THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

EARTHLY LIFE OF FAIRIES 123
was kept by Fayries, and that I was brought into it by enchant-
mer~t.~~
Woe betide the man who put sacrilegious plow or
scythe to this ground. The sheep knew better than to
take the smallest bite of the fairies' " green-sour ring-
lets " 49 and only the most incautious of mortals would
set: foot upon the bare space inside, or fall asleep within
the magic confines of the fairies' circles or upon the hil-
locks they most fancied or in the forests where they had
taken up an earthly habitation. If he took this risk, he
was either stricken dead, or carried away to fairyland,
or left with his body " as many colors as a mackrels
backe " " from fairy pinches.
The Fayries Daunce of Thomas Ravenscroft would
seem to have been written to celebrate this particular
prohibition of the fairies :
Dare you haunt our hallowed greene, none but Fayries
heere are seene. downe and sleepe, wake and weepe.
Pinch him blacke, and pinch him blew, that seekes to
steale a Louer true.
When you come to heare vs sing, or to tread our Fayrie
ring, pinch him blacke, and pinch him blew,
0 thus our nayles shall handle you, thus our nayles
shall handle
48 Thomas Dekker, Non-Dramatic Works, Grosart ed., 1884-1886,
Vol. 111, p. 74.
49 Temp., V, I.
SoRobin Goodfellow; his mad prankes, and merry Jests, Hazlitt
rpt., p. 203.
61 Roxburghe Club ed., 1822, NO. XXI, p. 20.
According to Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870,
p. 324, I' Husbandmen used to avoid, with superstitious reverence, to
till or destroy the little circlets of bright green grass which are be-
lieved to be the favourite ball-rooms of the fairies; for, . . .