THE FAIRY SUPERSTITIONS.  
The Fairies, which gave in old times one of the most interesting and poetical features to the country, have all vanished clean away. Of those supernatural and airy beings who used to haunt the woodlands, hamlets, and solitary houses of Old England, they were the first to depart. “They were of the old profession”—true Catholics; and with Catholicism they departed; and have only left their interest in the pages of our poets, who still cling with fondness to the fairy mythology. Bogards, barguests, ghosts, and hobgoblins, still, in many an obscure hamlet and the more primitive parts of the country, maintain much of their ancient power, and continue to quicken the steps of the clown in lonely places, of the schoolboy past the churchyard, and to add a fearful interest to the winter fireside stories in cottages and farms. Witchcraft, spite of what Sir Walter Scott asserted in his Demonology, is far from having ceased to have stanch believers in numerous places. Are not many of the Methodists firmly persuaded of demoniacal possession? It is not long ago that Mr. Heaton, one of their ministers, published a volume in support of this doctrine, and detailed a very extraordinary case of possession of a boy who mounted on the surbase of the room, and danced there, on a space where he could not for a moment support himself when not under this influence. In this curious book, which I sent to Sir Walter Scott, and which he assured me he meant to make use of, but was, no doubt, prevented by his quickly succeeding decline, is a minute[474] account of all the process of praying the spirit out of the lad, of the dogged resistance of the demon, and their final triumph over him. John Wesley was strongly impressed with a belief of such things, as may be seen in his “News from the Invisible World,” and in the pages of the old series of the Wesleyan Magazine. And if recent demoniacal possession be a living faith of the nineteenth century, witchcraft has no lack of votaries. In Nottingham, a town of seventy thousand inhabitants, I knew a shoemaker who stood six feet in height, and “might dance in iron mail,” who lately lived, and probably still lives, in constant dread of the evil arts of witches and wizards. On the lintel and sill of his door, he had the ancient charm of reversed horse-shoes nailed; but he said, he found them of little use against the audacious malice of witchcraft. He had standing regularly by his fireside a sack-bag of salt, for he bought it by a sack at a time for the purpose, and of this he frequently, during the day, but more especially on dark and stormy nights, took a handful, with a few horsenail stumps, and crooked pins, and casting them into the fire together, prayed to the Lord to torment all witches and wizards in the neighbourhood, and he believed that they were tormented. As I stood by the man’s fire while he related this, it was burning with the beautiful purple hue of salt. On all other subjects he appeared as grave and sober as his neighbours.
In the obscure alleys of large towns, as well as in solitary situations, fortunetellers still live, and to my own knowledge draw many customers, besides the gipsies, who haunt there in winter time, and are the regular professors of palmistry. Witches, spectres, gipsies, and cunning people, still remain to diversify common life, spite of all the spread of education; but the fairies, pleasant little people, are gone for ever, and have been gone long. Chaucer, indeed, says that they were gone in his day.
In olde dayes of the king Artour,
Of which that Bretons speke gret honour,
All was this land ful filled of faerie;
The elf-quene, with her joly compagnie
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede.
This was the old opinion as I rede;
I speke of many hundred yeres ago;
But now can no man see non elves mo,[475]
For now the grete charitee and prayeres
Of limitoures and other holy freeres,
That serchen every land and every streme,
As thikke as motes in the sonne beme,
Blissing halles, chambres, kitchenes and boures,
Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures,
Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies,
This maketh that ther ben no fairies;
For ther as wont to walken was an elf,
Ther walketh now the limitour himself.
And Dr. Corbet, bishop of Norwich, who died in 1635, wrote the following interesting—
FAREWELL TO THE FAIRIES.
Farewell rewards and fairies!
Good housewives now may say;
For now foule sluts in dairies,
Doe fare as well as they;
And though they sweepe their hearths no less
Than mayds were wont to doe,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?
Lament, lament old Abbies,
The Fairies’ lost command;
They did but change priests’ babies,
But some have changed your land:
And all your children stolen from thence
Are now growne Puritanes,
Who live as changelings ever since
For love of your demesnes.
At morning and at evening both
You merry were and glad,
So little care of sleepe and sloth
Those pretty ladies had.
When Tom came home from labour,
Or Ciss to milking rose,
Then merrily went their tabour,
And merrily went their toes.
Witness those rings and roundelayes
Of theirs which yet remain;
Were footed in Queen Mary’s days
On many a grassy playne.
But since of late Elizabeth,
And later James came in,
They never danced on any heath
As when the time hath bin.[476]
By which we note the fairies
Were of the old profession,
Their songs were Ave Maries,
Their dances were procession.
But now, alas! they all are dead,
Or gone beyond the seas,
Or farther for religion fled,
Or else they take their ease.
A tell-tale in their company
They never could endure;
And whoso kept not secretly
Their mirth was punished sure.
It was a just and Christian deed
To pinch such black and blue;
O how the commonwealth doth need
Such justices as you.
Now they have left our quarters;
A Register they have,
Who can peruse their charters,
A man both wise and grave.
A hundred of their merry pranks
By one that I could name
A............