THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

ORIGIN AND NATURE 31
after due ceremonies, an extraordinary occ~rrence.~~ To
Morion and his man, Ratsbane, in The Valiant Welshman,
the sight of the fairy queen in her usual haunts is
nothing to be wondered at.27 Maria, in Lusts Dominion,
-
does not regard the appearance of the fairies to her as
an improbable happening, but follows the usual ritual
practised on such occasions.28 And the materialization
of the fairies in Endimion is treated neither as an excep-
tional nor an unusual event, and the devastation wrought
upon their victim is repaired by herbs known and used as
the remedy for such injurie~.~'
The belief in fairies as visible and actual spirits is, also,
a matter of record among the scholars of the period.
E. K., in the June Glosse of The Shepheardes Calender,
of 1579, calls attention to the fact that " The opinion of
faeries and elfes is very old, and yet sticketh very re-
ligiously in the myndes of some." 30 " Well, thanks be
to God," comments Reginald Scot, speaking in 1584 of
the terrors of the night, among whom he included the
-
fairies and changelings, " this wretched and cowardly
infidelity, since the preaching of the gospel, is in part for-
gotten: and doubtlesse, the rest of those illusions will in
short time (by Gods grace) be detected and vanish
away." " Edward Fairfax stated in 1621 :
Yet in this flourishing time of the Gospel, and in this clear day
of knowledge, it cannot but offend the conscience of every zealous
Christian to see the people of God still buried in the night of
superstition, and lie dead in the grave of paganism ; so many are the
strange follies, rooted in the opinion of the vulgar, concerning the
26 Ben Jonson, Gifford ed., I, I and 111, 2.
z7 Students' Facsimile ed., 191 3, 11, 5.
28 Dodsley ed., 1874, Vol. XIV, 111, 2.
29 John Lyly, Bond ed., 1902, Vol. 111, IV, 3.
30 The Complete Works of Spenser, Cambridge ed., p. 31.
31 The Discovery of Witchcraft, 1651 ed., printed by R. C., p. 113.