THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

130 EARTHLY LIFE OF FAIRIES
them as their passion for dancing, they expected mortals
to share. And two human proclivities they would not
tolerate - dirt and disorder; or, to put it in the language
of the Merry Wives of Windsor, " Our radiant queen
hates sluts and sluttery." 76 With such a passion, in such
a century, they were kept inordinately busy pinching
"maids in their sleep that swept not their houses
cleane." 76 When this method proved unavailing, they
cured slovenliness by increasing it:
But where foul sluts did dwell,
Who used to sit up late,
And would not scour their pewter well,
There came a merry mate
To kitchen or to hall,
Or place where spreets resort;
Then down went dish and platters all,
To make the greater sport.77
Some of the fairies were believed to devote their en-
tire existence to the inculcation of cleanliness :
I, that am called Pinch, do goe about from house to house: some-
times I find the dores of the house open ; that negligent servants had
left them so, I doe so nip him or her, that with my pinches their
bodyes are as many colors as a mackrels backe. Then take I them,
and lay I them in the doore, naked or unnaked I care not whether:
there they lye, many times till broad day, ere they waken; . . .
Sometimes I find a slut sleeping in the chimney corner, when she
should be washing of her dishes, or doing something else which she
V, 5; cf. also Nutt, Fairy Myth. of Eng. Lit., p. 47.
76 Nashe, Terr. of the night, Vol. I, p. 347. Cf. also Burton, Anat.
of Mel., Vol. I, p. 220; Drayton, Nirnphidia, St. g; and Ben Jonson,
The Satyr.
77 Thomas Churchyard, " A Handfull of Gladsome Verses given to
the Queen's Majesty at Woodstock this Progress " (1592) ; rpt. in
E. K. Chambers, " Fairy World," p. 164.