THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS 97
Burdeux, Oberon and his train appear on horseback, but
with this exception 141 the fairies were not represented as
mounted until the latter part of the 17th century when
they were described in the anonymous Discourse concern-
ing Devils and Spirits as " Horse-men . . . to which
purpose they do in the night steal hempen stalks from
the fields where they grow, to Convert them into Horses
as the Story goes "; 14' and in A Pleasant Treatise of
Witches, 1673, where " they were prancing on their
horses round the brims of a large dish of white-broth." 14'
In Scotland, " they naturally rode and went," 144
Sum bukled on a buinvand, and some one a bene,
Ay trottand in trowpes from the twylycht;
Some saidland a sho aipe all graithid into greine,
Some hobland one ane hempstalk, hovand to pe heicht.
The King of pharie, and his Court, with the elph queine,
With mony elrich Incubus, was rydand that nycht.14'j
If the records of the witchcraft trials of the period
are to be believed, riding, not dancing, was their chief
means of locomotion :
. . . thair come ane cumpanye of rydaris by, that maid sic ane
dynn as heavin and erd had gane togidder; and incontinent, thai
raid in to the loich, with many hiddous rumbill. . . . It was the
gude wichtis that wer rydand in Middil-zerd ; 14'
. . . the Quene of Elphen was their, and vtheris with hir, rydand
vpon quhyt haiknaye~.~~~
141 Note that the Queen of the Fayry in The Queenes Majesties
Entertainment at Woodstocke, appeared in a wagon drawn by six
boys: p. 98.
*42 Page 5 10.
143 Rpt. in Hazlitt, Fairy Tales, 1875, p. 370.
144 James VI of Scotland, Daemon., p. 132.
14~5 Montgomerie, p. 151.
146 Pitcairn, Crim. Trials, Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 57.
147 Spald. Club Misc., Vol. I, p. 121.