Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

238 FRANCIS BACON
as they were wandering in the woods, had their fortunes told
them by three strange women.
" Terrestrial devils are those Lares, Genii, Fauns, Satyrs,
Wood-Nymphs, Foliots, Fairies, 1 Kouin Good-fellows, - etc.,
which, as they are most conversant with men, so they do them
most harm. Some think it was they alone that kept the heathen
people in awe of old, and had so many idols and temples erected
to them. Of this range was Dagon among the Philistines, Bel
among the Babylonians, Astarte among the Sidonians, Baal
among the Samaritans, Isis and Osiris among the Egyptians,
etc. Some put our fairies into this rank, which have been in
former times adored with much superstition, with sweeping their
houses, and setting of a pail of clear water, good victuals, and the
like, and then they should not be pinched? but find money in their
shoes, 4 and be fortunate in their enterprises. 5 These are they
that dance on heaths and greens, 6 as Lavater thinks with Tritehnius,
and, as Olaus Magnus adds, leaving that green circle 1 which
we commonly find in plain fields, which others hold to proceed
from a meteor falling, or some accidental rankness of the ground,
so nature sports herself. . . . Paracelsus reckons up many places
in Germany where they do usually walk in little coats, some
two feet long. A bigger kind of them is called with us hobgoblins
and Robin Goodfellows, that would, in those superstitious
times, grind cornfor a mess of milk, cut tvood, or do any manner
of drudgery work. . . . Cardan holds, 8 they will make strange
noises in the night, howl sometimes pitifully, and then laugh
again, cause great flame and sudden lights, fling stones, rattle
1 See 31. N. D. ii. 1. The fairies of Shakespeare are always Bacon's vital
spirits of nature, and this soems to be now recognized. The sprites and fairies
in Mr. Benson's recent representation of the Midsummer Nights Dream were
properly attired as flowers, insects, bullrushes, river weeds, etc., and not. as
formerly, in ballet skirts and satin shoes. In Macbeth Mr. Irving not only departs
from the old idea of witches as hags in red cloaks and poke bonnets, but
the witches are distinctly arrayed to imitate the winds, and a scene in dumb
show is interpolated where these wind-witches tilled the sails which are to
carry Macduff to England.
2 M.N. D. ii. 1.
3 "Let the supposed fairies pinch him." Mer. Wiv. iv. 4 "Pinch the maids
blue; . . . pinch them, arms and legs and backs; . . still pinch him, fairies, pinch
.
liiin to your time." lb. v. 5, and Temp. i. 2, 328, and iv. 1, 233.
4 "It was told me I should be rich by the fairies." W. T. iii. 3.
5 "Fairies and gods prosper it with thee." Lear. iv. 6.
6 "Dance our ringlets to the whistling winds." M. N. D. ii. 2.
7 "You demi-puppets, that by moonshine do the sour-green ringlets make,
whereof the sheep bites."— Temp. v. 1.
8 See of Ariel, who makes music in the air. Twanging instruments, voices
humming, or howling and thunder.