FOOTNOTES:
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Keightley, Thomas
Upon the cop right of his nose he hedde A wert.—Chaucer, Cant. Tales, v. 556.
[375] Deut. Mythol. p. 492.
[376] See France. In is a mere termination, perhaps, like on, a diminutive, as in Catin Kate, Robin Bob. Lutin was also spelt Luyton: see p. 42.
[377] The two lines which follow
Fro the nightes mare the witè Paternoster! Where wonest thou Seint Peter's suster?
are rather perplexing. We would explain them thus. Bergerac, as quoted by Brand (Pop. Antiq. i. 312. Bohn's edit.) makes a magician say "I teach the shepherds the wolf's paternoster," i. e. one that keeps off the wolf. Wite may then be i. q. wight, and wight paternoster be a safeguard against the wights, and we would read the verse thus: "Fro the nightes mare the wite paternoster" sc. blisse it or us. St. Peter's suster, i. e. wife (see I Cor. ix. 5) may have been canonised in the popular creed, and held to be potent against evil beings. The term suster was used probably to obviate the scandal of supposing the first Pope to have been a married man. This charm is given at greater length and with some variations by Cartwright in his Ordinary, Act iii. sc. 1.
[378] He derives it from the French oursin, but the Ang.-Sax. name of the hedgehog is ecen.
[379] Athenæum, Oct. 9, 1847.
[380] Hist. of England, i. 478, 8vo edit.
[381] Deut. Mythol. p. 419.
[382] Layamon's Brut, etc., by Sir Frederick Madden.
[383] Tales and Popular Fictions, ch. viii. We do not wonder that this should have eluded previous observation, but it is really surprising that we should have been the first to observe the resemblance between Ariosto's tale of Giocondo and the introductory tale of the Thousand and One Nights. It is also strange that no one should have noticed the similarity between Ossian's Carthon and the tale of Soohrâb in the Shâh-nâmeh.
[384] Both here and lower down we would take faërie in its first sense.
[385]Thrope, thorpe, or dorp, is a village, the German dorf; Dutch dorp; we may still find it in the names of places, as Althorpe. Dorp occurs frequently in Drayton's Polyolbion; it is also used by Dryden, Hind and Panther, v. 1905.
[386]Undermeles i. e. undertide (p 51), aftermeal, afternoon.
[387] This is the third sense of Faërie. In the next passage it is doubtful whether it be the second or third sense; we think the latter.
[388]
This wife which is of faërie, Of such a childe delivered is, Fro kindè which stante all amis. Gower, Legende of Constance.
[389] The derivation of Oberon has been already given (p. 208). The Shakspearean commentators have not thought fit to inform us why the poet designates the Fairy-queen, Titania. It, however, presents no difficulty. It was the belief of those days that the Fairies were the same as the classic Nymphs, the attendants of Diana: "That fourth kind of spritis," says King James, "quhilk be the gentilis was called Diana, and her wandering court, and amongst us called the Phairie." The Fairy-queen was therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid (Met. iii. 173) styles Titania; Chaucer, as we have seen, calls her Proserpina.
[390]
'Twas I that led you through the painted meads, Where the light Fairies danced upon the flowers, Hanging on every leaf an orient pearl. Wisdom of Dr. Dodypoll, 1600. Steevens.
Men of fashion, in that age, wore earrings.
[391]
And the yellow-skirted Fayes Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze. Milton, Ode on the Nativity, 235.
[392]Ouph, Steevens complacently tells us, in the Teutonic language, is a fairy; if by Teutonic he means the German, and we know of no other, he merely showed his ignorance. Ouph is the same as oaf (formerly spelt aulf), and is probably to be pronounced in the same manner. It is formed from elf by the usual change of l into u.
[393]i. e. Pinch severely. The Ang.-Sax. o joined to a verb or part. answers to the German zu or zer. o-becan is to break to pieces, o-ian to drive asunder, scatter. Verbs of this kind occur in the Vision of Piers Ploughman, in Chaucer and elsewhere. The part. is often preceded by all, in the sense of the German ganz, quite, with which some ignorantly join the to as all-to ruffled in Comus, 380, instead of all to-ruffled. In Golding's Ovid (p. 15) we meet "With rugged head as white as down, and garments all to-torn;" in Judges ix. 53, "and all to-brake his skull." See also Faerie Queene, iv. 7, 8; v. 8, 4, 43, 44; 9, 10.
[394] After all the commentators have written, this line is still nearly unintelligible to us. It may relate to the supposed origin of the fairies. For orphan, Warburton conjectured ouphen, from ouph.
[395] The Anglo-Saxon ian ea or ea; and is it not also plainly the Midgard of the Edda?
[396] The origin of Mab is very uncertain; it may be a contraction of Habundia, see below France. "Mab," says Voss, one of the German translators of Shakspeare, "is not the Fairy-queen, the same with Titania, as some, misled by the word queen, have thought. That word in old English, as in Danish, designates the female sex." He might have added the Ang.-Sax. cþen woman, whence both queen and quean. Voss is perhaps right and elf-queen may have been used in the same manner as the Danish Elle-quinde, Elle-kone for the female Elf. We find Phaer (see above, p. 11) using Fairy-queen, as a translation for Nympha.
[397]i. e., Night-mare. "Many times," says Gull the fairy, "I get on men and women, and so lie on their stomachs, that I cause them great pain; for which they call me by the name of Hagge or Night-mare." Merry Pranks, etc. p. 42.
[398]
Auræque et venti, montesque, amnesque, lacusque, Dîque omnes nemorum, dîque omnes noctis, adeste. Ovid, Met. l. vii. 198.
Ye ayres and winds, ye elves of hills, of brooks, of woods, alone, Of standing lakes, and of the night—approach ye everich one. Golding.
Golding seems to have regarded, by chance or with knowledge, the Elves as a higher species than the Fairies. Misled by the word elves, Shakspeare makes sad confusion of classic and Gothic mythology.
[399]Take signifies here, to strike, to injure.
And there he blasts the tree and takes the cattle. Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 4.
Thou farest as fruit that with the frost is taken. Surrey, Poems, p. 13, Ald. edit.
In our old poetry take also signifies, to give.
[400]
But not a word of it,—'tis fairies' treasure, Which but revealed brings on the blabber's ruin. Massinger, Fatal Dowry, Act iv. sc. 1.