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that he had almost lost his speech; that he kept his word with the spectre, whom he soon saw
floating through the air towards him; that he spoke to her, but she told him she was at that
time in too much haste to attend to him, but bid him go away and no harm should befall him,
and so the affair rested when I left the country. But it is incredible the mischief these agri
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somnia did in the neighbourhood. The friends and neighbours of the deceased, whom the old
dreamer had named, were in the utmost anxiety at finding them in such bad company in the
other world; the almost extinct belief of the old idle tales began to gain ground, and the good
minister will have many a weary discourse and exhortation before he can eradicate the
absurd ideas this idle story has revived.
It is scarcely necessary to add that this comparatively recent tale is just the counterpart of the
story of Bessie Dunlop, Alison Pearson, and of the Irish butler who was so nearly carried off,
all of whom found in Elfland some friend, formerly of middle earth, who attached themselves
to the child of humanity, and who endeavoured to protect a fellow-mortal against their less
.
philanthropic companions.
These instances may tend to show how the fairy superstition, which, in its general sense of
worshipping the Dii Campestres, was much the older of the two, came to bear upon and have
connexion with that horrid belief in witchcraft which cost so many innocent persons and crazy
impostors their lives for the supposed commission of impossible crimes. In the next chapter I
propose to trace how the general disbelief in the fairy creed began to take place, and gradu-
ally brought into discredit the supposed feats of witchcraft, which afforded pretext for such
cruel practical consequences.
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LETTER VI.
Immediate Effect of Christianity on Articles of Popular Superstition Chaucer s Account of
the Roman Catholic Priests banishing the Fairies Bishop Corbett imputes the same Effect
to the Reformation His Verses on that Subject His Iter Septentrionale Robin
Goodfellow and other Superstitions mentioned by Reginald Scot Character of the English
Fairies The Tradition had become obsolete in that Author s Time That of Witches
remained in vigour But impugned by various Authors after the Reformation, as Wierus,
Naudaeus, Scot, and others Demonology defended by Bodinus, Remigius, &c. Their
mutual Abuse of each other Imperfection of Physical Science at this Period, and the
Predominance of Mysticism in that Department.
ALTHOUGH the influence of the Christian religion was not introduced to the nations of
Europe with such radiance as to dispel at once those clouds of superstition which continued
to obscure the understanding of hasty and ill-instructed converts, there can be no doubt that
its immediate operation went to modify the erroneous and extravagant articles of credulity
which lingered behind the old pagan faith, and which gave way before it, in proportion as its
light became more pure and refined from the devices of men.
The poet Chaucer, indeed, pays the Church of Rome, with its monks and preaching friars, the
compliment of having, at an early period, expelled from the land all spirits of an inferior and
less holy character. The verses are curious as well as picturesque, and may go some length
to establish the existence of doubts concerning the general belief in fairies among the well-
instructed in the time of Edward III.
The fairies of whom the bard of Woodstock talks are, it will be observed, the ancient Celtic
breed, and he seems to refer for the authorities of his tale to Bretagne, or Armorica, genuine
Celtic colony:
In old time of the King Artour,
Of which that Bretons speken great honour,
All was this land fulfilled of faerie;
The Elf queen, with her joly company,
Danced full oft in many a grene mead.
This was the old opinion, as I rede
I speake of many hundred years ago,
But now can no man see no elves mo.
For now the great charity and prayers
Of limitours, and other holy freres,
That searchen every land and every stream,
As thick as motes in the sunne-beam,
Blessing halls, chambers, kitchenes, and boures,
Cities and burghes, castles high and towers,
Thropes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies,
This maketh that there ben no fairies.
For there as wont to walken was an elf,
There walketh now the limitour himself,
In under nichtes and in morwenings,
And saith his mattins; and his holy things,
As he goeth in his limitation.
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Women may now go safely up and doun
In every bush, and under every tree,
There is no other incubus than he,
And he ne will don them no dishonour.
When we see the opinion which Chaucer has expressed of the regular clergy of his time, in
some of his other tales, we are tempted to suspect some mixture of irony in the compliment
which ascribes the exile of the fairies, with which the land was fulfilled in King Arthur s time,
to the warmth and zeal of the devotion of the limitary friars. Individual instances of scepticism
there might exist among scholars, but a more modern poet, with a vein of humour not unwor-
.
thy of Geoffrey himself, has with greater probability delayed the final banishment of the fairies
from England, that is, from popular faith, till the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and has represent-
ed their expulsion as a consequence of the change of religion. Two or three verses of this
lively satire may be very well worth the reader s notice, who must, at the same time, be
informed that the author, Dr. Corbett, was nothing less than the Bishop of Oxford and Norwich
in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The poem is named A proper new Ballad, enti-
tled the Fairies Farewell, to be sung or whistle, to the tune of the Meadow Brow by the
learned; by the unlearned to the tune of Fortune:
Farewell, rewards and fairies,
Good housewives now may say,
For now foul slats in dairies
Do fare as well as they;
And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do,
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