affording us some curious information on fairy
superstition. He tells us that these capricious elves are chiefly
dangerous on a Friday, when, as the day of the Crucifixion, evil spirits
have most power, and mentions their displeasure at any one who assumes
their accustomed livery of green, a colour fatal to several families in
Scotland, to the whole race of the gallant Grahames in particular;
insomuch that we have heard that in battle a Grahame is generally shot
through the green check of his plaid; moreover, that a veteran sportsman
of the name, having come by a bad fall, he thought it sufficient to
account for it, that he had a piece of green whip-cord to complete the
lash of his hunting-whip. I remember, also, that my late amiable friend,
James Grahame, author of "The Sabbath," would not break through this
ancient prejudice of his clan, but had his library table covered with
blue or black cloth, rather than use the fated colour commonly employed
on such occasions.

[Footnote 37: Edinburgh, 1812.]

To return from the Perthshire fairies, I may quote a story of a nature
somewhat similar to that of Mas Robert Kirke. The life of the excellent
person who told it was, for the benefit of her friends and the poor,
protracted to an unusual duration; so I conceive that this adventure,
which took place in her childhood, might happen before the middle of
last century. She was residing with some relations near the small
seaport town of North Berwick, when the place and its vicinity were
alarmed by the following story:--

An industrious man, a weaver in the little town, was married to a
beautiful woman, who, after bearing two or three children, was so
unfortunate as to die during the birth of a fourth child. The infant was
saved, but the mother had expired in convulsions; and as she was much
disfigured after death, it became an opinion among her gossips that,
from some neglect of those who ought to have watched the sick woman, she
must have been carried off by the elves, and this ghastly corpse
substituted in the place of the body. The widower paid little attention
to these rumours, and, after bitterly lamenting his wife for a year of
mourning, began to think on the prudence of forming a new marriage,
which, to a poor artisan with so young a family, and without the
assistance of a housewife, was almost a matter of necessity. He readily
found a neighbour with whose good looks he was satisfied, whilst her
character for temper seemed to warrant her good usage of his children.
He proposed himself and was accepted, and carried the names of the
parties to the clergyman (called, I believe, Mr. Matthew Reid) for the
due proclamation of banns. As the man had really loved his late partner,
it is likely that this proposed decisive alteration of his condition
brought back many reflections concerning the period of their union, and
with these recalled the extraordinary rumours which were afloat at the
time of her decease, so that the whole forced upon him the following
lively dream:--As he lay in his bed, awake as he thought, he beheld, at
the ghostly hour of midnight, the figure of a female dressed in white,
who entered his hut, stood by the side of his bed, and appeared to him
the very likeness of his late wife. He conjured her to speak, and with
astonishment heard her say, like the minister of Aberfoyle, that she was
not dead, but the unwilling captive of the Good Neighbours. Like Mr.
Kirke, too, she told him that if all the love which he once had for her
was not entirely gone, an opportunity still remained of recovering her,
or _winning her back_, as it was usually termed, from the comfortless
realms of Elfland. She charged him on a certain day of the ensuing week
that he should convene the most respectable housekeepers in the town,
with the clergyman at their head, and should disinter the coffin in
which she was supposed to have been buried. "The clergyman is to recite
certain prayers, upon which," said the apparition, "I will start from
the coffin and fly with great speed round the church, and you must have
the fleetest runner of the parish (naming a man famed for swiftness) to
pursue me, and such a one, the smith, renowned for his strength, to hold
me fast after I am overtaken; and in that case I shall, by the prayers
of the church, and the efforts of my loving husband and neighbours,
again recover my station in human society." In the morning the poor
widower was distressed with the recollection of his dream, but, ashamed
and puzzled, took no measures in consequence. A second night, as is not
very surprising, the visitation was again repeated. On the third night
she appeared with a sorrowful and displeased countenance, upbraided him
with want of love and affection, and conjured him, for the last time, to
attend to her instructions, which, if he now neglected, she would never
have power to visit earth or communicate with him again. In order to
convince him there was no delusion, he "saw in his dream" that she took
up the nursling at whose birth she had died, and gave it suck; she
spilled also a drop or two of her milk on the poor man's bed-clothes, as
if to assure him of the reality of the vision.

