THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

136 EARTHLY LIFE OF FAIRIES
in A Midsummer Night's Dream,g5 The Tempe~t,'~ and
The Valiant Wel~hman.'~
According to Chlorin in The Faithful Shepherdess, by
one way only could a mortal be safe from the fairies'
misleading :
Yet I have heard (my mother told it me,
And now I do believe it) if I keep
My virgin flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,
No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elfe, or fiend,
Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves,
Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion
Draw me to wander after idle fires;
Or voices calling me in dead of night,
To make me follow, and so tole me on
Through mire and standing pools, to find my ruin.98
Though the fairies were tyrannical and dangerous
beings, even in their jokes, it must be counted to their
credit that " They do not all the Harme which appear-
ingly they have Power to do." s' It was easily within
their power to seize upon mortals and carry them away.
Yet the number of such seizures on record is compara-
tively few, in spite of the fact that A Discourse concern-
ing Devils and Spirits of 1665 insisted that
. . . many such have been taken away by the sayd Spirits, for a
fortnight, or a month together, being carryed with them in Chariots
through the Air, over Hills, and Dales, Rocks and Precipices, till
at last they have been found lying in some Meddow or Mountain
g5 111, 2.
IV, I.
g7 11, 5. Cf. also Wm. Browne, Brit. Pastorals, Vol. I, Book I,
Song 4; The Little French Lawyer, 11, 3; Ben Jonson, The Satyr,
Morley ed., p. qog; and Wit at Several Weapons, 11, 2.
'8 Fletcher, I, I. Cf. also Milton, Comus, 11. 432-438.
99 Kirk, Sec. Comm., p. 16.