Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/55

 Rh portions of these isles. I may here note, according to the latest, and in this respect the best, editor of the Midsummer Night's Dream, Mr. Chambers, what are the characteristics of the Shakespearian fairies. He ranges them as follows:

(a) They form a community under a king and queen. (b) They are exceedingly small, (c) They move with extreme swiftness, (d) They are elemental airy spirits; their brawls incense the wind and moon, and cause tempests; they take a share in the life of nature; live on fruit; deck the cowslips with dewdrops; war with noxious insects and reptiles; overcast the sky with fog, &c. (e) They dance in orbs upon the green. (f) They sing hymns and carols to the moon, (g) They are invisible and apparently immortal, (h) They come forth mainly at night. (i) They fall in love with mortals. (j) They steal babies and leave changelings, (k) They come to bless the best bride-bed and make the increase thereof fortunate.

This order of characteristics is, I make little doubt, what would occur to most well-read Englishmen, and denotes what impressed the fancy of Shakespeare's contemporaries and of the afterworld. The fairy community with its quaintly fantastic parody of human circumstance; the minute size and extreme swiftness of the fairies, which insensibly assimilate them in our mind to the winged insect world—these traits would strike us at first blush; only on second thoughts should we note their share in the life of nature, should we recall their sway over its benign and malign manifestations.

Yet a moment's reflection will convince us that the characteristics upon which Shakespeare seems to lay most stress, which have influenced later poets and story-tellers, and to which his latest editor assigns the first place, are only secondary, and can in no way explain either how the fairy belief arose nor what was its real hold upon popular imagination. The peasant stooping over his spade,