THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

INTRODUCTION
Look, the elves are come; 67
and in Hobbes' Leviathan, in which it is stated,
When the Fairies are displeased with any body, they are said to
send their Elves, to pinch them,68
can be taken as an indication of a distinction between
elves and fairies, rather than as an example of the usual
loose use of the terms.
A notable example of the distinction made in the 16th
century between the two terms, is to be found in " The
Eight Booke " of Golding's translation of Ovid's Meta-
morphoses:
The Woodnymphes with the losses of the woods and theyrs right
sore
Amazed, gathered on a knot, and all in mourning weede
Went sad too Ceres, praying her too wreake that wicked deede
Of Erisicthons. Ceres was content it should bee so
And with the mooving of her head in nodding too and fro,
She shooke the feeldes which laden were with frutefull Harvest tho.
And therewithal1 a punishment most piteous shee proceedes
Too put in practyse: were it not that his most heynous deedes,
No pitie did deserve to have at any bodies hand.
With helplesse hungar him to pyne, in purpose shee did stand.
And forasmuch as shee herself and famin myght not meete,
(For fate forbiddeth famin too abyde within the leete
Where plentie is) she thus bespake a fayrie of the hill.
There lyeth in the utmost bounds of Tartarie the chill
A Dreerie place, a wretched soyle, a barreine plot: no grayne,
No frute, no tree, is growing there: but there dooth ay remayne
Unweeldsome cold, with trembling feare, and palenesse white as
clowt,
e7 Jonson, Gifford ed., 1846, 111, 2.
6s Rpt. of 1651 ed., Oxford, 1909, p. 545. Cf. also C. Middleton,
The Famous Historie of Chinon of England, E. E. T. S. ed., 1925,
P. 30.
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