The Lady of the Lake
beings, who, possessing themselves but a scanty portion of happiness,
are supposed to envy mankind their more complete and substantial
enjoyments. They are supposed to enjoy, in their subterraneous recesses,
a sort of shadowy happiness,--a tinsel grandeur; which, however, they
would willingly exchange for the more solid joys of mortality.
'They are believed to inhabit certain round grassy eminences, where they
celebrate their nocturnal festivities by the light of the moon. About a
mile beyond the source of the Forth, above Loch Con, there is a placed
called Coirshi'an, or the Cove of the Men of Peace, which is still
supposed to be a favorite place of their residence. In the neighborhood
are to be seen many round conical eminences, particularly one near the
head of the lake, by the skirts of which many are still afraid to pass
after sunset. It is believed that if, on Hallow-eve, any person,
alone, goes round one of these hills nine times, towards the left hand
(sinistrorsum) a door shall open, by which he will be admitted into
their subterraneous abodes. Many, it is said, of mortal race have been
entertained in their secret recesses. There they have been received
into the most splendid apartments, and regaled with the most sumptuous
banquets and delicious wines. Their females surpass the daughters of men
in beauty. The seemingly happy inhabitants pass their time in festivity,
and in dancing to notes of the softest music. But unhappy is the mortal
who joins in their joys or ventures to partake of their dainties. By
this indulgence he forfeits for ever the society of men, and is bound
down irrevocably to the condition of Shi'ich, or Man of Peace.'"
301. Why sounds, etc. "It has been already observed that fairies, if not
positively malevolent, are capricious, and easily offended. They are,
like other proprietors of forests, peculiarly jealous of their rights of
vert and venison.... This jealousy was also an attribute of the northern
Duergar, or dwarfs; to many of whose distinctions the fairies seem so
have succeeded, if, indeed, they are not the same class of beings. In
the huge metrical record of German chivalry entitled the Helden-Buch,
Sir Hildebrand, and the other heroes of whom it treats, are engaged in
one of their most desperate adventures, from a rash violation of the
rose-garden of an Elfin or Dwarf King.
"There are yet traces of a belief in this worst and most malicious order
of fairies among the Border wilds. Dr. Leyden has introduced such a
dwarf into his ballad entitled The Cout of Keeldar, and has not forgot
his characteristic detestation of the chase.
'The third blast that young Keeldar blew,
Still stood the limber fern,
And a wee man, of swarthy hue,
Upstarted by a cairn.
'His russet weeds were brown as heath
That clothes the upland fell,
And the hair of his head was frizzy red
As the purple heather-bell.
'An urchin, clad in prickles red,
Clung cow'ring to his arm;
The hounds they howl'd, and backward fled,
As struck by fairy charm.
'"Why rises high the staghound's cry,
Where staghound ne'er should be?
Why wakes that horn the silent morn,
Without the leave of me?"--
'"Brown Dwarf, that o'er the muirland strays,
Thy name to Keeldar tell!"--
"The Brown Man of the Muirs, who stays
Beneath the heather-bell.
'"'T is sweet beneath the heather-bell
To live in autumn brown;
And sweet to hear the lav'rock's swell,
Far, far from tower and town.
'"But woe betide the shrilling horn,
The chase's surly cheer!
And ever that hunter is forlorn
Whom first at morn I hear."'
"The poetical picture here given of the Duergar corresponds exactly with
the following Northumberland legend, with which I was lately favored by
my learned and kind friend, Mr. Surtees of Mainsforth, who has bestowed
indefatigable labor upon the antiquities of the English Border counties.
The subject is in itself so curious, that the length of the note will, I
hope, be pardoned:
'I have only one record to offer of the appearance of our Northumbrian
Duergar. My narratrix is Elizabeth Cockburn, and old wife of Offerton,
in this country, whose credit, in a case of this kind, will not, I hope,
be much impeached when I add that she is by her dull neighbors supposed
to be occasionally insane, but by herself to be at those times endowed
with a faculty of seeing visions and spectral appearances which shun the
common ken.
'In the year before the great rebellion, two young men from Newcastle
were sporting on the high moors above Eldson, and after pursuing their
game several hours, sat down to dine in a green glen near one of the
mountain streams. After their repast, the younger lad ran to the brook
for water, and after stooping to drink, was surprised, on lifting his
head again, by the appearance of a brown dwarf, who stood on a crag
covered with brackens, across the burn. This extraordinary personage
did not appear to be above half the stature of a common man, but
was uncommonly stout and broad-built, having the appearance of vast
strength. His dress was entirely brown, the color of the brackens, and
his head covered with frizzled red hair. His countenance was expressive
of the most savage ferocity, and his eyes glared like a bull. It seems
he addressed the young man first, threatening him with his vengeance for
having trespassed on his demesnes, and asking him if he knew in whose
presence he stood? The youth replied that he now supposed him to be the
lord of the moors; that he offended through ignorance; and offered to
bring him the game he had killed. The dwarf was a little mollified by
this submission, but remarked that nothing could be more offensive
to him than such an offer, as he considered the wild animals as his
subjects, and never failed to avenge their destruction. He condescended
further to inform him that he was, like himself, mortal, though of years
far exceeding the lot of common humanity, and (what I should not have
had an idea of) that he hoped for salvation. He never, he added, fed on
anything that had life, but lived in the summer on whortleberries, and
in winter on nuts and apples, of which he had great store in the woods.
