THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

24 ORIGIN AND NATURE
literary invention or of a literary inheritance, but were
the traditional fairies of rural belief, a race of English
and Elizabethan spirits, indigenous to the country and
the centuryt3 who made their way into scholarly recogni-
tion and into literary records, neither from the estab-
lished categories of demons or devils, nor from the
romances of preceding centuries, but from the fields and
forests of England and from the living traditions and
contemporary belief of the English folk.
In pageants, plays, poems and tracts, the fairies ap-
peared inevitably as creatures of common tradition and
popular report. Even in the works of those poets in
the 17th century14 who, for one purpose or another, con-
sciously imitated the pattern of the literary fairies of
A Midsummer Night's Dream or of those who pre-
sented the fays of romance in masque or pageant, at-
tention was called to the fact of the differences between
the beings thus represented and the native fairies, as
may be seen, for example, in the Nimphidia of Drayt~n,~
and in the masque, Oberon, the Fairy Prince, of Ben
Jonson.'
reputation of Belphoebe, born of a " Fairie." See also Book VI,
Canto XI where Sir Calidore, himself a fairy, is unable to distin-
guish between " nymphes, or faeries, or enchaunted show"; and the
June Eclogue of the Shepheardes Calender, where " elvish ghosts"
are contrasted with " frendly Faeries," the Glosse by E. K. on
" Frendly faeries" utterly belying any friendliness.
"The fairies or elves of the British isles are peculiar to this part
of the world, and are not, so far as literary information or oral
tradition enables us to judge, to be found in any other country."
Joseph Ritson, " Dissertation on Fairies," Fairy Tales, 1831, p. 26.
See Chap. V.
Minor Poems, Brett ed., 1907, Stanzas 8, g and 10.
%Masques and Entertainments by Ben Jonson, Morley ed., 1890,
p. 154. Cf. also Wm. Browne, Britannia's Pastorals, Hazlitt ed.,
1869, Vols. I and 11, Books I and 3; the fairy poems of Herrick;