And For Our Dear Lord...

All Hail!

The “elf-queen” and the “elf-king”, if we may call her match or make thus, are godheads in but the thinnest of hidlocks (=disguises), as will be seen from what followeth.

King James I in his Dæmonologie (1597):

PHILOMATHES. Now I pray you come on to that fourth kinde of spirites. 
EPI. That fourth kinde of spirites, which by the Gentiles was called Diana, and her wandring court, and amongst vs was called the Phairie (as I tould you) or our good neighboures, was one of the sortes of illusiones that was rifest in the time of Papistrie: for although it was holden odious to Prophesie by the deuill, yet whome these kinde of Spirites carryed awaie, and informed, they were thought to be sonsiest and of best life. To speake of the many vaine trattles founded vpon that illusion: How there was a King and Queene of Phairie, of such a iolly court & train as they had, how they had a teynd, & dutie, as it were, of all goods: how they naturallie rode and went, eate and drank, and did all other actiones like naturall men and women: I thinke it liker VIRGILS Campi Elysij, nor anie thing that ought to be beleeued by Christians,...

In the so-called “Flyting of Montgomerie & Polwart”:

THE SECUND INVECTIVE.
 
Into the hinderend of harvest, on ane alhallow evin,
quhen our goode nichtbouris ryddis, if I reid richt, 269
...
the king of pharie, with þe court of the elph quene,
with mony alrege incubus, ryddand that nicht. 275

MONTGOMERYES ANSWEIR TO POLUART.

In the hinder end of harvest, on ahallow even,
Quhen our good neighboures doth ryd, If I reid rycht, 275
...
The King of pharie, and his Court, with the elph queine, 280
With mony elrich Incubus, was rydand that nycht.

Elrich, or alrege, meaneth “otherworldly”.

Notwithstanding that the “elf-queen” was widely evened with the Romans' gyden Diana, Chaucer in the Merchant's Tale eveneth her with Proserpina and the “elf-king”with Proserpina's husband, Pluto:

Full often time he, Pluto, and his queen
Proserpina, and all their faerie,
Disported them and made melody
About that well, and danced, as men told.
....
Pluto, that is the king of Faerie,
And many a lady in his company
Following his wife, the queen Proserpina, --

And Thomas Campion (1567 – 1620) in his leeth (=poem) Harke, al you ladies that doth sleep ... hath “The fayry queen Proserpina”. In William Dunbar's The Goldyn Targe lines 125 to 126, the Roman god is almost lost sight of behind all the much more northerly tokening Dunbar is here borrowing:

“There was Pluto, the elrich incubus,
In cloke of grene...”.

It is worthwhile here to mark William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Truly indeed of Shakespeare it is written: “He was not of an age, but for all time!”  In this we meet the “fairy king” (so-called once in act 4 scene 1) and the “fairy queen” (so-called four times in act 2 scene 1, act 2 scene 2, act 3 scene 1, act 4 scene 1).  The king he further nameth Oberon and the queen Titania.  In calling the “elf-queen” Titania Shakespeare is hiding the name of Diana, as in Ovid's Metamorphoses book 3 line 173 Diana is so called.  Although in Romeo and Juliet, Act I, scene IV it would seem he calleth her “Mab”:

“O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, …”.

Michael Drayton (1563 – 1631), another Warwickshire man, in his Nymphidia, The Court of Fairy would also seem to be of this mind:

Hence Oberon him sport to make,
Their rest when weary mortals take, 50
And none but only fairies wake,
Descendeth for his pleasure ;
And Mab, his merry Queen, …

And:

If Oberon had chanced to hear 150
That Mab his Queen should have been there,
He would not have abode it.
...

“Mab” is not a word borrowed from Irish as some do say.  It is seemingly a shortening of the lady's name “Mabel”, yet here somewhat misbrooked (=misused) for a gyden or an elfen.  But as we have seen with the “Mag” of the magpie, such names often hide a much deeper and older meaning.  I think Thomas Keightley (The Fairy Mythology..., Deal II, (1833), lf. 135) is therefore right to make it stem from “dame Habonde” as she is called in the Roman de la Rose (see J. Grimm Teutonic Mythology, Deal I (1882), chap. 13, lvs. 286 to 288), and who we know from William of Auvergne's De Universo (written in the 1230s) still had a lingering worship in Frankland (=France) in his days.  “dame Habonde” being yet another name for the “elf-queen”.

