THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

and the saints,
THE FAIRIES OF SHAKESPEARE 211
Grac't with the Trout-flies curious wings,
Which serve for watched Ribbanings; la3
An Apples-core . . .
With ratling Kirnils, which is rung
To call to Morn, and Even-Song; ls4
Saint Tit, Saint Nit, Saint Is, Saint Itis,
Who 'gainst Mabs-state plac't here right is.
Saint Will o'th' Wispe (of no great bignes)
But alias call'd here Fatuus ignis.
Saint Frip, Saint Trip, Saint Fill, S. Fillie,16"
show the depths of insignificance and of absurdity to
which the fairy world since A Midsummer Night's Dream
has been reduced, as does the poem of Sir Simon Steward,
of the same period, entitled (' King Oberon's Apparel,"
which emphasizes the fairy buttons :
. . . . . . a sparkling eye
Ta'ne from the speckled adders frye,
163 The Fairie Temple: or, Oberons Chappell, p. 92, 11. 71-73.
164 Ibid., p. 93, 11. 126-128.
Is5 Ibid., p. 91, 11. 28-32.
The following statement of Edmund W. Gosse is significant: "And
with him [Robert Herrick] the poetic literature of Fairyland ended.
He was its last laureate, for the Puritans thought its rites, though so
shadowy, superstitious, and frowned upon their celebration, while the
whole temper of the Restoration, gross and dandified at the same
time, was foreign to such pure play of the imagination. But some of
the greatest names of the great period had entered its sacred bounds
and sung its praises. Shakespeare had done it eternal honour in A
Midsummer Night's Dream, and Drayton had written an elaborate
romance, The' Court of Faerie. Jonson's friend Bishop Corbet had
composed fairy ballads that had much of Herrick's lightness about
them. It was these literary traditions that Herrick carried with him
into the west." Seventeenth Century Studies, London, 1883, p 131.