Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/156

148 common contractions of women's names, and certainly well-suited the reduced scale of nomenclature which Drayton so happily adopted. Of Tit I have somewhat more to say: at first sight the word may seem like an abbreviation of Titania, which in the shortened form of Tita distinguishes that nymph of elfin descent, over whose marriage with a fay—

Drayton poured forth some of his most luscious verse; but I believe that Tit, in the Nymphidia, is the word-symbol for dainty smallness, which we have in tomtit, titlark, titmouse, tit-bit, &c. Titania is the feminine of Titan, the sun-god; it was annexed for the fairy queen from Diana, from whose personality some hold that her elfin majesty was evolved. I believe it was Ovid who first coined the name for Diana, and as this was on an occasion when she was observably taller than the nymphs about her—

—irony being unsuspected—we may be sure the epithet involved no reference to smallness. Perhaps Shakespeare and the other guessing etymologists of his age may have fancied that it did, and that it was therefore the very name for the wee wife of King Oberon.

By this time Mab's followers, mounted on a grasshopper, and protected from inclement winds by a comfortable cobweb, are following quickly in the wake of the Fairy Queen, already with Pigwiggen.

It was not long before Oberon missed his spouse, and "grew as mad as any hare" when he failed to find her. He swore by Pluto—who by Drayton's day was the fairies' god instead of being their reigning king as he was in Chaucer's—he tore his clothes and his locks, and ran about flourishing a fearful weapon, formed of an "acorn-cup,"