  Sir Joseph Noel Paton FRSA, LL. D. (1821 – 1901) 

The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania (1849).  

Now in The National Gallery of Scotland.ᛋ

The name of Oberon is taken from the Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux done into English by Sir John Bourchier, Lord Berners and first thrutched (=printed) about 1534.  Oberon or Auberon is meant to be a French awending of Alberich the king of the dwarves in Otnit (see J. Grimm Teut. Myth. Deal II (1883), chap 17, lvs. 452 to 453) although in Orendel inde Brîde we also find a helpful dwarf called Albân (“ein gidwerch dô zô zir quam,/ daz was giheizen Albân”) who is likely to be the same.  But be this as it may, the name Alberich is itself the same as our old man's name Ælfriċ (said “Alvrich”), and which meaneth no more than “elf-king”!  I believe however, that the German leeths (=poems) have formenged here dwarves and elves, and which to begin with were to be told asunder, although dwarves are indeed a kind of elf.  Thus among the Northerners Snorri Sturluson can, in his Edda, seemingly name dwarves as dark or swart elves (see Gylfaginning 17, 34 and Skáldskaparmál 46).  And maybe with us also, if we minn (=recall) here Iohn Walsh's “ther be. iii. kindes of Feries, white, greene, & black”. Likewise in England the short height of elves, which in Shakespeare's time had reached a laughworthy low stead (and maybe also the making of them dwell in the earth at times), is also from a formenging of elves with dwarves, but in the againward (=opposite) way to that of the Germans.  Also under the sway of those dull minds who held that a seldom seen thing, if it had any being at all, had to be small so as to blend into its background and be so often overlooked.

Now before we go any further it is well to know that under the heading of “elf-king” two seemingly unalike godheads are to be understood. The other (=second) must abide a later post, but the first is one and the same with the Northern god Freyur who, as a child was made the lord of “eluenlond” or Alfheimur as they call it, (see Grímnismál 5).  He is to be linked to the Romans' Pluto only in so much as Pluto was a god of earthly wealth: hence his name stemmeth from the Greek ὁ πλούτων meaning “the richman”.  Thus Snorri Sturlusson  in his Edda, Skáldskaparmál, chapitle (=chapter) 14 Freyskenningar nameth the Freyur  “fégjafi” “fee giver” “wealth giver”.  And in Gylfaginning 24 he writeth “Hann ræðr ok fésælu manna. ” “He wieldeth also the wealth-luck of men”.  I further mark here “skírum Frey” (see Grímnismál 43) “skír Freyur” “sheer Freyur”  “bright Freyur” which should be weighed with Gylfaginning 24 “Hann ræðr fyrir ... skini sólar...” “He wieldeth over ... the shinining of the sun...”.  Freyur's elves are therefore likely to be Snorri's light-elves ljósálfar of whom he doth write that they are “as fair as the seen sun” (“ljósálfar eru fegri en Sól sýnum” Gylfaginning 17).  They are also likely to be those elves who are sometimes found among the gods, and share in their woe or weal (see Völuspá 48, Þrymskviða 7, Lokasenna 30); and also those elves who are sprung from Álfur or Finn-Álfur and Svanhildur Gullfjöður “Gold-feather” the daughter of Dagur “Day” and Sól “Sun” (see Hversu Noregr byggðist in the Flateyjarbók).  And if the “elf-queen” is linked to the Romans' Diana, must not the  “elf-king” we are here writing about be evened with Diana's brother, Apollo?  Indeed I believe that the Romans' Apollo and Diana are the Northerners' Freyur and Freyja (see Hélène Adeline Guerber (1859–1929)  Myths of Northern Lands, American Book Co., New York, Cincinatti, Chicago, (1895), chap XXVIII, lf.284 who marketh the likeness of Apollo to Freyur).  Plutarch On Isis and Osiris (awending F. C. Babbitt):

“ … οὐχ ἑτέρους παρ᾽ ἑτέροις οὐδὲ βαρβάρους καὶ Ἕλληνας οὐδὲ νοτίους καὶ βορείους: ἀλλ᾽ ὥσπερ ἥλιος καὶ σελήνη καὶ οὐρανὸς καὶ γῆ καὶ θάλασσα κοινὰ πᾶσιν, ὀνομάζεται δ᾽ ἄλλως ὑπ᾽ ἄλλων, οὕτως ἑνὸς λόγου τοῦ ταῦτα κοσμοῦντος καὶ μιᾶς προνοίας ἐπιτροπευούσης καὶ δυνάμεων ὑπουργῶν ἐπὶ πάντα τεταγμένων, ἕτεραι παρ᾽ ἑτέροις κατὰ νόμους γεγόνασι τιμαὶ καὶ προσηγορίαι: ...”

