Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844

What is a fairy?

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[“ A Wood near Athens.—Enter a Fairy on one side, and Puck on the other. 1 1 Midsummer Night’s Dream. ]

And there, then, they are!—The blithe and lithe, bright and fine darlings of your early-bewitched and for ever-enamoured fancy! There they are! The King and the Queen, and the Two royal Courts of shadowy, gorgeous, remote, and cloud-walled Elf-land: The fairies of the vision once wafted, “by moon or star light,” upon the “creeping murmur” of the Avon!—The Fairies in England! Your fairies!

Nevertheless you, from of old, are discreet. And you mistrust information which discountenances itself, by borrowing the magical robe of verse! Or you misdoubt this medley of our English blood, which in the lapse of ages must, as you deem, have confounded, upon the soil, the confluent streams of primitively distinct superstitions! Or your suspicious inquisition rebels against this insular banishment of ours, which, sequestering us from the common mind of the world, may, as you augur, have perverted, into an excessive individuality of growth, our mythological beliefs: Or—Southwards then!

One good stride over salt water lands you amongst a people, who, from the old, have kept themselves to themselves; whose warm, bold, thorough -loyal hearts hereditarily believe, after the love and reverence owed from the children’s children to the fathers’ fathers. Here are—for good and for ill—and from a sure hand:—“The Fairies in Lower Britanny; alio nomine —The Korrigans.”

“Like these holy virgins, (the Gallicenæ or Barrigenæ of Mela,) our Korrigans predict the future. They know the skill of healing incurable maladies with particular charms; which they impart, it is affirmed, to magicians that are their friends. Ingenious Proteuses, they take the shape of any animal at their pleasure. In the twinkling of an eye they whisk from one end of the world to the other. Annually, with returning spring, they celebrate a high nocturnal festivity. A tablecloth, white as the driven snow, is spread upon the greensward, by the margin of a fountain. It is covered with the most delicious viands; in the midst sparkles a crystal goblet, which sheds such a splendour as serves in the stead of torches. At the close of the repast, this goblet goes round from hand to hand; it holds a miraculous beverage, one drop of which, it is averred, would make omniscient, like the Almighty. At any least breath or stir of human kind, all vanishes.

“In truth, it is near fountains that the Korrigans are oftenest met with; especially near such as rise in the neighbourhood of dolmens . 2 2 Dolmen; literally, stone table . Remarkable structures, learnedly ascribed to the Druids; unlearnedly, to the dwarfs and fairies; and numerous throughout Western Britanny. One or more large and massive flat stones, overlaying great slabs planted edgeways in the ground, form a rude and sometimes very capacious chamber, or grotto. The superstition which cleaves to these relics of a forgotten antiquity, stamps itself in the names given to many of them by the peasantry:— Grotte aux fées , Roche aux fées , &c. For in the sequestered spots whence the Virgin Mary, who is held for their chief foe, has not yet driven them, they still preside over the fountains. Our traditions bestow upon them a strong passion for music, with sweet voices; but do not, like those of the Germanic nations, make dancers of them. The popular songs of all countries frequently depict them combing their fine fair hair, which they seem daintily to cherish. Their stature is that of the other European fairies: they are not above two feet in height. Their shape, exquisitely proportioned, is as airy, slight, and pellucid as that of the wasp. They have no other dress than a white veil, which they wrap around their body. Seen by night, they are very beautiful: in the daytime, you perceive that their hair is grey—that their eyes are red—that their face is wrinkled. Accordingly, they begin to show themselves only at the shut of eve; and they loathe the light. Every thing about them denotes fallen intelligences. The Breton peasants maintain that they are high princesses, who, because they would not embrace Christianity when the apostles came to preach in Armorica, were stricken by the curse of God . The Welsh recognise in them, souls of Druids doomed to penance. This coincidence is remarkable.

“They are universally believed to feel a vehement hatred for the clergy, and for our holy religion, which has confounded them with the spirits of darkness—a grand motive, as it appears, of displeasure and offence to them. The sight of a surplice, the sound of bells , scares them away. The popular tales of all Europe would, meanwhile, tend to support the church, in viewing them as maleficent genii. As in Britanny; the blast of their breath is mortal in Wales, in Ireland, in Scotland, and in Prussia. They cast weirds. 3 3 Weirds. The French has—Lots. “ Elles jettent des sorts. ” For justifying the translation, see the fine old Scottish ballad of Kempion; or Kemp Owayne, at the beginning:— “Come here, come here, ye freely fede , (i. e. nobly born ,) And lay your head low on my knee, A heavier weird I shall ye read Than ever was read to gay ladye. “I weird ye to a fiery beast: And released shall ye never be, Till Kempion the kinges son Come to the crag and thrice kiss thee!” Whosoever has muddied the waters of their spring, or caught them combing their hair, or counting their treasures beside their dolmen , (for they there keep, it is believed, concealed mines of gold and of diamonds,) almost inevitably dies; especially should the misencounter fall upon a Saturday, which day, holy to the Virgin Mother, is inauspicious for their kind,” 4 4 From the preface to the exceedingly interesting collection by M. Th. de la Villemarqué, of the transmitted songs that are current amongst his Bas Breton countrymen. &c. &c. &c.

Here, in the stead of the joyously-sociable monarchal hive, you behold a republic of solitarily-dwelling, and not unconditionally beautiful, naiads! No dancing! And a stature, prodigiously disqualifying for the asylum of an acorn cup! You are unsatisfied. Shakspeare has indeed vividly portrayed one curiously-featured species, and M. De la Villemarqué another, of the air-made inscrutable beings evoked by your question; but your question, from the beginning, struck at the Generic notion in its purified logical shape—at the definition, then—of the thing, a fairy.