Reliques of ancient English poetry, by T. Percy, ed. by J. V. Prichard

By wells and rills, in meadowes greene,
We nightly dance our hey-day guise1;
And to our fairye king and queene

We chant our moon-light minstrelsies.
When larks 'gin sing,

105

Away we fling;

And babes new borne steal as we go,

This word is perhaps corruptly given; being apparently the same with HEYDEGUIES, or HEYDEGUIVES, which occurs in Spenser, and means a "wild frolick dance."-Johnson's Dictionary.

XXVI.

The Fairy Queen.

We have here a short display of the popular belief concerning FAIRIES. It will afford entertainment to a contemplative mind to trace these whimsical opinions up to their origin. Whoever considers how early, how extensively, and how uniformly they have prevailed in these nations, will not readily assent to the hypothesis of those who fetch them from the East so late as the time of the Croisades. Whereas it is well known that our Saxon ancestors, long before they left their German forests, believed the existence of a kind of diminutive demons, or middle species between men and spirits, whom they called Duergar or Dwarfs, and to whom they attributed many wonderful performances, far exceeding human art. Vid. Hervarer Saga Olaj Verelj. 1675 Hickes' Thesaur. &c.

This song is given (with some corrections by another copy) from a book entitled, "The Mysteries of Love and Eloquence," &c. Lond. 1658, 8vo.

COME, follow, follow me,
You, fairy elves that be;
Which circle on the greene,
Come follow Mab, your queene.
Hand in hand let's dance around,
For this place is fairye ground.

When mortals are at rest
And snoring in their nest,
Unheard and unespy'd,

Through key-holes we do glide;

Over tables, stools, and shelves,
We trip it with our fairy elves.

And, if the house be foul
With platter, dish, or bowl,
Up stairs we nimbly creep,
And find the sluts asleep;

There we pinch their armes and thighes;

None escapes, nor none espies.

But if the house be swept,
And from uncleanness kept,
We praise the houshold maid,
And duely she is paid:
For we use before we goe
To drop a tester in her shoe.
Upon a mushroomes head
Our table-cloth we spread;
A grain of rye, or wheat,
Is manchet, which we eat;
Pearly drops of dew we drink
In acorn cups fill'd to the brink.
The brains of nightingales,
With unctuous fat of snailes,
Between two cockles stew'd,
Is meat that's easily chew'd;
Tailes of wormes and marrow of mice
Do make a dish that's wonderous nice.

This humorous old song fell from the hand of the witty Dr. Corbet (afterwards bishop of Norwich, &c.), and is printed from his Poëtica Stromata, 1648, 12mo (compared with a third edition of his Poems, 1672). It is there called, "A proper new Ballad, entitled, The Fairies Farewell, or God-a-mercy Will, to be sung or whistled to the tune of The Meddow Brow, by the learned; by the unlearned, to the tune of Fortune."

The departure of Fairies is here attributed to the abolition of. monkery Chaucer has, with equal humour, assigned a cause the very reverse, in his Wife of Bath's Tale.

"In olde dayes of the king Artour,

Of which that Bretons speken gret honour,
All was this lond fulfilled of faerie;
The elf-quene, with hire joly compagnie
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede.
This was the old opinion as I rede;
I speke of many hundred yeres ago;
But now can no man see non elves mo,
For now the grete charitee and prayeres
Of limitcures and other holy freres,
That serchen every land and every streme,
As thikke as motes in the sonne beme,

Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,
Citees and burghes, castles high, and toures,
Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies,
This maketh that ther ben no faeries:
For ther as wont to walken was an elf,
Ther walketh now the limitour himself,
In undermeles and in morweninges,

And sayth his Matines and his holy thinges,
As he goth in his limitatioun.

Women may now go safely up and doun,
In every bush, and under every tree,

Ther is non other incubus but he,

And he ne will don hem no dishonour."

Tyrwhitt's Chaucer, i. p. 255.

Dr. Richard Corbet, having been bishop of Oxford about three years, and afterwards as long bishop of Norwich, died in 1635, ætat 52.

FAREWELL rewards and Fairies!
Good housewives now may say;
For now foule sluts in dairies

Doe fare as well as they;

And though they sweepe their hearths no less

Than mayds were wont to doe,

Yet who of late for cleaneliness
Finds sixe-pence in her shoe?

Lament, lament old Abbies,