Ainsel.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Keightley, Thomas
Puck and a Fairy.
Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander you? Fai. Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough briar, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire. I do wander every where, Swifter than the moonès sphere, And I serve the Fairy-queen, To dew her orbs upon the green. The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats spots you see. Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours. I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.[390] Farewell, thou lob of spirits! I'll be gone; Our queen and all her elves come here anon. Puck. The king doth keep his revels here to-night. Take heed the queen come not within his sight; For Oberon is passing fell and wroth, Because that she, as her attendant, hath A lovely boy stolen from an Indian king,— She never had so sweet a changeling; And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild; But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy, Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled star-light sheen, But they do square; that all their elves, for fear, Creep into acorn cups, and hide
them there. Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call'd Robin Good-fellow. Are you not he That frights the maidens of the villagery, Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern, And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn; And sometimes makes the drink to bear no barm; Misleads night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hob-goblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck, Are not you he? Puck. Thou speakest aright, I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly-foal; And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab, And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her withered dewlap pour the ale. The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometimes for three-foot stool mistaketh me: Then slip I from her bum,—down topples she, And tailor cries, and falls into a cough; And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe, And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there.
The haunts of the Fairies on earth are the most rural and romantic that can be selected. They meet
On hill, in dale, forest or mead, By paved fountain, or by rushy brook, Or on the beached margent of the sea, To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind.
And the place of Titania's repose is
A bank whereon the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine. There sleeps Titania, some time of the night Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
The powers of the poet are exerted to the utmost, to convey an idea of their minute dimensions; and time, with them, moves on lazy pinions. "Come," cries the queen,
Come now, a roundel and a fairy song, Then for the third part of a minute hence: Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds; Some war with rear-mice for their leathern wings, To make my small elves coats.
And when enamoured of Bottom, she directs her Elves that they should
Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes; Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes; To have my love to bed, and to arise And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes.
Puck goes "swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow;" he says, "he'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes;" and "We," says Oberon—
We the globe can compass soon, Swifter than the wandering moon.
They are either not mortal, or their date of life is indeterminately long; they are of a nature superior to man, and speak with contempt of human follies. By night they revel beneath the light of the moon and stars, retiring at the approach of "Aurora's harbinger,"[391] but not compulsively like ghosts and "damned spirits."
But we (says Oberon) are spirits of another sort; I with the morning's love have oft made sport, And like a forester the groves may tread, Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red, Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams.
In the Merry Wives of Windsor, we are introduced to mock-fairies, modelled, of course, after the real ones, but with such additions as the poet's fancy deemed itself authorised to adopt.
Act IV., Scene IV., Mrs. Page, after communicating to Mrs. Ford her plan of making the fat knight disguise himself as the ghost of Herne the hunter, adds—
Nan Page, my daughter, and my little son, And three or four more of their growth, we'll dress Like urchins, ouphes,[392] and fairies, green and white, With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads, And rattles in their hands.
Then let them all encircle him about, And, fairy-like, to-pinch[393] the unclean knight, And ask him why that hour of fairy revel In their so sacred paths he dares to tread In shape profane.
And
My Nan shall be the queen of all the fairies, Finely attired in a robe of white.
In Act V., Scene V., the plot being all arranged, the Fairy rout appears, headed by Sir Hugh, as a Satyr, by ancient Pistol as Hobgoblin, and by Dame Quickly.
Quick. Fairies black, grey, green, and white, You moonshine revellers and shades of night, You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,[394] Attend your office and your quality. Crier Hob-goblin, make the fairy O-yes. Pist. Elves, list your names! silence, you airy toys! Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap; Where fires thou findest unraked, and hearths unswept, There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry: Our radiant queen, hates sluts and sluttery. Fals. They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die. I'll wink and couch; no man their works must eye. Pist. Where's Bead?—Go you, and where you find a maid That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said, Raise up the organs of her fantasy, Sleep she as sound as careless infancy; But those as sleep and think not on their sins, Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins. Quick. About, about, Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out; Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room, That it may stand till the perpetual doom, In state as wholesome as in state 'tis fit; Worthy the owner, and the owner it. The several chairs of order look you scour With juice of balm and every precious flower; Each fair instalment, coat,
and several crest, With loyal blazon evermore be blest; And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you sing, Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring: The expressure that it bears green let it be, More fertile-fresh than all the field to see; And "Hony soit qui mal y pense" write, In emerald tufts, flowers, purple, blue, and white; Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee: Fairies use flowers for their charactery. Away—disperse!—but, till 'tis one o'clock, Our dance of custom, round about the oak Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget. Eva. Pray you, lock hand in hand, yourselves in order set, And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be, To guide our measure round about the tree; But stay, I smell a man of middle earth.[395] Fal. Heaven defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest He transform me to a piece of cheese. Pist. Vile worm! thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth. Quick. With trial fire touch we his finger-end: If he be chaste the flame will back descend, And turn him to no pain; but if he start, It is the flesh of a corrupted heart. Pist. A trial, come. Eva. Come, will this wood take fire? Fal. Oh, oh, oh! Quick. Corrupt, corrupt, and
tainted in desire: About him, fairies, sing a scornful rime; And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.
In Romeo and Juliet the lively and gallant Mercutio mentions a fairy personage, who has since attained to great celebrity, and completely dethroned Titania, we mean Queen Mab,[396] a dame of credit and renown in Faëry.
"I dreamed a dream to-night," says Romeo.
"O then," says Mercutio:—
O then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes, In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies, Over men's noses as they lie asleep: Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs; The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; The traces, of the smallest spider's web; The collars of the moonshine's watery beams: Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash of film: Her waggoner, a small gray-coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid: Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut, Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers.
This is that very Mab That plats the manes of horses in the night; And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, Which once untangled, much misfortune bode. This is the hag,[397]when maids lie on their backs, That presses them.
In an exquisite and well-known passage of the Tempest, higher and more awful powers are ascribed to the Elves: Prospero declares that by their aid he has "bedimmed the noon-tide sun;" called forth the winds and thunder; set roaring war "'twixt the green sea and the azured vault;" shaken promontories, and plucked up pines and cedars. He thus invokes them:—
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;[398] And ye, that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him, When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight-mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew.
The other dramas of Shakspeare present a few more characteristic traits of the Fairies, which should not be omitted.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, This bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planet strikes, No fairy takes,[399] no witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is that time. Hamlet, Act. i. sc. 1.
King Henry IV. wishes it could be proved,
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged In cradle-clothes our children where they lay, And called mine—Percy, his—Plantagenet!
The old shepherd in the Winter's Tale, when he finds Perdita, exclaims,
It was told me, I should be rich, by the fairies: this is some changeling.
And when his son tells him it is gold that is within the "bearing-cloth," he says,
This is fairy-gold, boy, and 'twill prove so. We are lucky, boy, and to be so still requires nothing but secresy.[400]