“Nor do we think of the gods as different gods among different peoples, nor as barbarian gods and Greek gods, nor as southern and northern gods; but, just as the sun and the moon and the heavens and the earth and the sea are common to all, but are called by different names by different peoples, so for that one rationality which keeps all these things in order and the one Providence which watches over them and the ancillary powers that are set over all, there have arisen among different peoples, in accordance with their customs, different honours and appellations.”

With all this in mind then, what Oberon sayeth in A Midsummer Night's Dream Act III, scene ii is well worth marking:

PUCK.  My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,
For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,
That in crossways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone;
For fear lest day should look their shames upon,
They willfully themselves exile from light
And must for aye consort with black-brow'd night.

OBERON.  But we are spirits of another sort:
I with the morning's love have oft made sport,
And, like a forester, the groves may tread,
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.
But, notwithstanding, haste; make no delay:
We may effect this business yet ere day.

Likewise, understanding Freyur as Adam of Bremen's “Fricco” from his Descriptio insularum aquilonis, his wardship there of weddings (see chapitle 27 “si nuptiae celebrandae sunt, Fricconi [lybatur]” “if a wedding is frellsed (=celebrated) they yeet (=pour) a drink-offering to Fricco”) maketh what Oberon sayeth in A Midsummer Night's Dream Act V, scene I most fyrwit:

OBERON Now, until the break of day,
Through this house each fairy stray.
To the best bride-bed will we,
Which by us shall blessed be;
And the issue there create
Ever shall be fortunate.
So shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be;
And the blots of Nature's hand
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hare lip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
Despised in nativity,
Shall upon their children be.
With this field-dew consecrate,
Every fairy take his gait;
And each several chamber bless,
Through this palace, with sweet peace;
And the owner of it blest
Ever shall in safety rest.
Trip away; make no stay;
Meet me all by break of day.

In the 1601 outlaying of Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux, Chap. XXI Oberon is araught (=described) thus:

“Then they alighted vnder a great Oake, to the entent to search for some fruit to eate, they glad thereof let their horses goe to pasture. When they were thus alighted, the Dwarfe of the Fayry Kinge Oberon came ryding by, and had on a Gowne so rich, that it were maruaile to recount the riches and fashion thereof, & it was so garnished with precious stones, that the clearnesse of them shined like the Sonne.”
 

I also mark Gerames' words in the same work (chapitle XX) about Oberon:

“... he hath an Angell-like visage, so that there is no mortal man that séeth him, but that taketh great pleasure to behold his face, ”

And this bringeth us to Androw Man's “Devill”:

“ The said Androw confessis that Crystsunday cum to hym in liknes of ane fair angell, and clad in quhyt claythis, and said that he was ane angell, and that he suld put his trust in hym, and call hym his lord and kyng, and markit hym on the thrid fynger, quhilk mark he beris as yitt.”

“... that Crystsunday rydis all the tyme that he is in thair cumpanie...”.

“... the Devill, thy maister, quhom thow termes Christsonday, and supponis to be ane angell, and Goddis godsone, albeit he hes a thraw by God, and swyis to the Quene of Elphen, ...”

And some of what Marioun Grant had to say is worth etching (=adding) here:

“... the Devill thy maister, com to the, quhom thow calis Christsonday, in the scheap of a man, and baid the call him lord, and becom his servand, and thow suld nocht want, and callit the dame; and at that tyme, had carnall deall with the, and thow becom than his servand...” (lvs.170 to 171)

“Thow confessit that ance everie moneth sensyn, the Devill apperit to the, sumtyme in a hous, and sumtyme in the fieldis, in dyvers scheappis and liknes; sumtyme in the scheap of a beist, and sumtyme in the scheap of a man, and causit the kis him in dyvers pairtis, and worship him on thy kneis as thy lord.

... Thow confessit that the Devill thy maister, quhome thow termes Christsonday, causit the dans sindrie tymes with him and with Our Ladye, quha, as thow sayes, was a fine woman, clad in a quhyt walicot, and sindrie vtheris of Christsondayes servands with the, quhais names thow knawis not, ...”. (lf.171).

