“Into the heav’n of heav’ns he has presum’d,An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air.”
“Into the heav’n of heav’ns he has presum’d,An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air.”
“Into the heav’n of heav’ns he has presum’d,An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air.”
“Into the heav’n of heav’ns he has presum’d,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air.”
But the study of philosophy is nature and nature’sknown laws. If we lean, for one moment, to the credence of amodernmiracle, there is an end to our philosophy. Revealed truth, and the immaterial nature of the mystical essence within us, we may not lightly discourse on. The sacred histories of Holy Writ, and the miracles recorded in its pages—the hand-writing in the hall of Belshazzar, the budding of Aaron’s rod, the standing still of the sun upon Gibeon, and, above all, the miracles of the Redeemer, are of too holy a nature to be submitted to the test of philosophical speculation: they rest on theconvictionof conscience and the heart; a proof far more sublime than may ever be elicited by the ingenuity of man, or the workings of his sovereign reason.
FAIRY MYTHOLOGY.
“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee.”Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee.”Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee.”Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee.”Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee.”
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Astr.Why so thoughtful, fair Castaly? I fear Evelyn has clipped your sylphid wings, and made a mortal of you.
Cast.Your finger on your lips, Astrophel; for the world, not a syllable of confession to Evelyn.
I could think I heard the murmurs of a host of fairies streaming up to earth from elf-land, in fear of libels on their own imperial sovereignty by this matter-of-fact scholar.
Astr.Why did we listen to his philosophy? why not still believe the volumes of our antique legends; that those which tell the influence of fairies and demons on man’s life, have their source in the real history of a little world of creatures more ethereal than ourselves? Perhaps even the bright thoughts of a poet’s fancy are not his own creation.
Cast.We must hear no more, although Evelyn will still convert syrens into rocks and trees, and make a monster out of a mist or a thunder-cloud. The sunlight is sleeping on Wyndcliff, and the breeze, creeping among the leaves, seems to me a symphony meet to conjure the phantoms of romantic creatures. Evelyn is far away among the rocks; let us steal the moment to revel in our dreams of faëry. Even now, are we not in a realm of Peristan? Yon mossy carpet of emerald velvet, strewed with pearls and gold, may be the presence-chamber of Titania; and fays are dancing within their ring, which the silvery beech o’ercanopies so shadily; and the chaunting of theirviralays, or green-songs, comes like the humming of a zephyr’s wing flitting o’er the mouth of a lily. Ariel is lying asleep in her cinque-spotted cowslip bell, and the fays are feeding on their fairy-bread, made of the pollen of the jasmine; and Oberon quaffs to his queen the drops that hang on the purple lip of the violet, or glitter in the honied bell of the hyacinth, or that purest crystal of the lotus, that brings life to the fainting Indian in the desert, or the liquid treasure of thenepenthe.
We pray you, Astrophel, recount to us, now we are in the humour, the infancy of bright and dark spirits; for you have dipped deep, I know, into the Samothracian mysteries.
Astr.Know, then, that the birth-time of mythology and romance was in the primeval ages of man. The ancient heathens believed in the legends of their deities, as we have credence in modern history and biography; indeed, theromanceof the moderns was with the ancientstruth. They had implicit faith in the presence of their gods, and that they might perchance meet them in the groves and hills, which were consecrated to their worship, and adorned with sculpture and idols in honour of the deities. Hence the profusion of their names and nature, recorded in the pages of the olden time, when the scribe traced his reed letter on the papyrus.
From the climes of the sun came the orient tales of genie, and deeves, and peris; and of naiad, and nereid, and dryad, and hamadryad, from Greece and Rome. In the Koran shone forth the promised houris of Mahomet’s paradise; and its mysteries were echoed to us from the lips and tables of pilgrims and crusaders, who had blazoned their red cross in the holy wars. Thus was romance cradled and bosomed in religion.
From the legends of the East, spring the fairy romances of our own days. ThePeriof Persia was the denizen of Peristan, as theGinnof Arabia was of Ginnistan, and theFairyof England of Fairyland; and we have their synonyms in theFataof Italy and theDuergaof northern Europe.
These spirits of romance are almost innumerable; for thus saith the “Golden Legend:” that “the air is full of sprites as the sonnebeams ben full of small motes, which is small dust or poudre.”
The alchemyst Paracelsus asserts that the elements were peopled with life; the air withsylphsandsylvains, the water withondines, the earth withgnomes, and the fire withsalamanders. And Martin Luther coincides with these assertions; nay, hath not Master Cross of Bristol illustrated the creed, and shown, by his galvanic power, an animated atom starting forth, as if by magic, from a flint, a seeming inorganic mass?