The next morning the terrified widower carried a statement of his
perplexity to Mr. Matthew Reid, the clergyman. This reverend person,
besides being an excellent divine in other respects, was at the same
time a man of sagacity, who understood the human passions. He did not
attempt to combat the reality of the vision which had thrown his
parishioner into this tribulation, but he contended it could be only an
illusion of the devil. He explained to the widower that no created being
could have the right or power to imprison or detain the soul of a
Christian--conjured him not to believe that his wife was otherwise
disposed of than according to God's pleasure--assured him that
Protestant doctrine utterly denies the existence of any middle state in
the world to come--and explained to him that he, as a clergyman of the
Church of Scotland, neither could nor dared authorize opening graves or
using the intervention of prayer to sanction rites of a suspicious
character. The poor man, confounded and perplexed by various feelings,
asked his pastor what he should do. "I will give you my best advice,"
said the clergyman. "Get your new bride's consent to be married
to-morrow, or to-day, if you can; I will take it on me to dispense with
the rest of the banns, or proclaim them three times in one day. You will
have a new wife, and, if you think of the former, it will be only as of
one from whom death has separated you, and for whom you may have
thoughts of affection and sorrow, but as a saint in Heaven, and not as a
prisoner in Elfland." The advice was taken, and the perplexed widower
had no more visitations from his former spouse.

An instance, perhaps the latest which has been made public, of
communication with the Restless People--(a more proper epithet than that
of _Daoine Shi_, or Men of Peace, as they are called in Gaelic)--came
under Pennant's notice so late as during that observant traveller's tour
in 1769. Being perhaps the latest news from the invisible commonwealth,
we give the tourist's own words.

"A poor visionary who had been working in his cabbage-garden (in
Breadalbane) imagined that he was raised suddenly up into the air, and
conveyed over a wall into an adjacent corn-field; that he found himself
surrounded by a crowd of men and women, many of whom he knew to have
been dead for some years, and who appeared to him skimming over the tops
of the unbending corn, and mingling together like bees going to hive;
that they spoke an unknown language, and with a hollow sound; that they
very roughly pushed him to and fro, but on his uttering the name of God
all vanished, but a female sprite, who, seizing him by the shoulder,
obliged him to promise an assignation at that very hour that day
seven-night; that he then found his hair was all tied in double knots
(well known by the name of elf-locks), and that he had almost lost his
speech; that he kept his word with the spectre, whom he soon saw
floating through the air towards him; that he spoke to her, but she told
him she was at that time in too much haste to attend to him, but bid him
go away and no harm should befall him, and so the affair rested when I
left the country. But it is incredible the mischief these _Г¦gri somnia_
did in the neighbourhood. The friends and neighbours of the deceased,
whom the old dreamer had named, were in the utmost anxiety at finding
them in such bad company in the other world; the almost extinct belief
of the old idle tales began to gain ground, and the good minister will
have many a weary discourse and exhortation before he can eradicate the
absurd ideas this idle story has revived."[38]

[Footnote 38: Pennant's "Tour in Scotland," vol. i. p. 110.]

It is scarcely necessary to add that this comparatively recent tale is
just the counterpart of the story of Bessie Dunlop, Alison Pearson, and
of the Irish butler who was so nearly carried off, all of whom found in
Elfland some friend, formerly of middle earth, who attached themselves
to the child of humanity, and who endeavoured to protect a fellow-mortal
against their less philanthropic companions.

These instances may tend to show how the fairy superstition, which, in
its general sense of worshipping the _Dii Campestres_, was much the
older of the two, came to bear upon and have connexion with that horrid
belief in witchcraft which cost so many innocent persons and crazy
impostors their lives for the supposed commission of impossible crimes.
In the next chapter I propose to trace how the general disbelief in the
fairy creed began to take place, and gradually brought into discredit
the supposed feats of witchcraft, which afforded pretext for such cruel
practical consequences.




