Few will now endeavour to trace romantic and marvellous fiction to any individual source. An extensive survey of the regions of fancy and their productions will incline us rather to consider the mental powers of man as having an uniform operation under every sky, and under every form of political existence, and to acknowledge that identity of invention is not more to be wondered at than identity of action. It is strange how limited the powers of the imagination are. Without due consideration of the subject, it might be imagined that her stores of materials and powers of combination are boundless; yet reflection, however slight, will convince us that here also 'there is nothing new,' and charges of plagiarism will in the majority of cases be justly suspected to be devoid of foundation. The finest poetical expressions and similes of occidental literature meet us when we turn our attention to the East, and a striking analogy pervades the tales and fictions of every region. The reason is, the materials presented to the inventive faculties are scanty. The power of combination is therefore limited to a narrow compass, and similar combinations must hence frequently occur.

Yet still there is a high degree of probability in the supposition of the luxuriant fictions of the East having through Spain and Syria operated on European fancy. The poetry and romance of the middle ages are notoriously richer in detail, and more gorgeous in invention, than the more correct and chaste strains of Greece and Latium; the island of Calypso, for example, is in beauty and variety left far behind by the retreats of the fairies of romance. Whence arises this difference? No doubt

that a degree of pomp and splendour met the eye of the minstrel and romancer on which the bards of the simple republics of ancient times had never gazed, and this might account for the difference between the poetry of ancient and of middle-age Europe. Yet, notwithstanding, we discover such an Orientalism in the latter as would induce us to acquiesce in the hypothesis of the fictions and the manner of the East having been early transmitted to the West; and it is highly probable that along with more splendid habits of life entered a more lavish use of the gorgeous stores laid open to the plastic powers of fiction. The tales of Arabia were undoubtedly known in Europe from a very early period. The romance of Cleomades and Claremonde, which was written in the thirteenth century,[51] not merely resembles, but actually is the story of the Enchanted Horse in the Thousand and One Nights. Another tale in the same collection, The two Sisters who envied their younger Sister, may be found in Straparola, and is also a popular story in Germany; and in the Pentamerone and other collections of tales published long before the appearance of M. Galland's translation of the Eastern ones, numerous traces of an oriental origin may be discerned. The principal routes they came by may also be easily shown. The necessities of commerce and the pilgrimage to Mecca occasioned a constant intercourse between the Moors of Spain and their fellow-sectaries of the East; and the Venetians, who were the owners of Candia, carried on an extensive trade with Syria and Egypt. It is worthy of notice, that the Notti Piacevoli of Straparola were first published in Venice, and that Basile, the author of the Pentamerone, spent his youth in Candia, and was afterwards a long time at Venice. Lastly, pilgrims were notorious narrators of marvels, and each, as he visited the Holy Land, was anxious to store his memory with those riches, the diffusal of which procured him attention and hospitality at home.

We think, therefore, that European romance may be indebted, though not for the name, yet for some of the attributes and exploits of its fairies to Asia. This is more especially the case with the romances composed or turned into prose in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries; for in the earlier ones the Fairy Mythology is much more sparingly introduced.

But beside the classic and oriental prototypes of its fairies, romance may have had an additional one in the original mythology of the Celtic tribes, of which a being very nearly allied to the fay of romance appears to have formed a part. Such were the damoiselles who bestowed their favours upon Lanval and Graelent. This subject shall, however, be more fully considered under the head of Brittany.

Romances of chivalry, it is well known, may be divided into three principal classes; those of Arthur and his Round Table, of Charlemagne and his Paladins, and those of Amadis and Palmerin, and their descendants and kindred. In the first, with the exception of Isaie le Triste, which appears to be a work of the fifteenth century, the fairies appear but seldom; the second exhibits them in all their brilliancy and power; in the third, which all belong to the literature of Spain, the name at least does not occur, but the enchantress Urganda la Desconecida seems equal in power to La Dame du Lac, in the romance of Lancelot du Lac.[52]

Among the incidents of the fine old romance just alluded to,[53] is narrated the death of King Ban, occasioned by grief at the sight of his castle taken and in flames through the treachery of his seneschal. His afflicted queen had left her new-born infant on the margin of a lake, while she went to soothe the last moments of the expiring monarch. On her return, she finds her babe in the arms of a beautiful lady. She entreats her pathetically to restore the orphan babe; but, without heeding her entreaties, or even uttering a single word, she moves to the edge of the lake, into which she plunges and disappears with the child. The lady was the celebrated Dame du Lac: the child was Lancelot, afterwards styled Du Lac. The name of the lady was Vivienne, and she had dwelt "en la marche de la petite Bretaigne." Merlin the demon-born, the renowned enchanter, became enamoured of her, and taught her a portion of his art; and the ill-return she made is well known in the annals of female treachery.[54] In consequence of the knowledge thus acquired she became a fairy; for the author informs us that "the damsel who carried Lancelot to the lake was a fay, and in those times all those women were called fays who had to do with enchantments and charms—and there were many of them then, principally in Great Britain—and knew the power and virtues of words, of stones, and of herbs, by which they were kept in youth and in beauty, and in great riches, as they devised."[55]

