Brownies and Bogles

  CHAPTER I.

  WHAT FAIRIES WERE AND WHAT THEY DID.

  A FAIRY is a humorous person sadly out of fashion at present, who hashad, nevertheless, in the actors' phrase, a long and prosperous run onthis planet. When we speak of fairies nowadays, we think only of smallsprites who live in a kingdom of their own, with manners, laws, andprivileges very different from ours. But there was a time when "fairy"suggested also the knights and ladies of romance, about whom finespirited tales were told when the world was younger. Spenser's FaeryQueen, for instance, deals with dream-people, beautiful and brave, as dothe old stories of Arthur and Roland; people who either never lived, orwho, having lived, were glorified and magnified by tradition out of allkinship with common men. Our fairies are fairies in the modern sense. Wewill make it a rule, from the beginning, that they must be small, and wewill put out any who are above the regulation height. Such as thecharming famous Melusina, who wails upon her tower at the death of aLusignan, we may as well skip; for she is a tall young lady, with aserpent's tail, to boot, and thus, alas! half-monster; for if we shouldaccept any like her in our plan, there is no reason why we should notget confused among mermaids and dryads, and perhaps end by scoring downgreat Juno herself as a fairy! Many a dwarf and goblin, whom we shallmeet anon, is as big as a child. Again, there are rumors in nearly everycountry of finding hundreds of them on a square inch of oak-leaf, orbeneath the thin shadow of a blade of grass. The fairies of popularbelief are little and somewhat shrivelled, and quite as apt to bemalignant as to be frolicsome and gentle. We shall find that they weredivided into several classes and families; but there is much analogyand vagueness among these divisions. By and by you may care to studythem for yourselves; at present, we shall be very high-handed with thescience of folk-lore, and pay no attention whatever to learnedgentlemen, who quarrel so foolishly about these things that it is nothelpful, nor even funny, to listen to them. A widely-spread notion isthat when our crusading forefathers went to the Holy Land, they heardthe Paynim soldiers, whom they fought, speaking much of the Peri, theloveliest beings imaginable, who dwelt in the East. Now, the Arabianlanguage, which these swarthy warriors used, has no letter P, andtherefore they called their spirits Feri, as did the Crusaders afterthem; and the word went back with them to Europe, and slipped intogeneral use.

  "Elf" and "goblin," too, are interesting to trace. There was a greatItalian feud, in the twelfth century, between the German Emperor and thePope, whose separate partisans were known as the Guelfs and theGhibellines. As time went on, and the memory of that long strife wasstill fresh, a descendant of the Guelfs would put upon anybody hedisliked the odious name of Ghibelline; and the latter, generation aftergeneration, would return the compliment ardently, in his own fashion.Both terms, finally, came to be mere catch-words for abuse and reproach.And the fairies, falling into disfavor with some bold mortals, wereangrily nicknamed "elf" and "goblin"; in which shape you will recognizethe last threadbare reminder of the once bitter and historic faction ofGuelf and Ghibelline.

  It is likely that the tribe were designated as fairies because theywere, for the most part, fair to see, and full of grace and charm,especially among the Celtic branches; and people, at all times, had toomuch desire to keep their good-will, and too much shrinking from theirrancor and spite, to give them any but the most flattering titles. Theywere seldom addressed otherwise than "the little folk," "the kind folk,""the gentry," "the fair family," "the blessings of their mothers," and"the dear wives"; just as, thousands of years back, the noblest andcleverest nation the world has ever seen, called the dreaded Three"Eumenides," the gracious ones. It is a sure and fast maxim thatwheedling human nature puts on its best manners when it is afraid. InGoldsmith's racy play, She Stoops to Conquer, old Mistress Hardcastlemeets what she takes to be a robber. She hates robbers, of course, andis scared half out of her five wits; but she implores mercy with acowering politeness at which nobody can choose but laugh, of her "goodMr. Highwayman." Now, fairies, who knew how to be bountiful and tender,and who made slaves of themselves to serve men and women, as we shallsee, were easily offended, and wrought great mischief and revenge ifthey were not treated handsomely; all of which kept people in the habitof courtesy toward them. A whirlwind of dust is a very annoying thing,and makes one splutter, and feel absurdly resentful; but in Ireland,exactly as in modern Greece, the peasantry thought that it betokened thepresence of fairies going a journey; so they lifted their hatsgallantly, and said: "God speed you, gentlemen!"

  "GOD SPEED YOU, GENTLEMEN!"]