The sagas, or historical records of Scandinavia, of the Celtic, Scaldic, and Runic mythology, assert that the duergas or dwarfs, which are the Runic fairies, sprang from the worms in the body of the giant Ymor, slain, according to the Edda, by Odin and his brother; and Spenser has left a very interesting genealogical record of the faëry brood, in that romantic allegory of the Elizabethan age, the “Faëry Queen.” Elf, the man fashioned and inspired by Prometheus, was wandering over the earth alone, and in the bosky groves of Adonis he discovered a lady of marvellous beauty—Fay. From this romantic pair sprang the mighty race of the fairies, and we have wondrous tales of the prowess of their heroic princes. Elfiline threw a golden wall round the city of Cleopolis; Elfine conquered the Gobbelines; Elfant built Panthea, of purest crystal; Elfan slew the giant twins; and Elfinor spanned the sea with a bridge of glass.
Cast.Spenser, I presume, borrowedhisromance from Italy. We read that the rage and party spirit of the potent Guelphs and Ghibellines rankled even in their nurseries. The nurses were wont to frighten the children into obedience with these hated names, which, corrupted to the epithets of elf and goblin, were hence-forth applied to fairies and phantoms.
Astr.This story is itself a mere fiction. Ere the period of these feuds of party, the termElfen(and Dance identifies this with the TeutonicHelfen,) was a common epithet of the Saxon spirits: Weld-elfen were their dryads; Zeld-elfen their field-fairies, &c.
The American Indians to this day have faith in the presidencies of spirits over those lakes, trees, and mountains, and even fishes, birds, and beasts, which excel in magnitude. The orient Indian, too, at this hour, peoples the forests with his gods; and peacocks, and squirrels, and other wild creatures, are thus profanely deified.
The legends of later days have quaintly blended the classic with the fairy mythology. Hassenet tells us that Mercurius was called the Prince of Fairies; and Chaucer sings of Pluto, the King of Fayrie; and, in the romance of the Nine Champions, Proserpine sits crowned among the fairies. The great zoologist, Pliny, writes in his Natural History, that “you often encounter fairies that vanish away like phantasies.” And Baxter believed that “fairies and goblins might be as common in the air, as fishes in the sea.”
As the Peri could not enter Paradise in consequence of the errors of her “recreant race,” so the elves could not enjoy eternity without marrying a Christian; and on this plea they came up to the daughters of men. And we read, in the tenets of the Cabala, that, by these earthly weddings, they could enjoy the privileges and happiness of each other’s nature. But these unnatural unions were not always happy. There is, in our old chronicles, a tradition of a marriage between one of the counts of Anjou and a fair demonia, which entailed misery and commission of crime on the noble house of Plantagenet.
Now there are appointed times when the influence of the spirit fades for a season. It was the moment of the eclipse, among the American Indians and the African blacks; in Ireland, it is the feast of the Beltane; in Scotland, this immunity came over the mortal life onHogmanay, or New-year’s Eve, and during thegeneral assembliesof these mystic spirits of the world.
In Britain, it was on the eve of the first of May, the second of November, and on All Souls’ Day. At these times, indeed, they might be induced to divulge the secrets of their mysterious freemasonry.
In Germany, on May-day, when the unearthly rendezvous was on the dark mountain of the Hartz, and on Halloween, in Caledonia, even the secrets of time and futurity were unfolded by the spirits to a mortal, if one were found so bold as to repair on these festivals to their unhallowed haunts.
If a mortal enters the secret abodes of the Daoine Shi, in Scotland, and anoints his eyes with their charmed ointment, the gift of seeing that which is to all others invisible is imparted; but this must be kept secret, for the Men of Peace will blind the second-sighted eye, if once they are recognized on earth by a mortal.
In the gloomy forests of Germany rose the legends ofKobolds, andUmbriels, andWehrwolves, theHolts Konig, theWaldebach, theReiberzahl, and theSchattenman, theHudekin, theErl Konig, and the beautiful naiad, theNixa. The devil himself was believed to be a gnome king; for when the Elector of Saxony offered Martin Luther the profit of a mine, he refused it, “lest by accepting it he should tempt the devil, who is lord of those subterraneous treasures, to tempthim.”
Then we have thePutseet, or Puck of the Samogitæ, on the Baltic; theBiergen Trold, orSkow, of Iceland; and those mermaids which gambol around theFaroe Islands. We read in theDanske Folksaga, that these “merrows” cast their skins like the boa, and in that condition are changed into human beings, till their scales are restored to them. And the Shetlanders implicitly believe that awful storms instantly arise on the murder of one of these sea-maids.
