THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

112 EARTHLY LIFE OF FAIRIES
air and perfume, like the modern fairy of fancy, the
fairies of the 16th and 17th centuries required the beef
and bread of mortals, and ate their way through the
period, or, as James VI of Scotland stated, they " eate
and dranke, and did all other actions like natural1 men
and women." They were, in fact, addicted to the
pleasures of the table and lived in a round of banquets
and feasts; " there Food being exactly clean, and served
up by Pleasant Children, lyke inchanted Puppets." " I
have heard many wonderful Relations from Lunaticks or
such as are almost natural fools, who have asserted, That
being for many daies together conversant amongst
Faeries in Woods, Mountains, and Caverns of the Earth,
they have feasted with them, and been magnificently En-
tertaind with variety of dainties," for (( they will have
fair coverit taiblis."
The provision for these feasts, they partly supplied
themselves, for they were particularly devoted to making
cake and bread which they did with so much vigor that
the noise of this culinary occupation resounded from their
residential hillocks, where, according, to Robert Kirk,
" they are some times heard to bake Bread," ' and, as
late as 1725, " when they make Cakes (which is a Work
they have been often heard at) they are very noisy; and
when they have done, they are full of Mirth and
Pastime."
Daemon., p. 132.
3 Kirk, Sec. Comm., p. I 1.
4Dis. conc. D. &f S., p. 505.
Spald. Club Misc., Vol. I, p. 121.
Sec. Comm., p. 6.
7 Bourne, Antiq. Yulgares, p. 83.
The one exception to the general recognition of the fairies' con-
sumption of mortal food is found in Cymb., 11, I:
" But that it eats our victuals, I should think
Here were a fairy."