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.
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.) :
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:
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:
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” :
(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]).
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.
Farewell.
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