  Fairies had their followers and votaries from early times. Nothing inthe Bible hints that they were known among the heathens with whom theIsraelites warred; nothing in classic mythology has any approach tothem, except the beautiful wood and water-nymphs. Yet poet Homer, Plinythe scientist, and Aristotle the philosopher, had some notion of them,and of their influence. In old China, whole mountains were peopled withthem, and the coriander-seeds grown in their gardens gave long life tothose who ate of them. The Persians had a hierarchy of elves, and werethe first to set aside Fairyland as their dwelling-place. Saxons, intheir wild forests, believed in tiny dwarves or demons called Duergar.Celtic countries, Scotland, Brittany, Ireland, Wales, were alwayscrowded with them. In the "uttermost mountains of India, under a merrypart of heaven," or by the hoary Nile, according to other writers, werethe Pigmeos, one cubit high, full-grown at three years, and old atseven, who fought with cranes for a livelihood. And the Swiss alchemist,Paracelsus (a most pompous and amusing old bigwig), wrote that in hisday all Germany was filled with fairies two feet long, walking about inlittle coats!

  Their favorite color, noticeably in Great Britain, was green; themajority of them wore it, and grudged its adoption by a mortal. SirWalter Scott tells us that it was a fatal hue to several families in hiscountry, to the entire gallant race of Grahames in particular; for inbattle a Grahame was almost always shot through the green check of hisplaid. French fairies went in white; the Nis of Jutland, and many otherhouse-sprites, in red and gray, or red and brown; and the plump Welshgoblins, whose holiday dress was also white, in the gayest and mostvaried tints of all. In North Wales were "the old elves of the bluepetticoat"; in Cardiganshire was the familiar green again, though it wasnever seen save in the month of May; and in Pembrokeshire, a uniform ofjolly scarlet gowns and caps. The fairy gentlemen were quite as muchgiven to finery as the ladies, and their general air was one of extremecheerful dandyism. Only the mine and ground-fairies were attired insombre colors. Indeed, their idea of clothes was delightfully liberal;an elf bespoke himself by what he chose to wear; and fashions ranged allthe way from the sprites of the Orkney Islands, who strutted about inarmor, to the little Heinzelmaenchen of Cologne, who scorned to beburdened with so much as a hat!

  People accounted in strange ways for their origin. A legend, firmly heldin Iceland, says that once upon a time Eve was washing a number of herchildren at a spring, and when the Lord appeared suddenly before her,she hustled and hid away those who were not already clean andpresentable; and that they being made forever invisible after, becamethe ancestors of the "little folk," who pervade the hills and caves andruins to this day. In Ireland and Scotland fairies were spoken of as awandering remnant of the fallen angels. The Christian world over, theywere deemed either for a while, or perpetually, to be locked out fromthe happiness of the blessed in the next world. The Bretons thoughttheir Korrigans had been great Gallic princesses, who refused the newfaith, and clung to their pagan gods, and fell under a curse because oftheir stubbornness. The Small People of Cornwall, too, were imagined tobe the ancient inhabitants of that country, long before Christ was born,not good enough for Heaven, and yet too good to be condemned altogether,whose fate it is to stray about, growing smaller and smaller, until byand by they vanish from the face of the earth.

  Therefore the poor fairy-folk, with whom theology deals so rudely, weresupposed to be tired waiting, and anxious to know how they might fareeverlastingly; and they waylaid many mortals, who, of course, reallycoul
d tell them nothing, to ask whether they might not get into Heaven,by chance, at the end. It was their chief cause of doubt and melancholy,and ran in their little minds from year to year. And since we shallrevert no more to the sad side of fairy-life, let us close with a mostsweet story of something which happened in Sweden, centuries ago.

  Two boys were gambolling by a river, when a Neck rose up to the air,smiling, and twanging his harp. The elder child watched him, and criedmockingly: "Neck! what is the good of your sitting there and playing?You will never be saved!" And the Neck's sensitive eyes filled withtears, and, dropping his harp, he sank forlornly to the bottom. But whenthe brothers had gone home, and told their wise and saintly father, hesaid they had been thoughtlessly unkind; and he bade them hurry back tothe river, and comfort the little water-spirit. From afar off they sawhim again on the surface, weeping bitterly. And they called to him:"Dear Neck! do not grieve; for our father says that your Redeemer livethalso." Then he threw back his bright head, and, taking his harp, sangand played with exceeding gladness until sunset was long past, and thefirst star sent down its benediction from the sky.