THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

68 APPEARANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS
sity to designate them by the term little. To him and to
his reader, the adjective and the word fairy are almost
synonymous. A somewhat similar state of mind in regard
to the proportions of fairies prevailed in the 16th
century. So much were their measurements, as " near
the smaller size of men," a matter of course that the
Elizabethan, in referring to the fairies or writing about
them, found himself under no compulsion to describe
their proportions or to designate their stature by the
term large.
The idea of the size and proportions of the native fairy
of the 16th century, therefore, cannot be derived from
any definite description of their stature or from any explicit
statement of their measurements except in a few
instances, like that of Pandaemonium, mostly confined to
the late 17th century when belief in the existence of the
fairies was dying out. On the other hand, it seems both
logical and reasonable to take as evidence of their size
and figure the fact that they are described repeatedly as
men and w~rnen,~ and to assume that the proportions and
measurements of those persons with whom they were
compared and of those for whom they were mistaken,
were the proportions and measurements, with little variation,
of the fairies. Their size and stature also can be
reckoned from the evidence afforded by the representations
made of them on the stage or in masque and
pageant.
In those instances in which the stature or the figure of
the fairies is described, they are represented as possessing
It might be urged that the description of the fairies as men and
women furnishes no evidence of their size, and may well mean small
or diminutive men and women. The terms men and women usually
connote full-grown adults of normal size. In the medieval romances,
where the fays are described as women, no suspicion of smallness is
attached to the term.