THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

5 0 ORIGIN AND NATURE
These woods (cp he) sometime both Fauns, Nimphs, and Gods of
groiide,
And fairy Queenes did kepe, and vnder them a nacion rough;
A people saluage strong, and borne in tronks of timber tough:
Who neither nurture knew, nor trade of life, nor bullocks taught,
Nor goods vpstoare they could, nor wisely spare those things thei
caught.
But bowes of trees them fed, and hunting hard them kept from
cold,
Furst from Olympus mount (right neare the skies) good Saturn
old,
Whan he from Ioue did flee, and from his kingdoms outlawd stood,
He first that wayward kittish kynde disperst in hilles, and wood,
Did bring to thrift, and gaue them lawes, and all the land this
waye
Did Latium cal, . . . 82
Golding in 1565-1567 83 seems to have taken the
similitude between the fairies and elves and nymphs and
a2 The eygth booke of Aeneidos, 11. 335-345. The whole .xii. Bookes
of the Aeneidos of Yirgill. Whereof the first .ix. and part of the
tenth, were conuerted into English Meeter by Thomas Phaer Esquier,
and the residue supplied, and the whole worke together newly set
forth by Thomas Twyne Gentleman. London, 1573.
s3 The xv. Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso, entytuled Metamorphosis,
translated oute of Latin into English meeter, by Arthur Golding
Gentleman. A Worke very pleasaunt and delectable. Imprynted at
London, by William Seres, 1567. Rouse ed., London, 1904.
It is interesting to observe that the translation of the same passages
by George Sandys, published 1626, makes no mention of fairies or
elves, as for instance, Book XIV, 11. 584-586:
" In which hee saw a darksome denne forgrowne with busshes hye,
And watred with a little spring. The halfegoate Pan that howre
Possessed it: but heertoofore it was the fayryes bowre,"
is translated by Sandys as
"A Cave, inviron'd with a sylvan shade,
Distilling streames. By halfe-goate Pan possest;
Which erst the Wood-nymphs with their beauties blest."