THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

52 ORIGIN AND NATURE
That she should know, and world should say, Lo there thy Phayries
goth,
Like Furies madde, and Satyres wild : . . . 86
The conception of " The Robbin-good-fellowes, Elfes,
Fairies, Hobgoblins of our latter age " as the same
beings " which idolatrous former daies and the fantasti-
call world of Greece ycleaped Fawnes, Satyres, Dryades,
& Hamadryades " set forth by Nashe in 1593, is re-
peatedly found in the works of most of the earlier and
later Elizabethans. Even James VI of Scotland, com-
mitted though he is to the belief that the fairies are illu-
sions of the devil, or the devil himself, does not fail to
designate them also as
That fourth kinde of Spirits, which by the Gentiles was called
Diana, and her wandering court, and amongst vs was called the
Phairie (as I told you) or our good neighbo~rs.~~
In the dictionaries of the period, with few exceptions,
the elves and fairies are also defined in terms of classical
mythology but, in this case, they are most frequently
given as the English equivalent of lamiae and strygia,
both of whom are wicked and evil beings, than of nymphs
and of satyrs.89 The Promptorium Parvul~rum,~~ com-
s6 Ibid., pp. 212-213.
The Terrors of the Night, McKerrow ed., 1904-10, Vol. I, p. 347.
Cf. also The Maydes Metamorphosis, 111, I, in Bullen, A Coll. of
Old Eng. Plays, 1882, Vol. I: " No Fayrie Nymph "; Froissart'e
Chronicles, trans. Berners, 1812, Vol. 11, p. 700, Concerning the
island of Chyfolignie, " the fapry and the nympes be moche conuersaunt
there." This conception had appeared in Eden's Decades, printed
1555, in The Firste Booke of the Decades of the Ocean of Peter
Martyr, printed in Latin, 1511.
f18 Daemon., p. 132.
89 See Huloet's Dictionarie . . . corrected by John Higgins, 1572:
fayres or Elves - Lamiae, Empusae, Laruae, Lemures, Les fees.
E. E. T. S. ed., 1908.