CHAPTER XII.
THE PASSING OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE.
THERE was once a very childish child who laid her fairy-book on its faceacross her knee, and sat all the morning watching the cups of thehoneysuckle, grieved that not one solitary elf was left to swing on itssun-touched edges, and laugh back at her, with unforgetful eyes.
We are sorry for her, and sorry with her. The Little People, alas! havegone away; would that they might return! No man knows why nor when theyleft us; nor whither they turned their faces. The exodus was made softlyand slowly, till the whole bright tribe had stolen imperceptibly intoexile. Mills, steam-engines and prowling disbelievers joined to banishthem; their poetic and dreamy drama is over, their magic lamp out, andtheir jocund music hushed and forbidden. Or perhaps they of themselveswent lingeringly and sorrowfully afar, because the world had grown toorough for them.
Geoffrey Chaucer, in the fourteenth century, wrote in his sweet,tranquil fashion:
In olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour . . . Al was this lond fulfilled of faerie . . . . . I speke of mony hundrid yeer ago; But now can no man see non elves mo:
which you may understand as an announcement somewhat ahead of time. Formany, many "elves mo" were on record after the good poet's lyre washushed, and "thick as motes in the sunbeam" centuries after theirreported flight. There have been sound-headed folk in every age, of whomChaucer was one, who jested over the poor fairies and their arts, andspoke of them only for gentle satire's sake. But though Chaucer was surethe goblins had perished, his neighbors saw manifold lively specimens ofthe race, without stirring out of the parish. Up to two hundred yearsago prayers were said in the churches against bad fairies!
"AL WAS THIS LOND FULFILLED OF FAERIE."]
Sir Walter Scott related that the last Brownie was the Brownie ofBodsbeck, who lived there long, and vanished, as is the wont of hisclan, when the mistress of the house laid milk and a piece of money inhis haunts. He was loath to go, and moaned all night: "Farewell toBonnie Bodsbeck!" till his departure at break of day. A girl fromNorfolk, England, questioned by Mr. Thomas Keightley, admitted that shehad often seen the _Frairies_, dressed in white, coming up from theirlittle cities underground! Mr. John Brand saw a man who said he had seenone that had seen fairies! And Mr. Robert Hunt, author of the _Drollsand Traditions of Old Cornwall_, wrote that forty years ago every rockand field in that country was peopled with them! and that "a gentlemanwell-known in the literary world of London very recently saw inDevonshire a troop of fairies! It was a breezy summer afternoon, andthese beautiful little creatures were floating on circling zephyrs upthe side of a sunlit hill, fantastically playing,
'Where oxlips and the nodding violet grow.'
So here are three trustworthy gentlemen, makers of books on this specialsubject, and none of them very long dead, to offset Master GeoffreyChaucer, and to bring the "lond fulfilled of faerie" closer than hedreamed. About the year 1865, a correspondent told Mr. Hunt thefollowing queer little story:
FAIRY STORIES.]
"I heard last week of three fairies having been seen in Zennor veryrecently. A man who lived at the foot of Trendreen Hill in the valley ofTreridge, I think, was cutting furze on the hill. Near the middle ofthe day he saw one of the small people, not more than a foot long,stretched at full length and fast asleep, on a bank of heath, surroundedby high brakes of furze. The man took off his furze-cuff and slipped thelittle man into it without his waking up, went down to the house, andtook the little fellow out of the cuff on the hearthstone, when heawoke, and seemed quite pleased and at home, beginning to play with thechildren, who were well pleased also with the small body, and called himBobby Griglans. The old people were very careful not to let Bob out ofthe house, nor be seen by the neighbors, as he had promised to show theman where crocks of gold were buried on the hill. A few days after hewas brought, all the neighbors came with their horses, according tocustom, to bring home the winter's reek of furze, which had to bebrought down the hill in trusses on the backs of the horses. That Bobmight be safe and out of sight, he and the children were shut up in thebarn. Whilst the furze-carriers were in to dinner, the prisonerscontrived to get out to have a run round the furze-reek, when they saw alittle man and woman not much larger than Bob, searching into every holeand corner among the trusses that were dropped round the unfinishedreek. The little woman was wringing her hands and crying 'O my dear andtender Skillywidden! wherever canst thou be gone to? Shall I ever casteyes on thee again?' 'Go 'e back!' says Bob to the children; 'my fatherand mother are come here too.' He then cried out: 'Here I am, mammy!' Bythe time the words were out of his mouth, the little man and woman, withtheir precious Skillywidden, were nowhere to be seen, and there hasbeen no sight nor sign of them since. The children got a sound thrashingfor letting Skillywidden escape."
