In olde days of the King Artour,
Of which that Bretons spoken gret honour,
All was this lond fulfilled of faërie;
The elf-qrene with hir jolts companie
Danced full oft in many a grene mede.
CHAUCER.

ORIGIN OF THE BELIEF IN FAIRIES.

ACCORDING to a well-known law of our nature, effects suggest causes; and another law, perhaps equally general, impels us to ascribe to the actual and efficient cause the attribute of intelligence. The mind of the deepest philosopher is thus acted upon equally with that of the peasant or the savage; the only difference lies in the nature of the intelligent cause at which they respectively stop. The one pursues the chain of cause and effect, and traces out its various links till he arrives at the great intelligent cause of all, however he may designate him; the other, when unusual phenomena excite his attention, ascribes their production to the immediate agency of some of the inferior beings recognised by his legendary creed.

The action of this latter principle must forcibly strike the minds of those who disdain not to bestow a portion of their attention on the popular legends and traditions of different countries. Every extraordinary appearance is found to have its extraordinary cause assigned; a cause always connected with the history or religion, ancient or modern, of the country, and not unfrequently varying with a change of faith. [a]

The noises and eruptions of Aetna and Stromboli were, in ancient times, ascribed to Typhon or Vulcan, and at this day the popular belief connects them with the infernal regions. The sounds resembling the clanking of chains, hammering of iron, and blowing of bellows, once to be heard in the island of Barrie, were made by the fiends whom Merlin had set to work to frame the wail of brass to surround Caermarthen. [b] The marks which natural causes have impressed on the solid and unyielding granite rock were produced, according to the popular creed, by the contact of the hero, the saint, or the god: masses of stone, resembling domestic implements in form, were the toys, or the corresponding implements of the heroes and giants of old. Grecian imagination ascribed to the galaxy or milky way an origin in the teeming breast of the queen of heaven: marks appeared in the petals of flowers on the occasion of a youth's or a hero's untimely death: the rose derived its present hue from the blood of Venus, as she hurried barefoot through the woods and lawns; while the professors of Islam, less fancifully, refer the origin of this flower to the moisture that exuded from the sacred person of their prophet. Under a purer form of religion, the cruciform stripes which mark the back and shoulders of the patient ass first appeared, according to the popular tradition, when the Son of God condescended to enter the Holy City, mounted on that animal; and a fish only to be found in the sea [the Haddock] stills bears the impress of the finger and thumb of the apostle, who drew him out of the waters of Lake Tiberias to take the tribute-money that lay in his mouth. The repetition of the voice among the hills is, in Norway and Sweden, ascribed to the Dwarfs mocking the human speaker, while the more elegant fancy of Greece gave birth to Echo, a nymph who pined for love, and who still fondly repeats the accents that she hears. The magic scenery occasionally presented on the waters of the Straits of Messina is produced by the power of the Fata Morgana; the gossamers that float through the haze of an autumnal morning, are woven, by the ingenious dwarfs; the verdant circlets in the mead are traced beneath the light steps of the dancing elves; and St. Cuthbert forges and fashions the beads that bear his name, and lie scattered along the shore of Lindisfarne. [c]

In accordance with these laws, we find in most countries a popular belief in different classes of beings distinct from men, and from the higher orders of divinities. These beings are usually believed to inhabit, in the caverns of earth, or the depths of the waters, a region of their own. They generally excel mankind in power and in knowledge, and like them are subject to the inevitable laws of death, though after a more prolonged period of existence.

How these classes were first called into existence it is not easy to say; but if as some assert, all the ancient systems of heathen religion were devised by philosophers for the instruction of rude tribes by appeals to their senses, we might suppose that the minds which peopled the skies with their thousands and tens of thousands of divinities gave birth also to the inhabitants of the field and flood, and that the numerous tales of their exploits and adventures are the production of poetic fiction or rude invention. It may further be observed, that not unfrequently a change of religious faith has invested with dark and malignant attributes beings once the objects of love, confidence, and veneration. [d]

It is not our intention in the following pages to treat of the awful or lovely deities of Olympus, Valhalla, or Meru. Our subject is less aspiring; and we confine ourselves to those beings who are our fellow-inhabitants of earth, whose manners we aim to describe, and whose deeds we propose to record. We write of FAIRIES, FAYS, ELVES, aut alio quo nomine gaudent.

ORIGIN OF THE WORD FAIRY.