Finally, he invited his new acquaintance to accompany him home and
partake his hospitality, an offer which the youth was on the point of
accepting, and was just going to spring across the brook (which if he
had done, says Elizabeth, the dwarf would certainly have torn him in
pieces), when his foot was arrested by the voice of his companion, who
thought he had tarried long, and on looking round again, "the wee brown
man was fled." The story adds that he was imprudent enough to slight the
admonition, and to sport over the moors on his way homewards, but soon
after his return he fell into a lingering disorder, and died within the
year'" (Scott).
302. Our moonlight circle's. The MS. has "Our fairy ringlet's."
306. The fairies' fatal green. "As the Daoine Shi', or Men of Peace,
wore green habits, they were supposed to take offence when any mortals
ventured to assume their favorite color. Indeed, from some reason, which
has been, perhaps originally a general superstition, green is held in
Scotland to be unlucky to particular tribes and counties. The Caithness
men, who hold this belief, allege as a reason that their bands wore that
color when they were cut off at the battle of Flodden; and for the same
reason they avoid crossing the Ord on a Monday, being the day of the
week on which their ill-omened array set forth. Green is also disliked
by those of the name of Ogilvy; but more especially it is held fatal to
the whole clan of Grahame. It is remembered of an aged gentleman of that
name that when his horse fell in a fox-chase, he accounted for it at
once by observing that the whipcord attached to his lash was of this
unlucky color" (Scott).
308. Wert christened man. Scott says: "The Elves were supposed greatly
to envy the privileges acquired by Christian initiation, and they gave
to those mortals who had fallen into their power a certain precedence,
founded upon this advantageous distinction. Tamlane, in the old ballad,
describes his own rank in the fairy procession:
'For I ride on a milk-white steed,
And aye nearest the town;
Because I was a christen'd knight,
They give me that renown.'"
312. The curse of the sleepless eye. Cf. Macbeth, i. 3. 19:
"Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid," etc.
313. Part. Depart. See on ii. 94 above.
322. Grisly. See on i. 704 above.
330. Kindly. Kindred, natural. See Wb., and cf. Shakespeare, Much Ado,
iv. 1. 75:
"that fatherly and kindly power
That you have in her," etc.
345. All is glistening show. "No fact respecting Fairy-land seems to
be better ascertained than the fantastic and illusory nature of their
apparent pleasure and splendour. It has been already noticed in the
former quotations from Dr. Grahame's entertaining volume, and may be
confirmed by the following Highland tradition:--'A woman, whose new-born
child had been conveyed by them into their secret abodes, was also
carried thither herself, to remain, however, only until she should
suckle her infant. She one day, during this period, observed the
Shi'ichs busily employed in mixing various ingredients in a boiling
caldron, and as soon as the composition was prepared, she remarked that
they all carefully anointed their eyes with it, laying the remainder
aside for future use. In a moment when they were all absent, she also
attempted to anoint her eyes with the precious drug, but had time to
apply it to one eye only, when the Daoine Shi' returned. But with that
eye she was henceforth enabled to see everything as it really passed in
their secret abodes; she saw every object, not as she hitherto had done,
in deceptive splendour and elegance, but in its genuine colours and
form. The gaudy ornaments of the apartment were reduced to the walls
of a gloomy cavern. Soon after, having discharged her office, she was
dismissed to her own home. Still, however, she retained the faculty of
seeing, with her medicated eye, everything that was done, anywhere
in her presence, by the deceptive art of the order. One day, amidst a
throng of people, she chanced to observe the Shi'ich, or man of peace,
in whose possession she had left her child, though to every other eye
invisible. Prompted by maternal affection, she inadvertently accosted
him, and began to inquire after the welfare of her child. The man
of peace, astonished at being thus recognized by one of mortal race,
demanded how she had been enabled to discover him. Awed by the terrible
frown of his countenance, she acknowledged what she had done. He spat in
her eye, and extinguished it for ever.'
"It is very remarkable that this story, translated by Dr. Grahame from
popular Gaelic tradition, is to be found in the Otia Imperialia of
Gervase of Tilbury. [FN #10] A work of great interest might be compiled
upon the original of popular fiction, and the transmission of similar
tales from age to age, and from country to country. The mythology of one
period would then appear to pass into the romance of the next century,
and that into the nursery tale of the subsequent ages. Such an
investigation, while it went greatly to diminish our ideas of the
richness of human invention, would also show that these fictions,
however wild and childish, possess such charms for the populace as
enable them to penetrate into countries unconnected by manners and
language, and having no apparent intercourse to afford the means
of transmission. It would carry me far beyond my bounds to produce