LETTER VI.

    Immediate Effect of Christianity on Articles of Popular
    Superstition--Chaucer's Account of the Roman Catholic Priests
    banishing the Fairies--Bishop Corbett imputes the same Effect to the
    Reformation--His Verses on that Subject--His Iter
    Septentrionale--Robin Goodfellow and other Superstitions mentioned
    by Reginald Scot--Character of the English Fairies--The Tradition
    had become obsolete in that Author's Time--That of Witches remained
    in vigour--But impugned by various Authors after the Reformation, as
    Wierus, Naudæus, Scot, and others--Demonology defended by Bodinus,
    Remigius, &c.--Their mutual Abuse of each other--Imperfection of
    Physical Science at this Period, and the Predominance of Mysticism
    in that Department.


Although the influence of the Christian religion was not introduced to
the nations of Europe with such radiance as to dispel at once those
clouds of superstition which continued to obscure the understanding of
hasty and ill-instructed converts, there can be no doubt that its
immediate operation went to modify the erroneous and extravagant
articles of credulity which lingered behind the old pagan faith, and
which gave way before it, in proportion as its light became more pure
and refined from the devices of men.

The poet Chaucer, indeed, pays the Church of Rome, with its monks and
preaching friars, the compliment of having, at an early period, expelled
from the land all spirits of an inferior and less holy character. The
verses are curious as well as picturesque, and may go some length to
establish the existence of doubts concerning the general belief in
fairies among the well-instructed in the time of Edward III.

The fairies of whom the bard of Woodstock talks are, it will be
observed, the ancient Celtic breed, and he seems to refer for the
authorities of his tale to Bretagne, or Armorica, a genuine Celtic
colony:--

"In old time of the King Artour,
Of which that Bretons speken great honour,
All was this land fulfilled of faerie;
The Elf queen, with her joly company,
Danced full oft in many a grene mead.
This was the old opinion, as I rede--
I speake of many hundred years ago,
But now can no man see no elves mo.
For now the great charity and prayers
Of limitours,[39] and other holy freres,
That searchen every land and every stream,
As thick as motes in the sunne-beam,
Blessing halls, chambers, kitchenes, and boures,
Cities and burghes, castles high and towers,
Thropes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies,
This maketh that there ben no fairies.
For there as wont to walken was an elf,
There walketh now the limitour himself,
In under nichtes and in morwenings,
And saith his mattins and his holy things,
As he goeth in his limitation.
Women may now go safely up and doun;
In every bush, and under every tree,
There is no other incubus than he,
And he ne will don them no dishonour."[40]

[Footnote 39: Friars limited to beg within a certain district.]

[Footnote 40: "Wife of Bath's Tale."]

When we see the opinion which Chaucer has expressed of the regular
clergy of his time, in some of his other tales, we are tempted to
suspect some mixture of irony in the compliment which ascribes the exile
of the fairies, with whih the land was "fulfilled" in King Arthur's
time, to the warmth and zeal of the devotion of the limitary friars.
Individual instances of scepticism there might exist among scholars, but
a more modern poet, with a vein of humour not unworthy of Geoffrey
himself, has with greater probability delayed the final banishment of
the fairies from England, that is, from popular faith, till the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, and has represented their expulsion as a consequence of
the change of religion. Two or three verses of this lively satire may be
very well worth the reader's notice, who must, at the same time, be
informed that the author, Dr. Corbett, was nothing less than the Bishop
of Oxford and Norwich in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The
poem is named "A proper new Ballad, entitled the Fairies' Farewell, to
be sung or whistled to the tune of the Meadow Brow by the learned; by
the unlearned to the tune of Fortune:"--

     "Farewell, rewards and fairies,
       Good housewives now may say,
     For now foul sluts in dairies
       Do fare as well as they;
     And though they sweep their hearths no less
       Than maids were wont to do,
     Yet who of late for cleanliness
       Finds sixpence in her shoe?