THE CAPTURE OF SKILLYWIDDEN.]
Such is the latest evidence we can find of the whereabouts of ourgoblins.
We may, however, consider ourselves their contemporaries, since amongthe peasantry of many countries over-seas, the belief is not yetextinct. But it is pretty clear to us, modern and American as we are(safer in so thinking than anybody was anywhere before!) that the"restless people," as the Scotch called them, are at rest, and cleanquit of this world; and perhaps satisfied, at last, of their chance ofsalvation, along with fortunate Christians.
Such a great system as this of fairy-lore, propped on such show ofearnestness, grew up, not of a sudden like a mushroom after a Julyrain, but gradually and securely, like a coral-reef. And thedream-building was not nonsense at all, but a way of putting what wasevident and marvellous into a familiar guise. If certain strange things,which are called phenomena, happened--things like the coming of pebblesfrom clouds, music from sand, sparkling light from decay, or disease anddeath from the mere handling of a velvety leaf--then our forefathers,instead of gazing straight into the eyes of the fact, as we are taughtto do, looked askance, and made a fantastic rigmarole concerning thepebbles, or the music, and passed it down as religion and law.
The simple-minded citizens of old referred any trifling occurrence,pleasant or unpleasant, to the fairies. The demons and deities,according to their notion of fitness, governed in vaster matters; andthe new, potent sprites took shape in the popular brain as thecontrollers of petty affairs. If a shepherd found one of his flock sick,it had been elf-shot; if a girl's wits went wool-gathering, it was asign she had been in fairyland; if a cooing baby turned peevish andthin, it was a changeling! Wherever you now see a mist, a cobweb, amoving shadow on the grass; wherever you hear a cricket-chirp, or theplash of a waterfall, or the cry of the bird on the wing, there of yorewere the fairy-folk in their beauty. They stood in the mind to representthe lesser secrets of Nature, to account for some wonder heard and seen.It was many a century before nations stopped romancing about the bravethings on land and sea, and began to speculate, to observe more keenly,to hunt out reasons, and to lift the haze of their own fancy from heroicfacts and deeds.
Think a moment of the Danish moon-man, who breathed pestilence, and themoon-woman, whose harp was so charming. Well, the moon-man meant nothingelse than the marsh, slimy and dangerous, which yielded a malarial odor;and the wee woman with her harp represented the musical night-wind,which played over the marsh rushes and reeds. Was it not so, too, withthe larger myths of Greece? For the story of Proserpine, carried away bythe god of the under world, and after a weary while, given back forhalf-a-year to her fond mother Ceres, tells really of the seed-cornwhich is cast into her dark soil, and long hidden; but reappears inglory, and stays overground for months, basking in the sun. And so onwith many a fable, which we read, unguessing of the thought and purposebeneath. Though it was erring, we can hardly thank too much that joyousand reverent old paganism which fancied it saw divinity in each move ofNature, kept a natural piety towards everything that lived, and made athousand sweet memoranda, to remind us forever of the wonder and charmof our earth. All mythology, and the part the fairies play in it, standsfor what i
s true.
----"Still Doth the old instinct bring back the old names":
and again and again, when we cite some beautiful fiction of Merman andKobold, of White Dwarf or Pooka, we but repeat, whether aware of it ornot, how the dews come down at morning, or the storm-wind breaks thestrong trees, or how a comet, trailing light, bursts headlong across thewide sky.
To comprehend fairy-stories, to get under the surface of them, we wouldhave to go over them all at great length, and with exhaustless patience.And as in digging for the tendrils of a delicate, berry-laden vine, wehave to search, sometimes, deep and wide into the woodland loam, amonggnarly roots of shrubs and giant pines, so in tracing the sources of thesimplest tale which makes us glad or sad, we fall across a network ofponderous ancient lore; of custom, prejudice, and lost day-dreams, fromwhich this vine, also, is hard to be severed.
