THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

THE FAIRIES OF SHAKESPEARE 217
fairy company was come upon the table, that the brims of every
dish seemed filled with little horsemen, she saw the prince coming
toward her, (who) hearing she had not done what she promised,
seemed to go away displeased. The lady presently fell into a fit
of melancholy, and, being asked by her friends 'the cause of these
alterations and astonishments, related the whole matter; but, not-
withstanding all their consolations, pined away, and died not long
afkr.lso
By the end of the first quarter of the 18th century,
the proportions given by Shakespeare to Titania's court
were the native measurements of the traditional fairy
in popular belief and in folk tale. In one of the earliest
collections of the folklore of the time, Henry Bourne's
Antiquitates Yulgares, or The Antiquities of the Com-
mon People, in Chapter X of The Country Conversations
on a Winter Evening:
Another Part of this Conversation generally turns upon Fairies.
These, they tell you, have frequently been heard and seen, nay that
there are some still living who were stollen away by them and con-
fined seven Years. According to the Description they give of
them, who pretend to have seen them, they are in the Shape of
Men, exceeding little: . . .
Now in all this there is really nothing, but an old fabulous
Story, which has been handed down even to our Days from the
Times of Heathenism, . . . 181
The subsequent history of the fairies in the 18th and
19th centuries, at least in scholars' dissertations and
treatises, has been traced.lS2 Nor is it necessary to re-
call the fact that the fairies of Shakespeare were re-
garded, during the former century, as the fairies of Eng-
land, and during both periods, as small creatures whose
Iso Hazlitt rpt., pp. 369-371.
Pages 82-83.
See Introd.