Like every other word in extensive use, whose derivation is not historically certain, the word Fairy has obtained various and opposite etymons. Meyric Casaubon, and those who like him deduce everything from a classic source, however unlikely, derive Fairy from Φήρ, a Homeric name of the Centaurs; [e] or think that fée, whence Fairy, is the last syllable of nympha. Sir W. Ouseley derives it from the Hebrew לאפ (peer), to adorn; Skinner, from the Anglo-Saxon ranan, to fare, to go; others from Feres, companions, or think that Fairy-folk is quasi Fair-folk. Finally, it has been queried if it be not Celtic. [f]

But no theory is so plausible, or is supported by such names, as that which deduces the English Fairy from the Persian Peri. It is said that the Paynim foe, whom the warriors of the Cross encountered in Palestine, spoke only Arabic; the alphabet of which language, it is well known, possesses no p, and therefore organically substitutes an f in such foreign words as contain the former letter; consequently Peri became, in the mouth of an Arab, Feri, whence the crusaders and pilgrims, who carried back to Europe the marvellous tales of Asia, introduced into the West the Arabo-Persian word Fairy. It is further added, that the Morgain or Morgana, so celebrated in old romance, is Merjan Peri, equally celebrated all over the East.

All that is wanting to this so very plausible theory is something like proof, and some slight agreement with the ordinary rules of etymology. Had Feërie, or Fairy, originally signified the individual in the French and English, the only languages in which the word occurs, we might feel disposed to acquiesce in it. But they do not: and even if they did, how should we deduce from them the Italian Fata, and the Spanish Fads or Hada, (words which unquestionably stand for the same imaginary being,) unless on the principle by which Menage must have deduced Lutin from Lemur--the first letter being the same in both? As to the fair Merjan Peri (D'Herbelot calls her Merjan Banou--D'Herbelot titre Mergian says, "C'est du nom de cette Fée quo nos anciens romans ont formé celui de Morgante la Déconnue." He here confounds Morgana with Urganda, and he has been followed in his mistake. D'Herbelot also thinks it possible that Féerie may come from Peri; but he regards the common derivation from Fata as much more probable. Cambrian etymologists, by the way, say that Morgain is Mor Gwynn, the White Maid.), we fancy a little too much importance has been attached to her. Her name, as far as we can leant, only occurs in the Cahermân Nâmeh, a Turkish romance, though perhaps translated from the Persian.

The foregoing etymologies, it is to be observed, are all the conjectures of English scholars; for the English is the only language in which the name of the individual, Fairy, has the canine letter to afford any foundation for them.

Leaving, then, these sports of fancy, we will discuss the true origin of the words used in the Romanic languages to express the being which we name Fairy of Romance. These are Faée, Fée, French; Fada, Provençal (whence Hada, Spanish); and Fata, Italian.

The root is evidently, we think, the Latin fatum. In the fourth century of our aera we find this word made plural, and even feminine, and used as the equivalent of Parcae. On the reverse of a gold medal of the Emperor Diocletian are three female figures, with the legend Fatis victricibus; a cippus, found at Valencia in Spain, has on one of its sides Fat. Q. Fabius ex voto, and on the other, three female figures, with the attributes of the Moerae or Parcae. [these two instances are given by Mdlle. Amélie Bosquet (La Normandie Romanesque, etc. p. 91.) from Dom Martin, Rel. des Gautois, ii. ch. 23 and 24.] In this last place the gender is uncertain, but the figures would lead us to suppose it feminine. On the other hand, Ausonius [Gryphus ternaril numeri] has tres Charites,, tria Fata; and Procopius [Do Bell. Got. i. 25] names a building at the Roman Forum τά τρία, adding οΰτω γάρ 'Ρωμας τάς μοίρας νενομίκαδι καλείν . The Fate or Fata, then, being persons, and their name coinciding so exactly with the modem terms, and. it being observed that the Moerae were, at the birth of Meleager, just as the Fees were at that of Ogier le Danois, and. other heroes of romance and tale, their identity has been at once asserted, and this is now, we believe, the most prevalent theory. To this it may be added, that in Gervase of Tilbury, and other writers of the thirteenth century, the Fada or Fée seems to be regarded as a being different from human kind. [g]

On the other hand, in a passage presently to be quoted from a celebrated old romance, we shall meet a definition of the word Fée, which expressly asserts that such a being was nothing more than a woman skilled in magic; and such, on examination, we shall find to have been all the Fées of the romances of chivalry and of the popular tales; in effect, that fée is a participle, and the words dame or femme is--to be understood.

In the middle ages there was in use a Latin verb, fatare, [h] derived from fatum or fata, and signifying to enchant. This verb was adopted by the Italian, Provençal [i] and Spanish languages; in French it became, according to the analogy of that tongue, faer, féer. Of this verb the past participle is faé, fé; hence in the romances we continually meet with les chevalier, faés, les dames faées, Oberon la faé, le cheval étoit faé, la clef était fée, and such like. We have further, we think, demonstrated [see our Virgil, Excurs. ix.] that it was the practice of the Latin language to elide accented syllables, especially in the past participle of verbs of the first conjugation, and. that this practice had been transmitted to the Italian, whence fatato-a would form fato-a, and una donna fatata might thus become una fata. Whether the same was the case in the Provençal we cannot affirm, as our knowledge of that dialect is very slight; but, judging from analogy, we would. say it was, for in Spanish Hadada and Hada are synonymous. In the Neapolitan Pentamerone Fata and Maga are the same, and a Fata sends the heroine of it to a sister of hers, pure fatata.

Ariosto says of Medea--