There was the Norse goddess, Freya, which, like the Dragon of Wantley, and the Caliban of the “still vexed Bermoothes,” blasted the fair face of nature, and far eclipsed the giant-serpent off Cape Saint Anne, or thekrakenof Norway; and even that monstrous sea-snake, thejormungandz(so conspicuous among the wild romances of the Edda), whose coils entwined the globe. Thor angled for this snake with a bull’s head, but it was not to be caught, being reserved for some splendid achievement in the grand conflict which is to herald theRagnarockr,—the twilight of the gods.
Among the mountains of our own island we have a profuse legion. In Wales, theTylwth Tagand the Pooka; and many a hollow in the mountain where these strange animals resort, is calledCwm Pooka; and the wondrous cavern of the Meltè, in Breconshire, was believed to be haunted by this little pony.
In Ireland, they have aMerrow, the Runic sea, or oigh-maid; theBanshee, or fairy prophet; theFear-Dearg, the Irish Puck; theClurricane, a sottish pigmy; and thePooke, the wild pony.
Cast.These must have been a prolific as well as a wandering brood, for I also have seen many caverns in the rocky districts, calledPoola Phouka, in which these mischievous little creatures concealed themselves.
Astr.In Man there is a hill called the “Fairy Hill,” a tumulus of the Danes, which is thought to be a nocturnal revel-place for the Man fairies which preside over their fisheries.
Scotland was a fertile mother of monsters: theOurisksorUriskin, the goblin-satyrs or shaggy men; theBrownies; theKelpies, or river-demons; theBargheists; theRed-cap; theDaoine Shi, or Men of Peace; theGlaslic, or noontide hag, which haunted the district of Knoidart; and theLham-Dearg, or red-hand, in the forests of Glenmore, and Rothiemurchus; theBodach-Glas; and thePixies, or small grey men.
Cast.There is an islet among the Scottish Hebrides, which is called the Isle of Pigmies; and I remember a chapel there, in which very minute human bones were some time ago discovered. Think you, Astrophel, that these were the skeletons of pixies?
Astr.I cannot think the notion irrational; there are dwarfs and giants even in our days. TheBosgis-menof the Cape, and the Patagonians of South America, prove the existence of beings of another stature; and perchance of anothernature, in days long agone. The Laplander and Bushman of the Cape are little more than three feet high; and that there were giantstoo, is proved by the fossil bones which have been found in the strata of our earth.
Cast.Then we have really dwindled in our growth, and Adam was really a hundred and twenty-three feet nine inches high, and Eve a hundred and eighteen feet nine inches and three quarters, as we are solemnly informed by our profane chronicles? Nay, even the story may be true of the Pict, who bit off the end of the mattock, with which some slave of science was opening his coffin, and thundered forth this exclamation: “I see the degeneracy of your race by the smallness of your little finger.”
Ida.If Evelyn were here, he would ask why we have no skeletons of giants as of lizards in our secondary rocks; and he would tell this learned Theban, Castaly, that Cuvier decided these fossils, which seemed to be thedébrisof a giant race, to be the bones of elephants. The legends of Athenæus are probably a fable, and the fossils of the pigmies were, I dare say, the petrified skeletons of “span-long, wee unchristen’d bairns.”
Your allusion to the brownies, reminds me of the monstrous errors which have crept into our legends from the mingling oftwo stories, or the warping of plain facts in natural history. And indeed I interrupt you to recount, in proof of this, some fragments from “Surtees’ Durham.”
