THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

INTRODUCTION 15
translations by Lord Berners of Froissart's Chronicle
and of Huon of Burdeux. With these exceptions and
the recognition accorded the fairies in the early diction-
aries and the homely similes of Tyndale, which kept alive
in print the name and fame of Robin Goodfellow, the
fairies, as they came into prominence later, had no place
in the literature of the period.
As far as can be ascertained, neither Hawes nor Skel-
ton nor Barclay makes any mention of them. There is
no record of them in the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, in
The Governour of Sir Thomas Elyot, or in most of the
works of Roger Ascham. A careful reading of the plays
of John Bale, with one exception, and of the interludes of
John Heywood, and of other interludes of the period,
reveals neither elves nor fairies.
Though a reference to " mad peevish elves " occurs in
Ralph Roister Doister, the race is not mentioned in
Tottel's Miscellany, in the earliest edition of the Mirror
for Magistrates, or in Gorboduc.
In the Scottish literature of the same period, the fairies
are continually referred to and made use of. The Ex-
position in Matthew by John Major contains one of the
earliest descriptions of the brownie. In Gawin Douglas's
translation of the Aeneid is to be found one of the earliest
definitions of the fairies. They are mentioned at least
once by Dunbar and many times by Sir David Lyndesay.
After the publication of Douglas's translation of the
Aeneid in 1553 in England, the fairies begin to appear in
English translations of Virgil and of Ovid, brought into
literary prominence as the English equivalent of the
nymphs and hamadryads of the Latin originals. The
translation of the Aeneid by Thomas Phaer makes men-
tion of the fairies; the translation of Ovid's Metamor-
phoses by Golding gives space and poetic embellishment