Farewell.

For Our Dear Lady...

All hail!

Who hath not heard of the fairies or elves?  Are these not household words among us today although only now but dimly understood?  Robert Sheringham (1602-1678) De Anglorum gentis origine (1670):

“Apud nos sane superstitio haec, & stulta credulitas inter vulgus nondum desiit; nescio enim quas vetulae fabulas de Elvis (nobis alio vocabulo fayryes nuncupatis) pueris & puellis fuggerunt, quibus teneros animos ita imbuunt ut nunquam anilia illa deliramenta deponant, sed aliis tradant, & Elvarum choros interdum in cubiculis saltare, interdum (ut ancillis benefaciant) pavimentum verrere & purgare, interdum etiam manuaria mola molere solere vulgo praedicent; atque hujusmodi spectra saepe apparete affirment.” 

 

“Among us, truly, this superstition and foolish credulity among the vulgar is not yet left off; for I know not what fables old women suggest to boys and girls about elves (with us by another word called fairies), by which their tender minds they so imbue, that they never depose these old-wifish ravings, but deliver them to others, and vulgarly affirm that groups of elves sometimes dance in bed-chambers, sometimes (that they may benefit the maids) scour and cleanse the pavement, and sometimes are wont to grind with a hand-mill.” (awending W. C. Hazlitt Fairy Tales... (1875) lf.45)

 

Now it is swettle (=manifest) after looking through the most markworthy bookings (=records) of the witch lawdays (=trials), that the witches are - as all of us followers of the old gods are - much missaid as worshipping the devil by the followers of the new belief.  But the witches have their worship truly grounded upon the fairies or elves, otherwise called wights, or rather upon the king and queen of these beings. Thus in Bishop Stafford's Register we find Agnes Hancok of Montacute in Somerset in 1438 atwitted (=accused) of witchcraft (“de crimine sortilegii”) and, among other things, of “communicacionem” with “spiritibus immundis” “unclean wights” or “spiritibus aeris, quos vulgus “feyry” appellant” “wights of the loft (=air), which the folk call fairy” (see T. S. Holmes outlayer The Register of John Stafford, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1425–1443, Somerset Record Society Deal 32, Deal II, London, 1916, lvs. 225 to 227)). Later “Iohn Walsh of Netherbery in Dosetshiere” freely acknowledged that he “useth” “the Feries” (see The examination of John Walsh before Maister Thomas Williams, commissary to the Reuerend father in God William Bishop of Excester, vpon certayne interrogatories touchyng wytchcrafte and sorcerye... London, 1566). Henry More (1614 –1687) in his An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660), leaning somewhat I believe on Pico della Mirandola's Strix (1523) and Baptista Codronchius' De morbis veneficis (1618), writeth:

“... according to that practice which to this day is confessed by witches, especially in their meetings and joviall revellings in the night, at that solemnity which they call our Lady's play, the ancients called it Ludum Dianae, or Ludum Herodiadis; where the witches, as themselves confess, do eat and drink and dance, and doe that with these impure spirits which modesty would forbid to name. ”

Needless to say, “Lady's play” is not a stavewise (=literal) awending of Ludum Dianae. Doth More know something more than he is telling? For a fuller understanding of all these odd bits however, fully acknowledging on the way that fairies are the same as elves, we must set them against the background of the old folk belief found in the Fasciculus Morum. De fide written about 1320:

“Sed rogo quid dicendum est de talibus miseriis et supersticiosis qui de nocte dixerunt se videre reginas pulcherrimas et alias puellas tripudiantes cum domina Dyana, choreas ducentes dea paganorum, que in nostro vulgari dicitur elves? Et credunt quod tales possunt tam homines quam mulieres in alias naturas transformare et secum ducere apud eluenlond, ubi iam, ut dicunt, manent illi athlete fortissimi, scilicet Onewyn et Wad et ceteri. Que omnia [non] sunt nisi fantasmata et a maligno spiritu illis demonstrata.”

“But, I ask, what is to be said of those wretched superstitious persons who say that by night they see the most beautiful queens and other girls dancing with their lady Diana, leading dances with the goddess of the pagans, who among our commonfolk are called elves? And they believe that the latter transform men and women into other shapes and conduct them to Elvenlond, where now, as they say, dwell those mighty champions, Onewyne and Wade and so on. All of which are only phantasms displayed by an evil spirit.”