     "Lament, lament, old abbies,
       The fairies' lost command;
     They did but change priests' babies,
       But some have changed your land;
     And all your children sprung from hence
       Are now grown Puritans,
     Who live as changelings ever since
       For love of your domains.

     "At morning and at evening both,
       You merry were and glad,
     So little care of sleep and sloth
       Those pretty ladies had.
     When Tom came home from labour.
       Or Cis to milking rose,
     Then merrily, merrily went their tabor,
       And merrily went their toes.

     "Witness those rings and roundelays
       Of theirs, which yet remain,
     Were footed, in Queen Mary's days,
       On many a grassy plain;
     But since of late Elizabeth,
       And later James came in,
     They never danced on any heath
       As when the time hath bin.

     "By which we note, the fairies
       Were of the old profession,
     Their songs were Ave Maries,
       Their dances were procession.
     But now, alas! they all are dead,
       Or gone beyond the seas;
     Or farther for religion fled,
       Or else they take their ease."

The remaining part of the poem is dedicated to the praise and glory of
old William Chourne of Staffordshire, who remained a true and stanch
evidence in behalf of the departed elves, and kept, much it would seem
to the amusement of the witty bishop, an inexhaustible record of their
pranks and feats, whence the concluding verse--

"To William all give audience,
  And pray ye for his noddle,
For all the fairies' evidence
  Were lost if that were addle."[41]

[Footnote 41: Corbett's Poems, edited by Octavuis Gilchrist, p. 213.]

This William Chourne appears to have attended Dr. Corbett's party on the
_iter septentrionale_, "two of which were, and two desired to be,
doctors;" but whether William was guide, friend, or domestic seems
uncertain. The travellers lose themselves in the mazes of Chorley Forest
on their way to Bosworth, and their route becomes so confused that they
return on their steps and labour--

     "As in a conjuror's circle--William found
     A mean for our deliverance,--'Turn your cloaks,'
     Quoth he, 'for Puck is busy in these oaks;
     If ever you at Bosworth would be found,
     Then turn your cloaks, for this is fairy ground.'
     But ere this witchcraft was performed, we meet
     A very man who had no cloven feet.
     Though William, still of little faith, has doubt,
     'Tis Robin, or some sprite that walks about.
     'Strike him,' quoth he, 'and it will turn to air--
     Cross yourselves thrice and strike it.'--'Strike that dare,'
     Thought I, 'for sure this massy forester,
     In strokes will prove the better conjuror.'
     But 'twas a gentle keeper, one that knew
     Humanity and manners, where they grew,
     And rode along so far, till he could say,
     'See, yonder Bosworth stands, and this your way.'"[42]

[Footnote 42: Corbett's Poems, p. 191.]

In this passage the bishop plainly shows the fairies maintained their
influence in William's imagination, since the courteous keeper was
mistaken by their associate champion for Puck or Robin Goodfellow. The
spells resorted to to get rid of his supposed delusions are
alternatively that of turning the cloak--(recommended in visions of the
second-sight or similar illusions as a means of obtaining a certainty
concerning the being which is before imperfectly seen[43])--and that of
exorcising the spirit with a cudgel; which last, Corbett prudently
thinks, ought not to be resorted to unless under an absolute conviction
that the exorcist is the stronger party. Chaucer, therefore, could not
be serious in averring that the fairy superstitions were obsolete in his
day, since they were found current three centuries afterwards.

[Footnote 43: A common instance is that of a person haunted with a
resemblance whose face he cannot see. If he turn his cloak or plaid, he
will obtain the full sight which he desires, and may probably find it to
be his own fetch, or wraith, or double-ganger.]

