Ainsel.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Keightley, Thomas
Roguery and sportiveness are, we may see, the characteristics of this spirit. Hence it may have been that the diminutives of proper names were given to him, and even to the Ignis Fatuus, which in a country like England, that was in general dry and free from sloughs and bog-holes, was mischievous rather than dangerous.[371] But this seems to have been a custom of our forefathers, for we find the devil himself called Old Nick, and Old Davy is the sailor's familiar name for Death.
In the Midsummer Night's Dream the fairy says to Puck "Thou Lob of spirits;" Milton has the lubber-fiend, and Fletcher says,[372] "There is a pretty tale of a witch that had a giant to be her son that was called Lob Lie-by-the-fire." This might lead us to suppose that Lob, whence loby (looby), lubbard, lubber,[373] and adding the diminutive kin, Lubberkin, a name of one of the clowns in Gay's Pastorals, was an original name of some kind of spirit. We shall presently see that the Irish name of the Leprechaun is actually Lubberkin. As to the origin of the name we have little to say, but it may have had a sense the very opposite of the present one of lubber, and have been connected with the verb to leap.[374] Grimm[375] tells of a spirit named the Good Lubber, to whom the bones of animals used to be offered at Mansfield in Germany; but we see no resemblance between him and our Lob of spirits; we might rather trace a connexion with the French Lutin, Lubin.[376] The phrase of being in or getting into Lob's Pound (like the "Pouke's pondfold,") is easy of explanation, if we suppose Lob to be a sportive spirit. It is equivalent to being Poake-ledden or Pixy-led.
Wight, answering to the German Wicht, seems to have been used in the time of Chaucer for elf or fairy, most probably for such as haunted houses, or it may have had the signification of witch, which is evidently another form of it. In the Miller's Tale the carpenter says,
I crouchè thee from elvès and from wights.
And
Jesu Crist, and Seint Benedight, Blisse this house from every wicked wight![377]
Urchin is a term which, like elf and such like, we still apply to children, but which seems formerly to have been one of the appellations of the fairies. Reginald Scott, as we have seen, places it in his list, and we find it in the following places of the poets:—
Urchins Shall for the vast of night that they may work All exercise on thee.—Tempest, i. 2.
His spirits hear me, And yet I needs must curse; but they'll not pinch. Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire, Nor lead me like a fire-brand in the dark Out of my way, unless he bid 'em.—Ib. ii. 2.
Like urchins, ouphs, and fairies. Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 4.
Elves, urchins, goblins all, and little fairyes. Mad Pranks, etc., p. 38.
Great store of goblins, fairies, bugs, nightmares, Urchins, and elves, to many a house repairs. Old Poem, in Brand, ii. 514.
Trip it, little urchins all. Maid's Metamorphosis.
Helping all urchin-blasts and ill-luck signs, That the shrewd meddling elfe delights to make. Comus, 845.
Urchin is a hedgehog, as Stevens has justly observed,[378] and in these lines of Titus Andronicus (ii. 3.)
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes, Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
it probably has this sense. We still call the echinus marinus the Sea-urchin. Still as we have no analogy, but rather the contrary, for transferring the name of an animal to the elves, we feel inclined to look for a different origin of the term as applied to these beings. The best or rather only hypothesis we have met with[379] is that which finds it in the hitherto unexplained word Orcneas in Beówulf, which may have been Orcenas, and if, as we have supposed,[380] the Anglo-Saxons sometimes pronounced c before e and i in the Italian manner, we should have, if needed, the exact word. We would also notice the old German urkinde, which Grimm renders nanus.[381]
We now come to the poets.
In Beówulf, an Anglo-Saxon poem, supposed not to be later than the seventh century, we meet with the following verse,
"Eotenas, and Ylfe, And Orcneas."
The first of these words is evidently the same as the Iötunn or Giants of the northern mythology; the second is as plainly its Alfar, and we surely may be excused for supposing that the last may be the same as its Duergar.
Layamon, in the twelfth century, in his poetic paraphrase of Wace's Brut,[382] thus expands that poet's brief notice of the birth of Arthur:—
"Ertur son nom; de sa bunte Ad grant parole puis este."
Sone swa he com on eorthe,
So soon he came on earth,
Alven hine ivengen.
Elves received him.
Heo bigolen that child
They enchanted that child
Mid galdere swith stronge.
With magic most strong.
Heo zeven him mihte
They gave him might
To beon best alre cnihton.
To be the best of all knights.
Heo zeven him an other thing
They gave him another thing
That he scolde beon riche king.
That he should be a rich king.
Heo zeven him that thridde