Introduction.
“‘A Fairy tale, by William Churne of Staffordshire!’ And who may he be? I am sure I never heard ofhimbefore.”
“Say you so, gentle Reader? Well, perhaps, after all, there is nothing very extraordinary in the fact that a man who was born some two hundred and fifty years ago should be forgotten. Well I wot that William Churne is not the only one who is in that predicament.And yet my name has had a better chance of being remembered than that of many of my cotemporaries, who, in their day, were more illustrious than ever I was; for it has been wedded, look you, to immortal verse. Doctor Corbet, Bishop of Norwich,—‘the wittie Bishop,’ as King James the First was wont to call him—conferred on me the title of Registrar-General to the Fairies. Have you never read his ‘Fairies’ Farewell’? They say, indeed, that his poems, like many better things, are little read now-a-days; but you will find it among the ballads collected by a congenial spirit (a prelate likewise), Bishop Percy of Dromore. His ‘Reliques of Ancient Poetry,’ you are surely conversant withal? But stay, I see you have forgotten the passage, which my vanity, perhaps, has preserved in my memory for so many years. Thus, then, Richard Corbetspeaks of me in connection with those merry elves, whom he supposes to have taken their final farewell of that land, which, since their presence was withdrawn, has deserved the name of merry England no longer:—
‘Now, they have left our quarters;A registrar they have,Who can preserve their charters;A man both wise and grave.An hundred of their merry pranksBy one that I could name,Are kept in store; con twenty thanksTo William for the same.‘To William Churne, of Staffordshire,Give laud and praises due,Who, every meale, can mend your cheareWith tales both old and true;To William all give audience,And pray ye for his noddle,For all the Fairies’ evidenceWere lost if it were addle.’
‘Now, they have left our quarters;A registrar they have,Who can preserve their charters;A man both wise and grave.An hundred of their merry pranksBy one that I could name,Are kept in store; con twenty thanksTo William for the same.‘To William Churne, of Staffordshire,Give laud and praises due,Who, every meale, can mend your cheareWith tales both old and true;To William all give audience,And pray ye for his noddle,For all the Fairies’ evidenceWere lost if it were addle.’
‘Now, they have left our quarters;A registrar they have,Who can preserve their charters;A man both wise and grave.An hundred of their merry pranksBy one that I could name,Are kept in store; con twenty thanksTo William for the same.
‘Now, they have left our quarters;
A registrar they have,
Who can preserve their charters;
A man both wise and grave.
An hundred of their merry pranks
By one that I could name,
Are kept in store; con twenty thanks
To William for the same.
‘To William Churne, of Staffordshire,Give laud and praises due,Who, every meale, can mend your cheareWith tales both old and true;To William all give audience,And pray ye for his noddle,For all the Fairies’ evidenceWere lost if it were addle.’
‘To William Churne, of Staffordshire,
Give laud and praises due,
Who, every meale, can mend your cheare
With tales both old and true;
To William all give audience,
And pray ye for his noddle,
For all the Fairies’ evidence
Were lost if it were addle.’
There, gentle reader, that was the way in which the Bishop-Poet spake of me. I warrant you, my cheeks tingle still as I repeat the lines.”
“Indeed? cheeks that blushed for the first time two centuries and a half ago, must, I should think, have nearly blushed their last by this time. I cannot read your riddle. You would not have us believe, would you, that a man who was born in the sixteenth century, was story-telling in the nineteenth? I fear you must be story-telling in more senses than one, or else that the event so much deprecated by the Bishop of Norwich, hath befallen you, and that the ‘noddle’ is ‘addle.’”
“Ah, gentle reader, is it even so? Can you think of no other solution of the difficulty? I fear me that you have a larger share of the unbelief of this dull, plodding, unimaginative, money-getting, money-loving nineteenth century, than of the humour, and simplicity, and romance of the seventeenth.”
“Come then, Iwillhazard a solution.What if the fairies, whose official you have admitted yourself to be, carried you off some moonlight night, two hundred years ago, and hid you for that space in their secret chambers, amid the recesses of the grassy hills?”
“Hush! hush! kind reader; speak not so loudly. You know not who may be listening. However, I do not say but that it may be even as you suppose. Perhaps, while time and change have worked their will on others, I have been exempted from their influence.”
“How? What? Can such things be? Dear Sir, how much I should like to make your acquaintance. Two hundred and fifty years old! Why, your face must be a wilderness of wrinkles! And your dress, how strange and antiquated must be its cut! Are you not greatly incommoded, as you walk the streets, by the curiosity of the populace?”
“Nay, my friend, if that which I have hinted be the case, it is more than probable that I have the secret of fern-seed, and walk invisible.”
“What changes you must find among us! What advances have been made since you went to Fairy-land!”
“Changes, indeed! and advances, too, for that matter! but whether on the right road is another question. However, of this I can assure you, gentle reader, that I would I were back again in Fairy-land. I see nothing here to tempt me to linger among you.”
“Then why do you linger?”
“I only wait to see if it be a hopeless task to speak to the youth of the rising generation, as I spake to their forefathers. I would fain learn whether it be possible to excite their sympathies in behalf of anything butthemselves; whether they have yet patience to glean thelessons of wisdom, which lurk beneath the surface of legendary tales, and the chronicles of the wild and supernatural; whether their hearts can be moved to noble and chivalrous feelings, and to shake off the hard, cold, calculating, worldly, selfish temper of the times, by being brought into more immediate contact with the ideal, the imaginary, and the romantic, than has been the fashion of late years.”
“In plain English, then, good Master Churne, you desire to ascertain whether a race that has been glutted with Peter Parley and Penny Magazines, and such like stores of (so called) useful knowledge, will condescend to read a Fable and its moral, or to interest themselves with the grotesque nonsense, the palpable, fantastic absurdities, the utter impossibilities of a Tale of Enchantment?”
“Such is my object.”
“Well, we have lived to see a tunnel under the Thames, and they are talking of a canal across the isthmus of Darien. But your scheme is a wild one.”
“I do not think so.”
“And suppose you can find readers, is it your object to retail those ‘hundred merry pranks’ of Fairy-land, of which Bishop Corbet tells us that you are the depositary?”
“I shall be better able to answer your question, gentle reader, when I know how far your patience has carried you through the ensuing pages. Till then farewell.”