It is not the less certain that, as knowledge and religion became more
widely and brightly displayed over any country, the superstitious
fancies of the people sunk gradually in esteem and influence; and in the
time of Queen Elizabeth the unceasing labour of many and popular
preachers, who declaimed against the "splendid miracles" of the Church
of Rome, produced also its natural effect upon the other stock of
superstitions. "Certainly," said Reginald Scot, talking of times before
his own, "some one knave in a white sheet hath cozened and abused many
thousands, specially when Robin Goodfellow kept such a coil in the
country. In our childhood our mothers' maids have so terrified us with
an ugly devil having horns on his head, fire in his mouth, and a tail at
his breech; eyes like a basin, fangs like a dog, claws like a bear, a
skin like a negro, and a voice roaring like a lion, whereby we start and
are afraid when we hear one cry, Boh! and they have so frayd us with
bull-beggars, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs,
Pans, faunes, sylvans, Kitt-with-the-candlestick, tritons, centaurs,
dwarfs, giants, imps, calcars, conjurers, nymphs, changelings, incubus,
Robin Goodfellow, the spoorn, the man-in-the-oak, the hellwain, the
fire-drake, the puckle, Tom Thumb, Hobgoblin, Tom Tumbler, Boneless, and
such other bugbears, that we are afraid of our own shadows, insomuch
that some never fear the devil but on a dark night; and then a polled
sheep is a perilous beast, and many times is taken for our father's
soul, specially in a churchyard, where a right hardy man heretofore
durst not to have passed by night but his hair would stand upright.
Well, thanks be to God, this wretched and cowardly infidelity, since the
preaching of the Gospel, is in part forgotten, and doubtless the rest of
these illusions will in a short time, by God's grace, be detected and
vanish away."[44]

[Footnote 44: Reginald Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," book vii. chap.
15.]

It would require a better demonologist than I am to explain the various
obsolete superstitions which Reginald Scot has introduced as articles of
the old English faith, into the preceding passage. I might indeed say
the Phuca is a Celtic superstition, from which the word Pook or Puckle
was doubtless derived; and I might conjecture that the man-in-the-oak
was the same with the Erl-König of the Germans; and that the hellwain
were a kind of wandering spirits, the descendants of a champion named
Hellequin, who are introduced into the romance of Richard sans Peur. But
most antiquaries will be at fault concerning the spoorn,
Kitt-with-the-candlestick, Boneless, and some others. The catalogue,
however, serves to show what progress the English have made in two
centuries, in forgetting the very names of objects which had been the
sources of terror to their ancestors of the Elizabethan age.

Before leaving the subject of fairy superstition in England we may
remark that it was of a more playful and gentle, less wild and
necromantic character, than that received among the sister people. The
amusements of the southern fairies were light and sportive; their
resentments were satisfied with pinching or scratching the objects of
their displeasure; their peculiar sense of cleanliness rewarded the
housewives with the silver token in the shoe; their nicety was extreme
concerning any coarseness or negligence which could offend their
delicacy; and I cannot discern, except, perhaps, from the insinuations
of some scrupulous divines, that they were vassals to or in close
alliance with the infernals, as there is too much reason to believe was
the case with their North British sisterhood.[45] The common nursery
story cannot be forgotten, how, shortly after the death of what is
called a nice tidy housewife, the Elfin band was shocked to see that a
person of different character, with whom the widower had filled his
deserted arms, instead of the nicely arranged little loaf of the whitest
bread, and a basin of sweet cream, duly placed for their refreshment by
the deceased, had substituted a brown loaf and a cobb of herrings.
Incensed at such a coarse regale, the elves dragged the peccant
housewife out of bed, and pulled her down the wooden stairs by the
heels, repeating, at the same time, in scorn of her churlish
hospitality--

"Brown bread and herring cobb!
 Thy fat sides shall have many a bob!"

But beyond such playful malice they had no desire to extend their
resentment.

[Footnote 45: Dr. Jackson, in his "Treatise on Unbelief," opines for the
severe opinion. "Thus are the Fayries, from difference of events
ascribed to them, divided into good and bad, when as it is but one and
the same malignant fiend that meddles in both; seeking sometimes to be
feared, otherwhiles to be loued as God, for the bodily harmes or good
turnes supposed to be in his power."--Jackson on Unbelief, p. 178, edit.
1625.]

