THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

EARTHLY LIFE OF FAIRIES
. . . fearefull noise in Buttries and in Dairies;
. . . . . . . . . . . .
And keeping Christmasse gambols all night long.
Pots, glasses, trenchers, dishes, pannes and kettles
They will make dance about the shelues and settles.12
There was no householder but labored under the impres-
sion that bread must be left for the fairies either upon a
clean and well ordered table or upon the hearth, for:
. . . if they spread no Table, set no Bread,
They should haue nips from toe vnto the head.13
When the customary bread was forgotten - an omis-
sion which must have been very infrequent - the fairies
could remedy the deficiency by stealing the grain in the
fields :
Some have Bodies or Vehicles so spungious, thin, and defecat, that
they are fed by only sucking into some fine spirituous Liquors, that
peirce lyke pure Air and Oyl: others feid more gross on the
Foyson or substance of Corns and Liquors, or Corne it selfe that
grows on the Surface of thelEarth, which these Fairies steal1 away,
partly invisible, partly preying on the Grain, as do Crowes and
Mice.14
Their appetites were not confined wholly to bread or
grain. They lived, too, upon beef and brawn, either
keeping cattle them!selves, or obtaining them by theft
from mortals. It 1s a commonplace of the fairies' his-
tory in Ireland and in Wales that the fairy women who
married mortal husbands enriched their spouses with
great herds of cattle that followed them from the lake or
l2 Heywood, Hierarchie, p. 574.
la Wm. Browne, Brit. Pastorals, Vol. I, p. 67.
14 Kirk, Sec. Comm., pp. 5:6; cf. also Douce, Illus. of Shak., Vol. I,
P. 387.