 (see Siegfried Wenzel, outlayer and awender, Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook ( Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), lf. 578.

Which leadeth us to the name by which Diana was known in England, and indeed it is overlooked by all those who read Chaucer's Wife of Bath’s Tale:

“The elf-queen, with hir Ioly companye,       860

Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede;

This was the olde opinion, as I rede,”

“The Elf-Queen”!

And looking to the better known law-day bookings for witchcraft from the English-speaking deal of Scotland we can see why Androw Man of Tarbruith in 1597 acknowledged “the Quene of Elphen hes a grip of all the craft” (see The Miscellany of the Spalding Club, Aberdeen 1841, Deal I, III, xi-xiv lvs. 117 to 125).

It is worth marking here that Laȝamon Leouenaðes sone in his Hystoria Bruttonum (handwrit Cotton Caligula A. ix) would seem to understand “eluenlond” as the same as “Aualun” where “Argante” is queen, an  “aluen swiðe sceone”, with King Arthur also going to swell the followers of the “elf-queen”. Argante is not in Wace's Roman de Brut who only marketh Avalon (as at lines 13583, 13697) like Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniæ before that, so Laȝamon draweth not upon these works for this. Chrétien de Troyes Érec et Énide however, hath “Morgain, la fee”.  Furthermore Geoffrey of Monmouth will have Arthur's sword made in Avalon (see Historia Regum Britanniæ book 9 ch.4 “Accinctus ergo Caliburno gladio optimo et in insula Auallonis fabricato...” “begirt therefore with Caliburnus, the best of swords and made in the iland of Avalon...” ), as well as where Arthur is taken when wounded (see book 11 ch.2 “Sed et inclytus ille rex Arturus letaliter vulneratus est, qui, illinc ad sananda vulnera sua in insulam Avalonis evectus.” “But also the far-known king Arthur himself was deadly wounded, so that, he is borne thence to the iland of Avalon to the healing of his wounds.”). But this same island is Morgan's island in Geoffrey's Vita Merlini (where it is called only “Insula pomorum que Fortunata vocatur” “the island of apples called the blessed”), and it is to her that Arthur doth go to be healed.  From which the sharp reader might guess that “the lady of the lake” who doth give Arthur his sword in Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur book i cap. 25 was noneother than Morgan to begin with!  Now elsewhere in Malory's work we learn of a “lady of the lake” called Nyneve, Nyneve or Nimue (see book 4 cap. 1 “she was one of the damoysels of the lake that hyȝte Nyneue”, book 4 cap 24 “the damoysel of the lake Nymue” and book 20 cap. 6 “Nynyve the chyef lady of the lake”) but this is noneother than the gyden Diana's own name among the Scots of Nickniven “holy maiden”.  Thus in the so-called “Flyting of Montgomerie & Polwart” but which titleth itself Invectives. Capitane Alexander Montgomeree & Pollvart & cetera in the Tullibardine hand writ, or Polwart and Montgomerie Flyting in the Harley handwrit, we read:

The Secund Invective.

Thair a cleir cumpany cum eftir close, 402
Nickniven with hir nymphis, in nomber anew,
...
Thir venerabill virginis quhome ȝe wald call wiches, 411

Or in the Harley handwrit:

Montgomeryes Answeir To Poluart.

Then a cleere companje and soone after closse, 382
Nieniren with her Nimphes, in number anew,
...
Thir venerable virgines whome the world call witches, 391

See Poems of Alexander Montgomerie, outlaid by George Stevenson, Edinburgh and London 1910, lvs. 158 to 161.

The law-day booked in the Hessiche Hexenprocessacten for one Thiel or Diel Bruell from Germany in 1632 would seem to know the same kind of gyden as Androw Man's “the Quene of Elphen” by the name of “fraw holt” (see P. S. Barto Tannhäuser and the mountain of Venus, Oxford University Press, American Branch(!), 1916, II. lvs. 36 to 37 and 130 to 131 where the German is given). She is there said to abide “in Venusberg” or “in fraw Venus berg”. But Holde (Holdam often willfully miswritten as unholdam) is brooked much earlier by Burchardus of Worms in his Corrector Decretum 70 in the same way as Regino of Prüm writeth of Diana or Herodias in his  Canon Episcopi. Whilst Jacob Grimm (Teutonic Mythology, London 1883, Deal III, chap, 31, lf.933) marketh John Herolt, a Dominican, who at the beginning of the 15th yearhundred, wrote in his Sermones discipuli de tempore et de sanctis, Sermo 11 (in die Nativ.) :

“Sunt quidam, qui in his xii. noctibus subsequentibus multas vanitates exercent, qui deam, quam quidam Dianam vocant, in vulgari die frawen unhold, dicunt cum suo exercitu ambulare.”

