THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS 83
wyse." 69 And handsome and ugly visors must have been
kept in stock and were readily obtained, to judge from
the ease with which Master Ford bought them for his
fairies, and from the custom recorded by Lavater :
It is a common custome in many places, that at a certaine time of
the yeare, one with a nette or visarde on his face maketh Children
afrayde, to the ende that ever after they should laboure and be
obediente to their Parentes: afterward they tel them that those
which they saw, were Bugs, Witches, and Hagges, which thing
they verily believe, and are commonly miserablie afra~de.~O
The necessity for a mask or vizard is explicable, when
it is taken into account that the fairies of the 16th cen-
tury were of different complexions - black, gray, green,
white, red and sometimes blue.
In the play of The Buggbears, assigned to the years
1564-1565, the " whyte & red fearye" was included
among the spirits of the time.?' The examination of
John Walsh, tried for witchcraft in 1566, contained the
statement that " ther be .iii. kindes of Feries, white,
69 E. K. Chambers, Medieval Stage, 1903, Vol. I, p. 394. Cf. also
Peter Cunningham, Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at
Court in the Reigns of Queelz Elizabeth and King James I, Shak. Soc.
ed., 1842.
70 De Spectris, Eng. trans., 1572, p. 21. Cf. also Nathan Drake,
Shakspeare and his Times, 1838, p. 154; Joseph Strutt, Horda Angel
Cynnan, 1775-1776, Vol. 11, p. 94 and Vol. 111, p. 144; Thomas
Dekker, The Comedie of Olde Fortunatus, Pearson rpt., 1873, Vol. I,
p. 104; Stow's Annales, p. 918; and Francis Douce, Illus. of Shak.,
Vol. I, p. 78.
The word Larva was used in the Bibl. Eliotae of 1532 to mean
either " hegge," " goblyn," " a goste or an elfe. also a masker, or he
that weareth a visour. also the visour it selfe "; and in 1598 in Florio's
Worlde of Wordes to mean ' I a vizard, or a maske," " a hag, a spirit,
a hobgoblin."
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