Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/412

 384 The Folklore of Shakespeare.

A mermaid might have worked upon the feeHngs of a dolphin by the sweetness of her voice, siren as she was, but one would suppose a mermaid could take care of herself on the sea without the help of a dolphin.

Both these references seem to have been suggested by Gascoigne's Princely Pleasiwes at KenilwortJi in i575- -^ triton, in likeness of a mermaid, came towards the Queen to declare the woeful distress of the Lady of the Lake ; also Proteus appeared sitting on a dolphin's back, and then assumed the character of Arion.

3. Devils and Evil Spirits.

The literature of evil spirits is a considerable one, and Shakespeare has many references to these devils mostly taken from the works of Reginald Scot and Bishop Harsnet. One of the particularities of the old writers on Demonology was to catalogue the colours of the spirits. Scot specially mentions white, black, grey, and red spirits. Some less instructed writers refer to blue and green spirits, but these colours were not acknowledged by the chief authorities.

In Macbeth (iv. i.), when Hecate calls for song, the only stage direction in the first folio is " Music and a song, 'Black spirits','' etc. In Davenant's version of Macbeth (1674) the song is printed in full from Middleton's TJie Witch (Act V. sc. 2), as follows :

" Black spirits and white, Red spirits and gray, Mingle, mingle, mingle, You that mingle may."

Dr. Aid is Wright was mistaken when he said that Davenant substituted 'Blue' for 'Red' in the second line. Rowe however did print ' Blue.'

Falstaff says: "That same mad fellow of the north, Percy, and he of Wales, that gave Amaimon the bastinado "