The lake was a feerie, an illusion raised by the art which the devil had taught Merlin, and Merlin the lady. The romance says: "The lady who reared him conversed only in the forest, and dwelt on the summit of a hill, which was much lower than that on which King Ban had died. In this place, where it seemed that the wood was large and deep, the lady had many fair houses, and very rich; and in the plain beneath there was a gentle little river well-stored with fish; and this place was so secret and so concealed, that right difficult was it for any one to find, for the semblance of the said lake covered it so that it could not be perceived."[56]

When her young protÉgÉ had gone through his course of knightly education, she took him to King Arthur's court, and presented him there; and his subsequent history is well known.

In the romance of Maugis d'Aygremont et de Vivian son FrÈre, when Tapinel and the female slave had stolen the two children of Duke Bevis of Aygremont, the former sold to the wife of Sorgalant the child which he had taken, whose name was Esclarmonde, and who was about fifteen years of age, and was "plus belle et plus blanche qu'une fÉe." The slave having laid herself to rest under a white-thorn (aube-spine), was devoured by a lion and a leopard, who killed one another in their dispute for the infant. "And the babe lay under the thorn, and cried loudly, during which it came to pass that Oriande la FÉe, who abode at Rosefleur with four other fays, came straight to this thorn; for every time she passed by there she used to repose under that white-thorn. She got down, and hearing the child cry, she came that way and looked at him, and said, 'By the god in whom we believe, this child here is lying badly (mal gist), and this shall be his name;' and from that time he was always called Maugis."

Oriande la FÉe brought the child home with her and her damsels; and having examined him, and found, by a precious ring that was in his ear, that he was of noble lineage, "she prayed our Lord that he would be pleased of his grace to make known his origin (nation)." When she had finished her prayer, she sent for her nephew Espiet, "who was a dwarf, and was not more than three feet high, and had his hair yellow as fine gold, and looked like a child of seven years, but he was more than a hundred; and he was one of the falsest knaves in the world, and knew every kind of enchantment." Espiet informed her whose child he was; and Oriande, having prayed to our Lord to preserve the child, took him with her to her castle of Rosefleur, where she had him baptised and named Maugis. She and her damsels reared him with great tenderness; and when he was old enough she put him under the care of her brother Baudris, "who knew all the arts of magic and necromancy, and was of the age of a hundred years;" and he taught what he knew to Maugis.

When Maugis was grown a man, the Fay Oriande clad him in arms, and he became her ami; and she loved him "de si grand amour qu'elle doute fort qu'il ne se departe d'avecques elle."

Maugis shortly afterwards achieved the adventure of gaining the enchanted horse Bayard, in the isle of Boucaut. Of Bayard it is said, when Maugis spoke to him, "Bayard estoit feyÉ, si entendoit aussi bien Maugis comme s'il (Bayard) eust parlÉ." On his return from the island, Maugis conquers and slays the Saracen admiral Anthenor, who had come to win the lands and castle of Oriande, and gains the sword Flamberge (Floberge), which, together with Bayard, he afterwards gave to his cousin Renaud.

In Perceforest, Sebille la Dame du Lac, whose castle was surrounded by a river on which lay so dense a fog that no one could see across the water, though not called so, was evidently a fay. The fortnight that Alexander the Great and Floridas abode with her, to be cured of their wounds, seemed to them but as one night. During that night, "la dame demoura enceinte du roy dung filz, dont de ce lignage yssit le roi Artus."[57]

In the same romance[58] we are told that "en lysle de Zellande jadis fut demourante une faee qui estoit appellee Morgane." This Morgane was very intimate with "ung esperit (named Zephir) qui repairoit es lieux acquatiques, mais jamais nestoit veu que de nuyt." Zephir had been in the habit of repairing to Morgane la Faee from her youth up, "car elle estoit malicieuse et subtille et tousjours avoit moult desire a aucunement sÇavoir des enchantemens et des conjurations." He had committed to her charge the young Passelyon and his cousin Bennucq, to be brought up, and Passelyon was detected in an intrigue with the young Morgane, daughter of the fay. The various adventures of this amorous youth form one of the most interesting portions of the romance.