“Every castle, tower, or manor-house has its visionary inhabitants. ‘The Cauld Lad of Hilton’ belongs to a very common and numerous class, the brownie or domestic spirit, and seems to have possessed no very distinctive attributes. He was seldom seen, but was heard nightly by the servantswho slept in the great hall. If the kitchen had been left in perfect order, they heard him amusing himself by breaking plates and dishes, hurling the pewter in all directions, and throwing every thing into confusion. If, on the contrary, the apartment had been left in disarray, (a practice which the servants found it most prudent to adopt,) the indefatigable goblin arranged every thing with the greatest precision. This pooresprit folet, whose pranks were at all times perfectly harmless, was at length banished from his haunts by the usual expedient of presenting him with a suit of clothes. A green cloak and hood were laid before the kitchen fire, and the domestics sat up watching at a prudent distance. At twelve o’clock the spirit glided gently in, stood by the glowing embers, and surveyed the garments provided for him very attentively, tried them on, and seemed delighted with his appearance, frisking about for some time, and cutting several summersets and gambados, till on hearing the first cock, he twitched his mantle tight about him and disappeared with the usual valediction:
“ ‘Here’s a cloak, and here’s a hood,The cauld lad of Hilton will do no more good.’ ”
“ ‘Here’s a cloak, and here’s a hood,The cauld lad of Hilton will do no more good.’ ”
“ ‘Here’s a cloak, and here’s a hood,The cauld lad of Hilton will do no more good.’ ”
“ ‘Here’s a cloak, and here’s a hood,
The cauld lad of Hilton will do no more good.’ ”
The genuine Brownie, however, is supposed to be,ab origine, an unembodied spirit; but the boy of Hilton has, with an admixture of English superstition, been identified with the apparition of an unfortunate domestic, whom one of the old chiefs of Hilton slew at some very distant period, in a moment of wrath or intemperance. The baron had, it seems, on an important occasion, ordered his horse, which was not brought out so soon as he expected. He went to the stable, found the boy loitering, and seizing a hay-fork, struck him, though not intentionally, a mortal blow. The story adds, that he covered his victim with straw till night, and then threw him into a pond, where the skeleton of a boy was (in confirmation of the tale) discovered in the last baron’s time.
I am by no means clear that the story may not have its foundation in the fact recorded in the following inquest:
“Coram Johannem King, coron., Wardæ de Chestræ, apud Hilton, 3 Jul. 7 Jac. 1609.”(And here follows a report in Latin.)
“Coram Johannem King, coron., Wardæ de Chestræ, apud Hilton, 3 Jul. 7 Jac. 1609.”
(And here follows a report in Latin.)
Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that the unhousel’d spirit of Roger Skelton, whom in the hay-field the good Hilton ghosted, took the liberty of playing a few of those pranks which are said by writers of grave authority to be the peculiar privilege of those spirits only who are shouldered untimely by violence from their mortal tenements.
“Ling’ring in anguish o’er his mangled clay,The melancholy shadow turn’d away,And follow’d through the twilight grey.”
“Ling’ring in anguish o’er his mangled clay,The melancholy shadow turn’d away,And follow’d through the twilight grey.”
“Ling’ring in anguish o’er his mangled clay,The melancholy shadow turn’d away,And follow’d through the twilight grey.”
“Ling’ring in anguish o’er his mangled clay,
The melancholy shadow turn’d away,
And follow’d through the twilight grey.”
A free pardon for the above manslaughter appears on the rolls of Bishop James, dated 6th September, 1609.
I will only add that, among the Harleian MSS., the same legend is told with some variations, in which this “cauld lad” is termed the “Pale Boyof Hilton.”
This confusion ofourmythology is as conclusive of the fiction of all the mysterious legends of the moderns, as the jumble which the classic poets have made oftheirmonsters. If we read Lempriere, the genealogy of the classic monster is involved in a maze of impious confusion; and the mythology ofChimera, andEchidna, andTyphon,Geryon, andCerberus, and theHydraandBellerophon, andOrthaand theSphynx, and theNemæan Lion, and theMinotaur, and the demoniac records of their origin, it is almost profanation even to reflect on.
But when Martianus Capella tells us that devils have aërial bodies, that they live and die, and yet, if cut asunder, soon re-unite; and when Bodine asserts, in his “Solution of Natural Theology,” that spirits and angels areglobular, as being of the most perfect shape, I confess I feel more disposed to smile at their imposture than to frown, were it not for their utter worthlessness.
Yet all the allegories which adorn our legends are not so remote from truth or nature. The vampires are said to have gloated over the sacrifices of human life, while the gouls and afrits, the hyenas in human shape, not only fed on dead carcases, but, by a special transmigration, took possession of a corpse. On this fable is founded the monstrous legend of “Assuet and Ajut.” I confess it monstrous; but indeed there is little exaggeration even in these tales of horror, if we may believe, for once, Master Edmund Spenser, in that part of his record of the rebellion of Desmond, in Ireland, which treats of the Munster massacre:—“Out of every corner of the woodes and glennes, they came creeping forth upon their handes, for their legges could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghostes, crying out of their graves: they eat the dead carrions—happy were they could they find them—yea, and one another soon after, insomuch as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves.” That episode also, in the “Inferno” of Dante, in which Count Ugolino wears out days and nights in gnawing the skull of an enemy, may well seem a fiction; but even this hellish repast is but a prototype of the savage rage for scalping and cannibalism among the Indian hordes of America.