The constant attendant upon the English Fairy court was the celebrated
Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, who to the elves acted in some measure as the
jester or clown of the company--(a character then to be found in the
establishment of every person of quality)--or to use a more modern
comparison, resembled the Pierrot of the pantomime. His jests were of
the most simple and at the same time the broadest comic character--to
mislead a clown on his path homeward, to disguise himself like a stool,
in order to induce an old gossip to commit the egregious mistake of
sitting down on the floor when she expected to repose on a chair, were
his special enjoyments. If he condescended to do some work for the
sleeping family, in which he had some resemblance to the Scottish
household spirit called a Brownie, the selfish Puck was far from
practising this labour on the disinterested principle of the northern
goblin, who, if raiment or food was left in his way and for his use,
departed from the family in displeasure. Robin Goodfellow, on the
contrary, must have both his food and his rest, as Milton informs us,
amid his other notices of country superstitions, in the poem of
L'Allegro. And it is to be noticed that he represents these tales of the
fairies, told round the cottage hearth, as of a cheerful rather than a
serious cast; which illustrates what I have said concerning the milder
character of the southern superstitions, as compared with those of the
same class in Scotland--the stories of which are for the most part of a
frightful and not seldom of a disgusting quality.

Poor Robin, however, between whom and King Oberon Shakespeare contrives
to keep a degree of distinct subordination, which for a moment deceives
us by its appearance of reality, notwithstanding his turn for wit and
humour, had been obscured by oblivion even in the days of Queen Bess. We
have already seen, in a passage quoted from Reginald Scot, that the
belief was fallen into abeyance; that which follows from the same author
affirms more positively that Robin's date was over:--

"Know ye this, by the way, that heretofore Robin Goodfellow and
Hobgoblin were as terrible, and also as credible, to the people as hags
and witches be now; and in time to come a witch will be as much derided
and condemned, and as clearly perceived, as the illusion and knavery of
Robin Goodfellow, upon whom there have gone as many and as credible
tales as witchcraft, saving that it hath not pleased the translators of
the Bible to call spirits by the name of Robin Goodfellow, as they have
diviners, soothsayers, poisoners, and cozeners by the name of
witches."[46] In the same tone Reginald Scot addresses the reader in the
preface:--"To make a solemn suit to you that are partial readers to set
aside partiality, to take in good part my writings, and with indifferent
eyes to look upon my book, were labour lost and time ill-employed; for I
should no more prevail herein than if, a hundred years since, I should
have entreated your predecessors to believe that Robin Goodfellow, that
great and ancient bull-beggar, had been but a cozening merchant, and no
devil indeed. But Robin Goodfellow ceaseth now to be much feared, and
Popery is sufficiently discovered; nevertheless, witches' charms and
conjurers' cozenage are yet effectual." This passage seems clearly to
prove that the belief in Robin Goodfellow and his fairy companions was
now out of date; while that as to witchcraft, as was afterwards but too
well shown, kept its ground against argument and controversy, and
survived "to shed more blood."

[Footnote 46: Reginald Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," book vii. chap,
ii.]

We are then to take leave of this fascinating article of the popular
creed, having in it so much of interest to the imagination that we
almost envy the credulity of those who, in the gentle moonlight of a
summer night in England, amid the tangled glades of a deep forest, or
the turfy swell of her romantic commons, could fancy they saw the
fairies tracing their sportive ring. But it is in vain to regret
illusions which, however engaging, must of necessity yield their place
before the increase of knowledge, like shadows at the advance of morn.
These superstitions have already survived their best and most useful
purpose, having been embalmed in the poetry of Milton and of
Shakespeare, as well as writers only inferior to these great names. Of
Spenser we must say nothing, because in his "Faery Queen" the title is
the only circumstance which connects his splendid allegory with the
popular superstition, and, as he uses it, means nothing more than an
Utopia or nameless country.