“There are some, who in these following twelve nights do many empty things, the goddess whom some call Diana, in the folk tongue lady hold (here willfully miswritten unhold), they say then to walk with her following.”

It is worth marking here that holde as a mean nameword (=common noun) is only another word for an elf or other such wight, and so “fraw holt” is only another way of saying “elf-queen”! In later German folklore “fraw holt” becometh Frau Holle (see any good outlaying of “Grimms' Fairy Tales”). In Germany her riding out is formenged with the “witch ride” (gand-reið), the so-called “wild hunt” (she also hunts) and “das wütende heer” “raging host” (she also has the dead in her fellowship). Thus Grimm again marketh:

“In Thüringen zieht das wütende heer im geleite der frau Holla. Zu Eisleben und im ganzen Mansfelder land fuhr es alle jahr auf fastnacht donnesrstag vorüber, das volk versammelte sich und sah der ankunft des heers entgegen, nicht anders als sollte ein mächtiger könig einziehen. vor dem haufen trat ein alter mann einher mit weißem stabe, der treue Eckhart, der die leute aus dem wege weichen, einige auch heim gehen hieß: sie würden sonst schaden nehmen. hinter ihm kamen etliche geritten, etliche gegangen, man sah darunter neulich verstorbne menschen.”

“In Thuringia the furious host travels in the train of frau Holla. At Eisleben and all over the Mansfeld country it always came past on the Thursday in Shrove-tide; the people assembled, and looked out for its coming, just as if a mighty monarch were making his entry. In front of the troop came an old man with a white staff, the trusty Eckhart, warning the people to move out of the way, and some even to go home, lest harm befall them. Behind him, some came riding, some walking, and among them persons who had lately died. ” (see J. Grimm Teut. Myth. London 1883, Deal III, chap. 31 lf.934). ”

Further south “fraw holt” was also called “fraw Percht”. Stephanus Lanzkrana in Die Hymelstrass (1494) chideth those who believe in “frawn percht, frawn hold, herodyasis or dyana, the heathen goddess.” And a Thesaurus pauperum of 1468 from Tegernsee hath: “Qui credunt quod Diana, quae vulgariter dicitur fraw Percht, cum exercitu suo de nocte solet ambulare per multa sapatia terrarum.” “Diana who is widely known as Fraw Percht is in the wone (=habit) of wandering through the night with a band of women.” (see Tegernsee MS 434 in Viktor Waschnitius, Perht, Holda und verwandte Gestalten, Vienna 1914). Grimm outfoldeth her name as Bertha (Teut. Myth. London, 1882, Deal I, chap. 13, 5, lvs. 272 to 282) and I mark here that Swainson giveth the name of “Bertha” for the magpie in “North Italy”!

 From the so-called “Flyting of Montgomerie & Polwart” we have our elf-queen riding out with her king:


THE SECUND INVECTIVE.

Into the hinderend of harvest, on ane alhallow evin,
quhen our goode nichtbouris ryddis, if I reid richt, 269
...
the king of pharie, with þe court of the elph queue,
with mony alrege incubus, ryddand that nicht. 275

MONTGOMERYES ANSWEIR TO POLUART.

In the hinder end of harvest, on ahallow even,
Quhen our good neighboures doth ryd, If I reid rycht, 275
...
The King of pharie, and his Court, with the elph queine, 280
With mony elrich Incubus, was rydand that nycht.


Bessie Dunlop calls a riding out somewhat akin to this as “the gude wichtis ...  rydand in Middil-ȝerd”. 


