THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

ORIGIN AND NATURE 5 1
hamadryads as a matter of course, to judge from the
number of instances in which the wood spirits of the Latin
original are translated fairies: as, in Book IX, line 408~
where Nymphis latura becomes fayries of the Lake; Book
XI, line 171, where nymphis is rendered fayrye elves;
Book XIV, line 586, where nymphae becomes fayryes;
Book I, line 859, hamadryadas, Fairie; and Book IV, line
370, naiadum, Waterfaries. And in the earliest rhyming
dictionary of the time, the Manipvlvs Yocabvlorvm by P.
Leuins, I 570, faunus is given as the equivalent for Fa_irrye
and Satyrus, faunus as the equivalent of elfe.'"
To Thomas Churchyard in I 578, and, it must be sur-
mised, to the Queen and courtiers to whom he presented
his entertainments, the likeness between nymphs and
fairies is so close that they not only appear together, the
fairies being introduced by the nymphs as follows:
The Phayries are another kinde of elfes that daunce in darke,
Yet can light candles in the night, and vanish like a sparke;
And make a noyse and rumbling great among the dishes oft,
And wake the sleepie sluggish maydes that lyes in kitchen loft.
And when in field they treade the grasse, from water we repayre,
And hoppe and skippe with them sometime as weather waxeth
fayre;
but the difference between the two is so indistinguishable
that the costumes which were to have adorned the nymphs
of the water are used later as the costumes of the fairies:
Yea, out of hedge we crept indeede, where close in caves we lay,
And knowing by the brute of fame a Queene must passe this way,
To make hir laugh, we clapt on coates of segges and bulrush both,
E. E. T. S. ed., 1867. Cf. also Medulla Gramatice, 1468, Note,
p. 113, Catholicon Anglicum, E. E. T. S., 1881: " Satirus. An elfe
or a mysshapyn man."
86 The Queen's Entertainment in Sufiolk and Norfolk, 1578:
Nichols, Prog. of Eliz., Vol. 11, p. 210.