THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

ORIGIN AND NATURE 29
. . . no Nonentities or Phantasms, Creatures proceiding from ane
affrighted Apprehensione, confused or crazed Sense, but Realities,
appearing to a stable Man in his awaking Sense, and enduring a
rational1 Tryall of their Being.22
There is ample evidence of the belief in the reality and
actual being of the fairies in the recognized existence in
Elizabethan life of the changeling, a visible and material
being and a member of the fairy race, and in the recog-
nition by English law, and more especially by Scottish law
of mortals made witches by fairies who appeared to them
and invested them with their
The several1 notorious and lewd Cousonages of John
West and Alice Pest, falsely called the King and Queene
of Fayries, -practised verie lately both in this citie and
many places neere adjoyning: to the impoverishing of
many simple people, as well men as women, and the ar-
raignment and conviction, on the 14th of January, I 613,
of the two impostors whose crime consisted in imperson-
ating the king and queen of fairies, furnishes a significant
illustration of the belief in visible and actual fairies at
the beginning of the I 7 th century.24
piety of the limatours, and Bishop Corbet's lament in The Faerye's
Farewell that the Reformation had caused their disappearance. I am
forced to dissent from Mr. Chambers' statement that they were not
supposed to appear.
22 Secret Commonwealth, Lang ed., London, 1893, pp. 27-28.
28 See authorities quoted in Chap. IV, in which the subject of
changelings and witches has been treated separately.
24 A tract rpt. in Hazlitt, Fairy Tales, . . . illustrating Shakespeare,
London, 1875, pp. 222-238. Cf. also J. P. Collier, Bibliographical
Account of Early English Literature, 1866, Vol. 11, p. 205: ". . . the
real value of the tract consists in the manner in which it shows, that
just about the time that Shakespeare ceased to write, the belief in
the existence of fairies was so prevalent among the lower orders.
West and his wife were not themselves ' King and Queen of the
Fairies,' but persons who asserted that they had irresistible influence