The spirit of these neat little goblin-chronicles was right and sincere;but the matter of them was often sadly astray. Of course, sometimes,useless, misleading details gathered to obscure the first idea, and tooverrun it with a tangle of error; and not only were fine storiesspoiled, but many were started which were funny, or silly, or grimmerely, without serving any use beyond that.
But so powerful is Truth, when there was actually a grain of it at thecentre, that even those versions which were exaggerated and distorted,played into the hands of what we call Folk-lore, and laid their goldenkey at the feet of Science. You will discover that, besides pointing outthe workings of the natural world, the fairy-tales rested often on theworkings of our own minds and consciences. The Brownie was a littleschoolmaster set up to teach love of order, and the need of perfectcourtesy; the Nix betokened anything sweet and beguiling, which yet washurtful, and to which it was, and is, a gallant heart's duty not toyield. And thus, from beginning to end, the elves at whom we laugh, helpus toward larger knowledge, and a more chivalrous code of behavior. Howshall we say, then, that there never was a fairy?
GOOD-BYE]
A miner, hearing the drip of subterranean water, took it to be a Duergaror a Bucca, swinging his tiny hammer over the shining ore. His notion ofthe Bucca, askew as it was, was one at bottom with our knowledge of thedark brooklet. You, the young heirs of mighty Science, can oftenoutstrip the slow-gathered wisdom of dead philosophers. But do notdespise that fine old imagination, which felt its way almost to thelight. A sixteenth-century boy, who was all excitement once over thepranks of Robin Goodfellow, knew many precious things which our verygreat nineteenth-century acuteness has made us lose!
Good-bye, then, to the army of vanishing "gentry," and to theirsteadfast friends, and to you, children dear! who are the guardians oftheir wild unwritten records. Shall you not miss them when next the moonis high on the blossomy hillocks, and the thistledown, ready-saddled,plunges to be off and away? Merry fellows they were, and shrewd andjust; and we were very fond of them; and now they are gone. And theirgoing, like a mounting harmony, note by note, which ends in one noblechord, with a hush after it, leads us to a serious parting word. Keepthe fairies in kindly memory; do not lose your interest in them. Theyand their history have an enchanting value, which need never be outgrownnor set aside; and to the gravest mind they bring much which isbeautiful, humane and suggestive.
We have found that believers in the Little People were not so wrong,after all; and that the eye claiming to have seen a fairy saw, verily, asight quite as astonishing. Let us think as gently of other myths towhich men have given zeal, awe and admiration, of every faith hereafterwhich seems to us odd and mistaken. For many things which are not truein the exact sense, are yet dear to Truth; and follow her as a baby'stripping tongue lisps the language of its mother, not very successfully,but still with loyalty, and with a meaning which attentive ears canalways catch.
Surely, our ancestors loved the "span-long elves" who wrought them nogreat harm, and who gave them help and cheer. We will praise them, too.Who knows but some little goblin's thorny finger directed many aninnocent human heart to march, albeit waveringly, towards the amplelight of God?
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page vii, "Puck" changed to "Pueck" (All that Pueck demanded)
Page vii, "wa" changed to "Wa" (Wag-at-the-Wa')
Page viii, "Kopenick" changed to "Koepenick" (Kobold of Koepenick)
Page viii, "changling" changed to "changeling" (was an Irish changeling)
Page viii, "Taknakaux" changed to "Taknakanx" (Taknakanx Kan)
Page 27, "airy" changed to "fairy" (to the fairy neighbors)
Page 30, illustration caption, "RUGEN" changed to "RUeGEN" (THE ISLE OFRUeGEN)
Page 37, illustration caption, "RUGEN" changed to "RUeGEN" (DWARVES OFRUeGEN)
Page 38, repeated word "and" removed from text. Original read (by twosand and threes)
Page 93, illustration caption, "KOPENICK" changed to "KOePENICK" (KOBOLDOF KOePENICK)
Page 169, "scources" changed to "sources" (the sources of the simplest)
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