Although the dead are not marked in the so-called “Flyting...” as being in the elf-king's and elf-queen's fellowship, we would not think this an unlikelihood, as this riding is the same as the “wütende heer” in Thuringia marked above and led by “frau Holla” (that is “fraw holt”).  And where “man sah darunter neulich verstorbne menschen” “a man saw therein newly dead folk”.  And we bethink here that Argante took Arthur  to Avalon when wounded, although some might think when dead, and in the Fasciculus Morum “elves”  lead folk with them “to eluenlond” among whom are “Onewyne and Wade”, whom others might think of as dead. And from what Chaucer writeth in his Squire's Tale (“That Gawain with his olde courtesy,/Though he were come again out of Faerie,/Him coulde not amende with a word.) might make us think that Gawaain at least was also among these.  Androw Man of Tarbruith in 1597 acknowledgeth in his law-day for witchcraft at Aberdeen that King James IV of Scotland  and the far-known Thomas the Rhymer were there:

“Siclyk, thow affermis that the Quene of Elphen hes a grip of all the craft, bot Christsondy is the gudeman, and hes all power vnder God, and that thow kennis sindrie deid men in thair cumpanie, and that the kyng that deit in Flowdoun and Thomas Rymour is their.”(see The Miscellany of the Spalding Club, Aberdeen 1841, Deal I, III, xi-xiv lvs. 117 to 125).

And in the lawday of Bessie Dunlop of Lynn in Dalry, Ayrshire, for witchcraft in 1576 we learn of ”Thome Reid, quha deit at Pinkye,...” who was afterwards in Elfland, there called “Elfame”, for it is said of him that “the Quene of Elfame his maistres, ... had commandit him to wait vpoun hir [Bessie Dunlop], and to do hir gude”. And the “La(i)rd of Auchinskeyth” :

“Item, the said Bessie declaris, that the Lard of Auchinskeyth is rydand with the ffair-folk, albeit he deit ix ȝeir syne.”


“Item, deponis that four ȝeir syne, or thairbye, sche saw the Laird of Auchinskeyth, at a thorne, beyond Monkcastell; quhilk Lard deit mair nor fyve ȝeir syne. Thaireftir, sche, at the desyre of the Ladye Auchinskeyth, inquirit at Thom Reid, Giff sic ane mann was amangis thame? Quha ansuerit, That he was amangis thame.”

(see Robert Pitcairn, outlayer, Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, Deal 1, Underdeal (=Part) 2, lvs.49 to 58, under 10 Jac. VI A.D. 1576 Nov. 8. “Elizabeth or Bessie Dunlop, spous to Andro Jak in Lyne [in Ayrshire]).

 And such like things belike led to the elf-queen and elf-king being thought of by some as the same as the Romans' Pluto and Priserpina, the king and queen of the dead.

The elf-queen is also the leader of a kind of “wild hunt” thus Sir Orfeo (Auchinleck Handwrit):

And on a day he seiȝe him biside
Sexti levedis on hors ride,
Gentil and jolif as brid on ris;                              305
Nought o man amonges hem þer nis;
And ich a faucoun on hond bere,
And riden on haukin bi o rivere.

Orfeo follows these and lines 347 to 348:
 
In at a roche þe levedis rideþ,
And he after, and nouȝt abideþ.
 

Now the ásatrúarfólk reading this might well say what hath all this to do with the gods of the North that they know? Well, they may like to call to mind that their gyden Freyja hath a name which is not a name as such, but a title and meaneth no more than “lady”. That Freyja is the lady of seiður (see Ynglinga saga 4 (“Dóttir Njarðar var Freyja, hon var blótgyðja, ok hon kendi fyrst með Ásum seið, sem Vönum var títt.” “The daughter of Njörður was Freyja, she was a blot-harrow-ward (=sacrificial priestess), and first taught to the gods witchcraft, as it was done by the Wanes.” ) and Hyndluljóð (I mark verses 30 and 31 “hleypr þú, Óðs vina, |úti á náttum,|sem með höfrum |Heiðrún fari.”) and Sörla þáttr from Flateyjarbók).  Seiður is a word that is overworked by almost all the writers about it, but which is no more than to say witchcraft in English when all is said and done.  Whilst Freyja's links to cats (see Edda Gylfaginning 49 and Skáldskaparmál 28. Freyjukenningar) should be withmeted (=compared) to what Ovid writeth of Diana in his Metamorphoses book 5 line 325 “Fele soror phoebi...” “the cat the sister of Phoebus”.  Lastly if Freyja's brother, Freyur, as a child was made the lord of “eluenlond”, which is with them called Alfheimur (see Grímnismál 5), must not then Freyja be the lady of “eluenlond”?

Farewell.