Fairy Revels.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Folkard, Richard
The English Fays and Fairies, the Pixies of Devon—
“Fantastic Elves, that leap
The slender Hare-cup, climb the Cowslip bells,
And seize the wild bee as she lies asleep,”
according to the old pastoral poets, were wont to bestir themselves soon after sunset—a time of indistinctness and gloomy grandeur, when the moonbeams gleam fitfully through the wind-stirred branches of their sylvan retreats, and when sighs and murmurings are indistinctly heard around, which whisper to the listener of unseen beings. But it is at midnight that the whole Fairy kingdom is alive: then it is that the faint music of the blue Harebell is heard ringing out the call to the Elfin meet:
“’Tis the hour of Fairy ban and spell,
The wood-tick has kept the minutes well,
He has counted them all with click and stroke,
Deep on the heart of the forest Oak;
And he has awakened the sentry Elve,
That sleeps with him in the haunted tree,
To bid him ring the hour of twelve,
And call the Fays to their revelry.
“They come from the beds of the Lichen green,
They creep from the Mullein’s velvet screen,
Some on the backs of beetles fly
From the silver tops of moon-touched trees,
Where they swing in their cobweb hammocks high,
And rocked about in the evening breeze;
Some from the hum-bird’s downy nest,
Had driven him out by Elfin power,
And pillowed on plumes of his rainbow crest,
Had slumbered there till the charmed hour;
Some had lain in a scarp of the rock,
By glittering ising-stars inlaid,
And some had opened the ‘Four-o’-Clock,’
And stolen within its purple shade;
And now they throng the moonlight glade,
Above, below,—on every side,
Their little minim forms arrayed,
In the tricksy pomp of Fairy pride.”—Dr. Drake’s ‘Culprit Fay.’
Like the Witches, Fairies dearly love to ride to the trysting-place on an aerial steed. A straw, a blade of Grass, a Fern, a Rush, or a Cabbage-stalk, alike serve the purpose of the little people. Mounted on such simple steeds, each joyous Elf sings—
“Now I go, now I fly,
Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I.
O what a dainty pleasure ’tis
To ride in the air,
When the morn shines fair,
And sing and dance, and toy and kiss!”
Arrived at the spot selected for the Fairy revels—mayhap, “a bank whereon the wild Thyme blows, where Oxlips and the nodding Violet grows”—the gay throng wend their way to a grassy link or neighbouring pasture, and there the merry Elves trip and pace the dewy green sward with their printless feet, causing those dark green circles that are known to mortals as “Fairy Rings.”
The Fays that haunt the moonlight dell,