THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

EARTHLY LIFE OF FAIRIES 125
the charges of a Tombe is sau'd, and you being his heyres, may doe
as many rich Executors doe, put that money in your purses, and
giue out that he dyed a begger.64
It was easier to keep away from the fairy haunts and,
especially, the fairy rings than it was to observe the fair-
ies' edict against being stared at. For some reason or
other, they could not bear to be seen, but followed dark-
ness like a dream, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream,"
and shunned the sun, as in Churchyard's presentation of
them in A Discourse of the Queenes Majestie's Enter-
tainment in Suffolk and Norfolk:
We shun the Sunne, yet love the Mone, and hate the open light,
We hide our heads amid the reedes in blustring stormy night.
In calmest weather do we play, yet seldome seene we are,
We watch our times, and flee from those that still doe on us stare.66
Their resentment at being spied upon was known to be
violent. Corsites, in Endimion, dared to look at the
fairies and obtained many wounds because of his temerity,
which were inflicted to the following refrain:
OMNES. Pinch him, pinch him, blacke and blue,
Sawcie mortalls must not view
What the Queene of Stars is doing,
Nor pry into our Fairy w ~ing.~~
Sir John Falstaff, disguised though he was with a stag's
head, refused to gaze at the fairies and threw himself
upon his face with the ejaculation, " 1'11 wink and couch:
No man their works must eye." 58 Maria, in Lusts
54 Dekker, The Comedie of Olde Fortunatus, Vol. I, p. 124.
55 v, 2.
6e Nichols, Prog. of Eliz., Vol. 11, p. 210.
" Lyly, IV, 3.
68 M. W. of W., V, 5.