DEMONOLOGY.
“Be thy intents wicked or charitable,Thou com’st in such a questionable shape—”Hamlet.
“Be thy intents wicked or charitable,Thou com’st in such a questionable shape—”Hamlet.
“Be thy intents wicked or charitable,Thou com’st in such a questionable shape—”Hamlet.
“Be thy intents wicked or charitable,Thou com’st in such a questionable shape—”Hamlet.
“Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com’st in such a questionable shape—”
Hamlet.
Astr.Now from the holy records, from the creed of the Magus Zoroaster, from the Greek, and Roman, and other legends, how clear is the influence of ethereal beings, of angels and demons, on man’s life; and of the imparted power ofexorcism! In allusion to this divine gift to Solomon, Josephus has the following story:—“God also enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to men. And this method is of great force unto this day, for I have seen a certain man of my own country, whose name was Eleazer, releasing people that were demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the cure was this. He put a ring, that had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon, to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the man fell down immediately, he adjured him to return into him no more, making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed. And when Eleazer would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, he set a little way off a cup or bason full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know that he had left the man.”
The gods of the Greeks and the Latins, thelaresandlemures, or hearth-spirits, the pagan and the Christian elves, were ever held as delegated agents of the Deity, who worked, not by a fiat, but by an instrument. Such were theCemiesof the American islanders, and theKitchiandMatchi Manitouof the Indians; and, if we consult Father Borri, we shall learn that in Cochin ChinaLuciferhimself promenaded the streets inhumanshape.
Psellus records six kinds of devils; and the arrangements of Agrippa, and other theologians, enumerate nine sorts of evil spirits, as you may read in one of old Burton’s eccentric chapters.
The mythology of theBaghvat Geeta, the sacred record of the Hindoo theists, is based on the notion of good and evil spirits, the emblems of virtue and of vice under the will and power of Brahma. Indeed, the Hindoo mythology is but that of the classic in other words.Agnee, the god of fire,Varoon, the god of the ocean,Vayoo, the god of the wind, andCama, the god of love, are but other names for Jupiter, and Neptune, and Œolus, and Cupid.
The creed of Zoroaster asserts a perpetual conflict between the good and evil deity, the types of religious knowledge and ignorance. The southern Asiatics are people ofgoodprinciple, and the northern nations people ofevilprinciple. And why may not the Persian thus coincide with Bacon himself, who in his book “De Dignitate,” confesses his belief in good and bad spirits, in charms, and prophecies, and the varieties of natural magic. Or is it inconsistent that the Hindoos should incarnate the malignant disease, small pox, in the person of the deityMah-ry-umma, of whose lethal influence they lived in abject fear.
Ida.In the holy records, it is true, we read that demons were even permitted to enter the bodies of other beings, and that when they had so established a possession, by divine command they went out of those possessed, as, for sacred example, into the herd of the Gadarenes; that they were also commissioned, for the fulfilment of the inscrutable will of the Creator, to try the endurance of Job, and even to tempt the divinity of the Saviour, and that they were the immediate cause of madness and other sad afflictions.
I do fear, Astrophel, that there is much danger,now, in thisembodyingof a demon; and that we too often model our modern principles, on the proud presumption of still possessing that miraculous power of exorcism. With sorrow may I confess, that the holy truths of Scripture, so clearly evincing aspecialpurpose, should have been ever warped, by worse than inquisitorial bigotry, into the motive for cruelties unparalleled. From the Scripture histories of demoniac possession have arisen the coercion and cruelties, which once marked with an indelible stain the records of our own madhouses; where chains and lashes, inflicted by the demons of science, have driven the moody wretch into a raving maniac, when a light hand and a smile would have brought back the angel reason to the mind.
Impersonation is the grand source of many similar errors. The demon, which, since the light of the Christian dispensation has brooded in man’s heart and mind, is his own base passion, which incites him to shut his eyes to this holy light, and follow deeds of evil; to be a slavish worshipper in the hall ofArimanes. With this profane homage, we court our evil passions, to betray and destroy the soul. And this is the interpretation of an allegory in the profane legends of the Talmud—that Lilis, the wife of Adam, ere the creation of Eve, brought forth none but demons; the origin, indeed, of moral evil.
There are many popular stories which bear a moral to this end: that the evil spirit is powerless over the heart, if it be not encouraged and invited; and, alas! the alluring masque under which evil looks on us, is often but too certain to charm us to its influence, or we are too thoughtless to beware the danger. Thus the disguised enchanter enters into the palace of the Sultan Mesnar, (in “The Tales of the Genii,”) and thus the gentle Christabel of Coleridge leads the false Geraldine over that threshold, which she could not cross without the help of confiding and unsuspecting innocence.