In Tristan de Leonois,[59] king Meliadus, the father of Tristan, is drawn to a chase par mal engin et negromance of a fairy who was in love with him, and carries him off, and from whose thraldom he was only released by the power of the great enchanter Merlin.

In Parthenopex of Blois,[60] the beautiful fairy Melior, whose magic bark carries the knight to her secret island, is daughter to the emperor of Greece.

In no romance whatever is the fairy machinery more pleasingly displayed than in Sir Launfal, a metrical romance, composed[61] by Thomas Chestre, in the reign of Henry VI.

Before, however, we give the analysis of this poem, which will be followed by that of another, and by our own imitations of this kind of verse, we will take leave to offer some observations on a subject that seems to us to be in general but little understood, namely, the structure of our old English verse, and the proper mode of reading it.

Our forefathers, like their Gotho-German kindred, regulated their verse by the number of accents, not of syllables. The foot, therefore, as we term it, might consist of one, two, three, or even four syllables, provided it had only one strongly marked accent. Further, the accent of a word might be varied, chiefly by throwing it on the last syllable, as natÚre for nÁture, honoÚr for hÓnour, etc. (the Italians, by the way, throw it back when two accents come into collision, as, Il PÁstor Fido[62]); they also sounded what the French call the feminine e of their words, as, In oldÈ dayÈs of the King ArtoÚr; and so well known seems this practice to have been, that the copyists did not always write this e, relying on the skill of the reader to supply it.[63] There was only one restriction, namely, that it was never to come before a vowel, unless where there was a pause. In this way the poetry of the middle ages was just as regular as that of the present day; and Chaucer, when properly read, is fully as harmonious as Pope. But the editors of our ancient poems, with the exception of Tyrwhitt, seem to have been ignorant or regardless of this principle; and in the Canterbury Tales alone is the verse properly arranged.

We will now proceed to the analysis of the romance of Sir Launfal.

Sir Launfal was one of the knights of Arthur, who loved him well, and made him his steward. But when Arthur married the beautiful but frail Gwennere, daughter of Ryon, king of Ireland, Launfal and other virtuous knights manifested their dissatisfaction when she came to court. The queen was aware of this, and, at the first entertainment given by the king,

Launfal, under the feigned pretext of the illness of his father, takes leave of the king, and retires to Karlyoun, where he lives in great poverty. Having obtained the loan of a horse, one holyday, he rode into a fair forest, where, overcome by the heat, he lay down under the shade of a tree, and meditated on his wretched state. In this situation he is attracted by the approach of two fair damsels splendidly arrayed.

They greet him courteously in return, and invite him to visit their mistress, whose pavilion is at hand. Sir Launfal complies with the invitation, and they proceed to where the pavilion lies. Nothing could exceed this pavilion in magnificence. It was surmounted by an erne or eagle, adorned with precious stones so rich, that the poet declares, and we believe, that neither Alexander nor Arthur possessed "none swiche jewel."

The beauty of dame Tryamour was beyond conception.

This lovely dame bestows her heart on Sir Launfal, on condition of his fidelity. As marks of her affection, she gives him a never-failing purse and many other valuable presents, and dismisses him next morning with the assurance, that whenever he wished to see her, his wish would be gratified on withdrawing into a private room, where she would instantly be with him. This information is accompanied with a charge of profound secrecy on the subject of their loves.

The knight returns to court, and astonishes every one by his riches and his munificence. He continues happy in the love of the fair Tryamour, until an untoward adventure interrupts his bliss. One day the queen beholds him dancing, with other knights, before her tower, and, inspired with a sudden affection, makes amorous advances to the knight. These passages of love are received on his part with an indignant repulse, accompanied by a declaration more enthusiastic than politic or courteous, that his heart was given to a dame, the foulest of whose maidens surpassed the queen in beauty. The offence thus given naturally effected an entire conversion in the queen's sentiments; and, when Arthur returned from hunting, like Potiphar's wife, she charges Launfal with attempting her honour. The charge is credited, and the unhappy knight condemned to be burned alive, unless he shall, against a certain day, produce that peerless beauty. The fatal day arrives; the queen is urgent for the execution of the sentence, when ten fair damsels, splendidly arrayed, and mounted on white palfreys, are descried advancing toward the palace. They announce the approach of their mistress, who soon appears, and by her beauty justifies the assertion of her knight. Sir Launfal is instantly set at liberty, and, vaulting on the courser his mistress had bestowed on him, and which was held at hand by his squire, he follows her out of the town.

