The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream'/The Fairy Queen

The Fairy Queen

 * Come, follow, follow me,
 * You fairy elves that be,
 * Which circle on the green,
 * Come follow me your queen;
 * Hand in hand let's dance around,
 * For this place is fairy ground.


 * When mortals are at rest,
 * And snorting in their nest,
 * Unheard and unespied
 * Through keyholes we do glide:
 * Over tables, stools, and shelves.
 * We trip it with our fairy elves.


 * And if the house be foul,
 * Or platter, dish, or bowl,
 * Upstairs we nimbly creep
 * And find the sluts asleep;
 * There we pinch their arms and thighs;
 * None escapes nor none espies.


 * But if the house be swept,
 * And from uncleanness kept,
 * We praise the household maid
 * And surely she is paid;
 * For we do use, before we go,
 * To drop a tester in her shoe.


 * Upon a mushroom's head
 * Our table we do spread;
 * A corn of rye or wheat
 * Is manchet which we eat,
 * Pearly drops of dew we drink
 * In acorn cups filled to the brink.


 * The brains of nightingales
 * With unctuous dew of snails
 * Between two nutshells stewed
 * Is meat that's easily chewed;
 * And the beards of little mice
 * Do make a feast of wondrous price.


 * On tops of dewy grass
 * So nimbly do we pass,
 * The young and tender stalk
 * Ne'er bends when we do walk;
 * Yet in the morning may be seen
 * Where we the night before have been.


 * The grasshopper and fly
 * Serve for our minstrelsy.
 * Grace said, we dance awhile,
 * And so the time beguile;
 * And when the moon doth hide her head,
 * The glow-worm lights us home to bed.


 * From The Mysteries of Love and
 * Eloquence (1658); with a preface
 * signed E[dward] P[hillips].

The poem was given by Percy in his Reliques from The Mysteries of Love and Eloquence, a curious book of which the preface is signed E.P.; the British Museum Catalogue attributes these initials to Edward Phillips, the nephew of John Milton. But Rimbault pointed out that this song occurs in a tract of 1635, A Description of the King and Queen of the Fairies, attributed to Robert Herrick; a single copy of this pamphlet is known, and is in the Bodleian Library.