Cast.The crones of retired villages have not yet yielded their belief in fairy influence.
Among the low Irish it is believed that (as thenympholeptsof old who had looked upon Pan, sealed an early doom), the paralytic isfairy-struck; and superstition has inspired them with a belief in the influence of theevil eyeorglamourie, especially in the vicinity of Blackwater.
I remember, when our wanderings among the Wicklow mountains led us through the dark glen of the Dargle, the implicit faith of the Irish women in the charm of amulets and talismans. Like the fabled glance of the basilisk, the evil eye is bestowed on some unhappy beings from their very birth; nay, the spell infests the cabin in which they herd. To avert this fatal influence from the children, a charm is suspended around their necks, which when blessed by the priest is called a “gospel.”
When a happy or evil star shines at a birth, it is the eye of a cherub or a demon, smiling or frowning on the destiny of the babe; and when happiness or misery predominates in a life, it is a minister of good or ill that blesses or inflicts. There is one beautiful scrap of this mythology—the thrill of holy joy which the Irish mother feels when her infant smiles in its sleep; for sheknowsit is a holy angel whispering in its ear.
In our own island they are often celebrated as the very pinks of hospitality.
In Cornish history, we read how Anne Jeffries was fed for six months by the small green people. And in yonder forest of Dean, (as writeth Gervase, the Imperial Chancellor, in his “Otia Imperialia,”) “In a grovy lawn there is a little mount, rising in a point to the height of a man, on which knights and other hunters are used to ascend, when fatigued with heat and thirst, to seek some relief for their wants. The nature of the place and of the business is, however, such, that whoever ascends the mount must leave his companions and go quite alone. When alone, he was to say, as if speaking to some other person, ‘I thirst,’ and immediately there would appear a cup-bearer in an elegant dress, with a cheerful countenance, bearing in his outstretched hand a large horn, adorned with gold and gems, as was the custom among the most ancient English. In the cup, nectar of an unknown but most delicious flavour was presented; and when it was drunk, all heat and weariness fled from the glowing body, so that one would be thought ready to undertake toil, instead of having toiled. Moreover, when the nectar was taken, the servant presented a towel to the drinker to wipe his mouth with, and then, having performed his office, he waited neither for recompense for his services, nor for questions, nor inquiry.”
This frequent and daily action had, for a very long period, of old times taken place among the ancient people, till one day a knight of that city, when out hunting, went thither, and having called for drink, and gotten the horn, did not, as was the custom, and as in good manners he should have done, return it to the cup-bearer, but kept it for his own use. But the illustrious Earl of Gloucester, when he learned the truth of the matter, condemned the robber to death, and presented the horn to the most excellent king, Henry the Elder; lest he should be thought to have approved of such wickedness, if he had added the rapine of another to the store of his private property.
But the fairies might rue their kindness, if you frowned so darkly on them, Astrophel. They would fear the influence of your spells, for there is blight and mildew in that glance. At the banquet of the fairies, if the eye of theseerbut look on them, the romance is instantly at an end: the nymphs of beauty are changed into withered carles and crones, and the splendour of Elfin-land is turned to dust and ashes.
Ida.As a set-off against thevirtuesof your fairies, Castaly, you forget there was a propensity tomischief. They were rather fond, like the Daoine Shi, of stealing unchristened babes, and of chopping and changing these innocents, thence calledchangelings. On this fable your own Shakspere has wrought the quarrel of Oberon and Titania: —
“A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king;She never had so sweet a changeling.”
“A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king;She never had so sweet a changeling.”
“A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king;She never had so sweet a changeling.”
“A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling.”
I am willing, dearest, that thepoetshall make a good market of these fictions; but superstitious ignorance may make a sad and cruel work of it, even among your romantic Irish peasantry.
A few months since, on the demesne of Heywood (as we learn from the “Tipperary Constitution”), the death of a child, six years old, was accomplished with a wantonness of purpose almost incredible. Little Mahony was afflicted with spinal disease, and, like many other deformed children, possessed the gift,—in this case thefatalgift,—of acute intellect. For this quality, it was decided that he was not the son of his reputed father, but a fairy changeling. After a solemn convocation, it was decreed that the elfin should be scared away: and the mode of effecting this was, by holding the child on a hot shovel, and then pumping cold water on his head! This had the effect of extorting a confession of his imposture, and a promise to send back therealJohnny Mahony; but ere he could return to elfland and perform this promise,he died. But who is he sitting at your ear, Castaly?