With the fairy popular creed fell, doubtless, many subordinate articles
of credulity in England, but the belief in witches kept its ground. It
was rooted in the minds of the common people, as well by the easy
solution it afforded of much which they found otherwise hard to explain,
as in reverence to the Holy Scriptures, in which the word _witch,_ being
used in several places, conveyed to those who did not trouble themselves
about the nicety of the translation from the Eastern tongues, the
inference that the same species of witches were meant as those against
whom modern legislation had, in most European nations, directed the
punishment of death. These two circumstances furnished the numerous
believers in witchcraft with arguments in divinity and law which they
conceived irrefragable. They might say to the theologist, Will you not
believe in witches? the Scriptures aver their existence;--to the
jurisconsult, Will you dispute the existence of a crime against which
our own statute-book, and the code of almost all civilized countries,
have attested, by laws upon which hundreds and thousands have been
convicted, many or even most of whom have, by their judicial
confessions, acknowledged their guilt and the justice of their
punishment? It is a strange scepticism, they might add, which rejects
the evidence of Scripture, of human legislature, and of the accused
persons themselves.

Notwithstanding these specious reasons, the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries were periods when the revival of learning, the invention of
printing, the fearless investigations of the Reformers into subjects
thought formerly too sacred for consideration of any save the clergy,
had introduced a system of doubt, enquiry, disregard of authority, when
unsupported by argument, and unhesitating exercise of the private
judgment, on subjects which had occupied the bulls of popes and decrees
of councils. In short, the spirit of the age was little disposed to
spare error, however venerable, or countenance imposture, however
sanctioned by length of time and universal acquiescence. Learned writers
arose in different countries to challenge the very existence of this
imaginary crime, to rescue the reputation of the great men whose
knowledge, superior to that of their age, had caused them to be
suspected of magic, and to put a stop to the horrid superstition whose
victims were the aged, ignorant, and defenceless, and which could only
be compared to that which sent victims of old through the fire to
Moloch.

The courageous interposition of those philosophers who opposed science
and experience to the prejudices of superstition and ignorance, and in
doing so incurred much misrepresentation, and perhaps no little
ill-will, in the cause of truth and humanity, claim for them some
distinction in a work on Demonology. The pursuers of exact science to
its coy retreats, were sure to be the first to discover that the most
remarkable phenomena in Nature are regulated by certain fixed laws, and
cannot rationally be referred to supernatural agency, the sufficing
cause to which superstition attributes all that is beyond her own narrow
power of explanation. Each advance in natural knowledge teaches us that
it is the pleasure of the Creator to govern the world by the laws which
he has imposed, and which are not in our times interrupted or suspended.

The learned Wier, or Wierus, was a man of great research in physical
science, and studied under the celebrated Cornelius Agrippa, against
whom the charge of sorcery was repeatedly alleged by Paulus Jovius and
other authors, while he suffered, on the other hand, from the
persecution of the inquisitors of the Church, whose accusation against
this celebrated man was, that he denied the existence of spirits, a
charge very inconsistent with that of sorcery, which consists in
corresponding with them. Wierus, after taking his degree as a doctor of
medicine, became physician to the Duke of Cleves, at whose court he
practised for thirty years with the highest reputation. This learned
man, disregarding the scandal which, by so doing, he was likely to bring
upon himself, was one of the first who attacked the vulgar belief, and
boldly assailed, both by serious arguments and by ridicule, the vulgar
credulity on the subject of wizards and witches.

Gabriel Naudé, or Naudæus, as he termed himself, was a perfect scholar
and man of letters, busied during his whole life with assembling books
together, and enjoying the office of librarian to several persons of
high rank, amongst others, to Queen Christina of Sweden. He was,
besides, a beneficed clergyman, leading a most unblemished life, and so
temperate as never to taste any liquor stronger than water; yet did he
not escape the scandal which is usually flung by their prejudiced
contemporaries upon those disputants whom it is found more easy to
defame than to answer. He wrote an interesting work, entitled "Apologie
pour les Grands Homines AccusГ©s de Magie;" and as he exhibited a good
deal of vivacity of talent, and an earnestness in pleading his cause,
which did not always spare some of the superstitions of Rome herself, he
was charged by his contemporaries as guilty of heresy and scepticism,
when justice could only accuse him of an incautious eagerness to make
good his argument.