Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/370

 362 THE FOLK-LORE OF DRAYTON.

and the faithful spirits remain true to their trust, moving further and further away as covetous folk draw nearer and nearer to their charge. The miner spirits seem to work, yet all their work produces no result. There is a very curious representation of these busy gentry in a com- partment of the frontispiece to the third impression (1688) of the Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable Mr, John Hales, who was a contemporary of Drayton's. Twelve spirits, overlooked by a winged creature — possibly draconian, but with no tail to swear by — are working diligently underground. The moral they are to suggest we may as well hear from the " Ever Memorable" himself. * " G. Agricola, writing de Animanitihus suhterraneis, reports of a certain kind of Spirits that converse in Minerals, and so much interest those that work in them ; and the manner of them when they come is, to seem to busie themselves according to all the custom of Workmen ; they will dig and cleanse and melt and sever Metals ; yet when they are gone the workmen do not find that there is anything done. So fares it with a great part of the multitude, who thrust themselves into the Controversies of the Times ; they write books, move ques- tions, frame distinctions, give solutions, and seem sedulously to do whatsoever the nature of the business requires ; yet if any skilful workmen in the Lord's mines shall come and examine their work he shall find them to be but Spirits in the Minerals, and that with all this labour and stir there is nothing done."

The theory connected with Incubus made too groat demands on Drayton's credulity, as he takes occasion to inform us when speaking of the parentage of Merlin,t and he should not be accused of incon- sistency in that he makes Incubus responsible for that very unpleasant conception, the Mooncalf. ^ I think, too, that the existence of were- wolves was not an article of faith with him ; but however that might be, English folk-lore is particularly indebted to him for the tale he puts into the mouth of Mother Owl, § as it is " singularly barren," as Baring -Gould says, of such stories, " the reason being that wolves had been extirpated from England under the Anglo-Saxon kings,


 * Page 45. t ^ol v. [ii. 757].

X [it. 479,] § Mooncalf [ii. 504, &c.]