THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

40 ORIGIN AND NATURE
taile in his breech, eyes like a bason, fanges like a dog, clawes like
a bear, a skinne like a Niger, and a voice roring like a Lion,
whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Bough: and
they have so fraied us with bull-beggers, spirits, witches, urchens,
elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, sylens, kit with the
cansticke, tritons, centaures, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors,
nymphes, changelings, Incubus, Robin good fellow, the
spoorn, the mare, the man in the oke, the hellwaine, the firedrake,
the puckle, Tom thombe, hob-gobblin, Tom tumbler boneles, and
such other bugs, that we are afraid of our own shad owe^.^^
Among the spirits enumerated in The B~ggbears,~' " the
whyte & red fearye " and " Garret " are to be found,
added by the English adapter and translator of Le
Spiritata of Grazzini to the roll of spirits, both amiable
and ' L yll," of the Italian original. They appear, too, in
the list of wicked spirits in A Mirror for Magistrates,
edition 1578; 69 in The Battle of Alcazar; 60 in A Declaration
of egregious Popish Impostures; 61 in Comus; 62 in
The Faithful Shepherdess; 6S and in Joseph Hall'$
s7 Scot, 1651 ed., p. I 13.
5s Early Plays from the Italian, Bond ed., 1911, 111, 3, p. 117.
59 Haslewood ed., 1815, Vol. 11, p. 121.
60 Geo. Peele, Malone Soc. Rpt., 1907, IV, 2, 1. 1231.
Samuel Harsnet, 1603 ed., p. 134.
62 Milton, Cambridge ed., 1899, 11. 432-437.
63 Fletcher, Darley ed., 1851, I, I
In the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, with the possible excep-
tion of The Faithful Shepherdess, where the good qualities of the fair-
ies are depicted in most instances, the fairies are always referred to as
beings of the deepest dyed villainy and wickedness.
64 Carmen Funebre Caroli Horni, 1596, Grosart ed., 1879, p. 217,
verse 5 :
" Now shall the wanton Deuils daunce in rings
In euerie mede, and euerie heath hore:
The Eluish Faeries and the Gobelins: