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Page 31
However, these splendors, astonishing as they were, all vanished in a
moment, whenever the eye of any one gifted with the power of spiritual
communion was turned upon them. Then their treasures of gold and silver
became slate-stones, and their stately halls were turned into damp caverns.
They themselves, instead of being the beautiful creatures they were before,
became ugly as a hedge-fence.
The king of fairy land was called _Oberon_--the queen, _Titania_.
The king used to wear a crown of jewels on his head, and he always carried
a horn in his hand, which set every body around him to dancing, whenever he
blew it. Ben Jonson, a poet who flourished a great many years ago, speaks
very respectfully of fairies and elves, in his poems. In describing the
haunts of his "Sad Shepherd," he says--
"There, in the stocks of trees, white fays do dwell,
And span-long elves that dance about a pool."
Shakspeare, too, in several of his plays, makes us quite familiar with the
fairy people. Shakspeare, you are aware, wrote in the time of Elizabeth,
and as late as that period, there were thousands in England and Scotland in
whose creed the existence of such a race of spirits was a very important
article. It was not long, however, after this, before the superstition
about the fairies--which, at the worst, was a very foolish affair--began to
decline. But that decline brought a dark night to thousands of poor,
innocent men and women; for then came the era of witchcraft, and persons of
every rank, convicted of this imaginary crime, were hurried to the scaffold
or the stake.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Dr. Corbett, Bishop of Oxford
and Norwich, wrote a very humorous satire on the fairy superstition, called
"The Fairies' Farewell, a proper new ballad to be sung or whistled to the
tune of Meadow Brow." Perhaps I cannot better take leave of these very
curious imaginary people, than to employ a couple of stanzas from the
bishop's playful ballad:
"Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs, which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days,
On many a grassy plain;
But since of late Elizabeth,
And later James came in,
They never danced on any heath,
As when the time hath been.
"By which we note the fairies
Were of the old profession;
Their songs were Ave Marias,
Their dances were processions;
But now, alas! they all are dead,
Or gone beyond the seas,
Or further for religion fled,
Or else they take their ease."
THE HERMIT.
A Traveler was once passing through a great wilderness, in which he
supposed no human being dwelt. But, while riding along in its gloomiest
part, he was surprised to see a hermit, his face covered with a long
beard, that hung down upon his breast, sitting on a stone at the
entrance of what seemed a cave.
The hermit arose as the traveler drew up his horse, and speaking kindly to
him, invited him to accept such refreshment as it was in his power to
offer. The traveler did not refuse, but, dismounting, tied his horse to a
tree, and, following the pious man, entered the narrow door of a little
cave which nature had formed in the side of a mountain. All the hermit had
to set before the traveler, was water from a pure stream that came merrily
leaping down the hill side, and some wild fruit and nuts.
"Tell me," said the traveler, after he had eaten, "why a man with a sound
body, such as you possess, and a sound mind, should hide away from his
fellow-men, in a dreary wild like this?"
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