Cast.Sir, is this fair? You have played the eaves-dropper. Why come you here?
Ev.To counsel you to silence on these mysteries, sweetest Castaly: remember the fate of Master Kirke, of Aberfoyle, for his dabbling in elfin matters, which you may read in Sir Walter’s “Demonology.” Yet I will not flout all your fayrie legends; there may beinnocentillusions, that carry with them somewhat of morality and retribution,—seeing that there are good and bad spirits, which reward and punish mortality. But, in sooth, I never think of fairyland, without remembering that good Sir Walter, as sheriff of Selkirkshire, once took the deposition of a shepherd, who affirmed that he saw the good neighbours sitting under a hill-side: when, lo! it was proved that these were thepuppets of a showman, stolen and left there by some Scotch mechanics. And, better still, the story of the Mermaid of Caithness, as related to Sir Humphrey Davy, and recorded in his “Salmonia;”—the mermaids, as I take it, being nearly allied to theNereid, or Sea-fairy, and the reality of one about as true as that of the other.
Nature is wild and beautiful enough, without these false creations. Read hertruth, fair lady, and leave thefablesto the fairies. There is not a ripple or a stone that is not replete with scientific interest, and yields not a study that both ennobles and delights the mind.
The doublings, orhorse-shoes, of this Wye, orVagaas the Romans named it, within its circle of rocks, so exquisitely fringed with green and purple lichens (like the Danube, round the castle of Hayenbach in the gloomy gorge of Schlagen, or the Crook of Lune, in Westmoreland, and many others), illustrate at once the nature of the stratification on the earth’s surface; even the varied tints of these mountain streams may read the student a practic lesson in geology.
From the lime-rock springs the azure-blue, as the Glaslyn stream, at Beddgelert, the Rhone, and the Traun in Styria; from the chalk ripples the grey water of the Dee and the Arve; from the clay hills the stream comes down yellow, as “the Derwent’s amber wave;” and where the peat-mosses abound, especially in the autumnal flood, the stream is of a rich and dark sienna brown, as the Conway, and the Mawddach, in Merioneth; or even of transparent black, as the Elain, which flows down through the white schist rocks of Cardiganshire.
Cast.And is there wisdom, Evelyn, in thus
“Flying from Nature to study her laws,And dulling delight by exploring the cause?”
“Flying from Nature to study her laws,And dulling delight by exploring the cause?”
“Flying from Nature to study her laws,And dulling delight by exploring the cause?”
“Flying from Nature to study her laws,
And dulling delight by exploring the cause?”
I do fear that this analytic study of nature destroys the romance of life which flings around us its rainbow beauty.
Oh, for those halcyon days of infancy, when every thought was a promise; when hope, thedreamof waking men, was lost in its fulfilment; and even fear itself was a thrill of romance!
Behold yon silver moon! it is, to thepoet’s eye, an orb of unsullied beauty, and the planets and their satellites glitter like diamond studs in the firmament. Yet shift but the lens of the star-gazer, and lo! dark and murky spots instantly shadow o’er its purity; nay, have I not read that one deep astronomer, Fraüenhofer, has discovered mountains and cities; and another, Sir John Herschell, the laying down of rail-roads in the moon? So the optics of Gulliver magnified the court beauties of Brobdignag into monsters, and the auburn tresses of a maid of honour into a coil of dusty ropes!
Ev.A truce, fair Castaly. If science discovers defects, does it not unfold new beauties, a new world of animated atoms, endowed with faculties and passions as influential as our own? Nay, science has thrown even apoetryaround the blue mould of a cheese-crust; and in the bloom of the peach the microscope has shown forth a treasury of flowers, and gigantic forests, in the depths of which the roving animalcule finds as secure an ambush as the lion and the tiger within the gloomy jungles of Hindostan. In a drop of liquid crystal the water-wolf chases his wounded victim, till it is changed to crimson with its blood. Ehrenberg has seen monads in fluid the 24,000th part of an inch in size; and in one drop of water 500,000,000 creatures—the population of the globe! I hope, Castaly, you will not, like the Brahmin, break your microscope, because it unfolds to you these wonders of the water.
