THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

ORIGIN AND NATURE 59
Subordinate unto these of the Air are the Terrestrial Spirits,
which are of several degrees according to the places which they
occupy, as Woods, Moun/tains, Caves, Fens, Mines, Ruins, Deso-
late places, and Antient Buildings, calld by the Antient Heathens
after various names, as Nymphs, Satyrs, Lamii, Dryades, Sylvanes,
Cobali, &c. And more particularly the Faeries, who do principally
inhabit the Mountains, and Caverns of the Earth.lle
As water devils they are classified by Thomas Heyby
Ely~t,'~~ and by F10ri0,'~~ and tentatively
ranked by Burton as follows:
Water-devils are those Naiades or Water-nymphs, which have
been heretofore conversant about waters and rivers. The water
(as Paracelsus thinks) is their Chaos, wherein they live; some call
them Fairies and say that Habundia is their Queen; these cause
inundations, many times shipwrecks, and deceive men divers ways,
as Succubae, or otherwise, appearing most part, (saith Trithemius),
in women's shapes.lZ3
With water nymphs, as has already been seen, they are
made synonymous by Golding,12* and by Chur~hyard.'~"
And as fairies of the sea, they appear in Eden's Decades:
But if they be wrought with the cunninge hande of Phidias or
Praxiteles, and shaped to the similitude of the fayre nimphes or
fayeres of the sea (cauled Nereiades) or the fayres of the wods,
(cauled Hamadriades) they shal neuer lacke byers.lZ6
llQ Page 5 10.
lzO Hierarckie, p. 506.
121 Bibl. Eliotae.
lZ2 A Worlde of Wordes, p. 236.
123Anat. of Mel., Vol. I, p. 219.
lZ4 Op. cit., Chap. I, pp. 50-51.
lZ5 Nichols, Prog. of Eliz., Vol. 11, p. 210. Cf. also Chap. 11, pp.
100-101.
lZ6 Page 12 of " The Firste Booke of the Decades of the Ocean,"
written by Peter Martyr. First printed in 1511: in The first Three