THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS 87
which is not to be wondered at, considering the romantic
glamour which haunts both color and fabric to this pres-
ent day. "There were with King Obreon a many
fayries, all attyred in greene silke," the author of Robin
Goodfellow; his mad prankes, and merry Jests, insi~ted.'~
'6 . . . like Men, and Women, Souldiers, Kings, and
Ladyes Children, and Horse-men cloathed in green," 87
was the comment on the fairy costumes in 1665. They
rode into sight " on ahallow even," in Scotland, " all
graithid into greine," 88 and were dressed in the same
color in the Psalmes, Sonets, W Songs of Sadness and
Pietie IsQ of William Byrd. So much given to green were
they that in 1696, when Anne Jefferies saw them, they
appeared as " six small People, all in Green clothe^,'^
and as late as 1726 Waldron recounts their materialization
in the Isle of Man " all drest in green, and gallantly
mounted." O1
Despite their preference for the color, there was no
one pirticular shade of green which they most affected.
Their costumes took on all the tones which the earth,
from which the fairies must have taken their color,
decked itself, and varied from yellow to green to brown.
It was as " yellow-skirted " fairies that they were referred
to in The English Parnassu~,~~ and as the " finest
186 Rpt. in J. 0. Halliwell, Illus. of the Fairy Myth. of M. N. D.,
Shak. Soc., 1845, p. 142.
s7 Dis. conc. D. 0" S., p. 5 10.
8s Montgomerie, p. 15 I.
"9 Lyrics from the Song-books of the Elizabethan Age, A. H. Bullen
ed., London, 1891, p. 34. Cf. also William Dunbar, Golden Targe,
Scottish Text Soc. ed,, 1893, Vol. 11, 1. 125.
Morgan, Phoenix Brit., p. 548.
Q1 Waldron, A Description of the Isle of Man, 1726, p. 33. Cf.
also Bourne, Antiq. Vulgares, p. 83: "They are always clad in
Green."
92 Josua Poole, 1677 ed., p. 332.