Then, by the power of the telescope, we roam into other systems —
“World beyond world in infinite extent,Profusely scattered o’er the blue expanse,”
“World beyond world in infinite extent,Profusely scattered o’er the blue expanse,”
“World beyond world in infinite extent,Profusely scattered o’er the blue expanse,”
“World beyond world in infinite extent,
Profusely scattered o’er the blue expanse,”
and orbs so remote as to reduce to a mere span the distance between us and the Georgium Sidus; and revel in all the gorgeous splendour of rings, and moons, and nebulæ, the poetry of heaven.
Is there not an exquisite romance in the closing of the barometrical blossoms; of the white convolvulus, and theanagallisor scarlet pimpernel; of the sun-flower, and the leaves of theDionæaandmimosa?
Is there not poetry in the delicate nautilus, with its arms dropped for oars; in thevelellaand purplephysaliaexpanding their membranous sails; and the beautiful fish-lizard, theProteusof transparent alabaster, found in the wondrous cavern of Maddalena, among the Styrian mountains; and even in theStalactytesof Antiparos, as glittering as the gems and crystal pillars of Aladdin’s palace? Are not these more beautiful because they aretrue, and better to be read than all the impersonations of mythology, or that voluptuous romance which would endow a flower with the fervour of sense and passion?
Ida.I have ever wondered that a scholar, like Darwin, should have so wasted time with his “Loves of the Plants.” For the study of nature and the discoveries of science are ever vain, if they lift not the heart in adoration. The insect, that fans the sunbeam with its golden wing, or even the flower that opes its dewy eyes to the light, are unconscious worshippers of the Divine Being.
The Epicurean, who weeps for a decaying body, but mourns not for a lost soul, will enjoy these beauties of nature with a heart faithful to his creed, that pleasure is the only good; but the Christian feels that, when he chips a stone, or culls a flower, he touches that which comes fresh from the hand of its Creator.
How full is nature, too, of mute instruction! the simplest incident is a lesson, if we will but learn it. You see that fading blossom floating on the surface of the stream. That inanimate type of decaying beauty shows, to the reflective mind, that even in the summer of life the flower of existence will lose its youthful lustre, and float down the stream of time into the depths of eternity.
But tell me, Evelyn, may not the influence of that science that magnifies the lights of heaven (created torule day and night) into habitable worlds, weaken the influence of faith in holy writ?
May we not fear that, like the Promethean Preadamites of Shelley, the Cain of Byron, the fabled beings of Ovid, and the mythology of Milton, will be the vaunted discoveries of the geologist, in controversion of the Mosaic records, of the creation and the deluge; proving the wisdom of Bacon, that to associate natural philosophy with sacred cosmogony, will lead to heretical opinions? Indeed, I remember in theZendavestaof Zoroaster, the chronicle of the Magian religion (supposed to be a piracy from the book of Genesis), the sunIScreatedbefore light.
Ev.Fear not this, fair Ida. Rather believe with Bouget, that philosophy andnaturaltheology mutuallyconfirmeach other. The latter teaches us that which it is our duty to believe; the former to believe more firmly. And Lord Bacon himself, in his “Cogitata et Visa,” deems natural philosophy “the surest antidote of superstition, and the food of religious faith.”
The belief in existence of a preadamite world, presumes not to controvert the Mosaic record of the development of the globe, the creation of Adam, or the fall of man. Modern geology has peopled this preadamite world withsaurians, or lizards, a race of beingsnot concerned in the punishment of that delinquency. Of the existence of these creatures there is no doubt; the discovery of their fossil remains, without a vestige of the human skeleton, marks the period of their destruction, and that the crust of the globe enveloping these relics, might have been reduced to that chaos when “the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep;” and from which our beautiful world was fashioned by a fiat.
The truth of holy Scripture is too clear even to be disturbed by a sophist. You may recollect that Julian, the apostate, contemplated the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, in order to confute the prophecies; but Julian failed, and misfortune was the lot of all who were leagued in the impiety.
As to natural laws, think me not so profane as to cite such as the superstitious alchemyst, Paracelsus, in proof of their use in the working of a miracle; who says that “devils and witches raise storms by throwing up alum and saltpetre into the air, which comes down as rain-drops!”
And it were reversing this solemn argument were I to confess the doctrines of the Illuminaten, who, taught by Jacob Boehmen, and the mysticisms of his “Theosophia Revelata,” explained all nature’s laws by warping texts of Scripture to their purpose. Yet it is clear that even the miracles of the prophets may have been sometimes influenced by established laws. Elisha raised the Shunamite’s son by placing mouth to mouth, as if by inhalation.
Believe not then, fair Ida, that philosophy is set in array against religion, when the student of nature endeavours to explain her phenomena by physical laws,for those laws the great Creator himself hath made.