No romance is of more importance to the present subject than the charming Huon de Bordeaux.[68] Generally known, as the story should be, through Wieland's poem and Mr. Sotheby's translation, we trust that we shall be excused for giving some passages from the original French romance, as Le petit roy Oberon appears to form a kind of connecting link between the fairies of romance and the Elves or Dwarfs of the Teutonic nations. When we come to Germany it will be our endeavour to show how the older part of Huon de Bordeaux has been taken from the story of Otnit in the Heldenbuch, where the dwarf king Elberich performs nearly the same services to Otnit that Oberon does to Huon, and that, in fact, the name Oberon is only Elberich slightly altered.[69]

Huon, our readers must know, encounters in Syria an old follower of his family named Gerasmes; and when consulting with him on the way to Babylon he is informed by him that there are two roads to that city, the one long and safe, the other short and dangerous, leading through a wood, "which is sixteen leagues long, but is so full of Fairie and strange things that few people pass there without being lost or stopt, because therewithin dwelleth a king, Oberon the Fay. He is but three feet in height; he is all humpy; but he hath an angelic face; there is no mortal man who should see him who would not take pleasure in looking at him, he hath so fair a face. Now you will hardly have entered the wood, if you are minded to pass that way, when he will find how to speak to you, but of a surety if you speak to him, you are lost for evermore, without ever returning; nor will it lie in you, for if you pass through the wood, whether straightforwards or across it, you will always find him before you, and it will be impossible for you to escape at all without speaking to him, for his words are so pleasant to hear, that there is no living man who can escape him. And if so be that he should see that you are nowise inclined to speak to him, he will be passing wroth with you. For before you have left the wood he will cause it so to rain on you, to blow, to hail, and to make such right marvellous storms, thunder and lightning, that you will think the world is going to end. Then you will think that you see a great flowing river before you, wondrously black and deep; but know, sire, that right easily will you be able to go through it without wetting the feet of your horse, for it is nothing but a phantom and enchantments that the dwarf will make for you, because he wishes to have you with him, and if it so be that you keep firm to your resolve, not to speak to him, you will be surely able to escape," etc.[70]

Huon for some time followed the sage advice of Gerasmes, and avoided Oberon le fayÉ. The storms of rain and thunder came on as predicted, the magic horn set them all dancing, and at last the knight determined to await and accost the dwarf.

"The Dwarf Fay came riding through the wood, and was clad in a robe so exceeding fine and rich, that it would be a marvel to relate it for the great and marvellous riches that were upon it; for so much was there of precious stones, that the great lustre that they cast was like unto the sun when he shineth full clear. And therewithal he bare a right fair bow in his fist, so rich that no one could value it, so fine it was; and the arrow that he bare was of such sort and manner, that there was no beast in the world that he wished to have, that it did not stop at that arrow. He had at his neck a rich horn, which was hung by two rich strings of fine gold."[71]

This horn was wrought by four Fairies, who had endowed it with its marvellous properties.

Oberon, on bringing Huon to speech, informed him that he was the son of Julius CÆsar, and the lady of the Hidden Island, afterwards called Cephalonia. This lady's first love had been Florimont of Albania, a charming young prince, but being obliged to part from him, she married, and had a son named Neptanebus, afterwards King of Egypt, who begot Alexander the Great, who afterwards put him to death. Seven hundred years later, CÆsar, on his way to Thessaly, was entertained in Cephalonia by the lady of the isle, and he loved her, for she told him he would defeat Pompey, and he became the father of Oberon. Many a noble prince and noble fairy were at the birth, but one Fairy was unhappily not invited, and the gift she gave was that he should not grow after his third year, but repenting, she gave him to be the most beautiful of nature's works. Other Fairies gave him the gift of penetrating the thoughts of men, and of transporting himself and others from place to place by a wish; and the faculty, by like easy means, of raising and removing castles, palaces, gardens, banquets, and such like. He further informed the knight, that he was king and lord of Mommur; and that when he should leave this world his seat was prepared in Paradise—for Oberon, like his prototype Elberich, was a veritable Christian.

When after a variety of adventures Oberon comes to Bordeaux to the aid of Huon, and effects a reconciliation between him and Charlemagne, he tells Huon that the time is at hand that he should leave this world and take the seat prepared for him in Paradise, "en faerie ne veux plus demeurer." He directs him to appear before him within four years in his city of Mommur, where he will crown him as his successor.

Here the story properly ends, but an addition of considerable magnitude has been made by a later hand, in which the story is carried on.

Many are the perils which Huon encounters before the period appointed by Oberon arrives. At length, however, he and the fair Esclairmonde (the Rezia of Wieland) come to Mommur. Here, in despite of Arthur (who, with his sister Morgue la faÉe and a large train, arrives at court, and sets himself in opposition to the will of the monarch, but is reduced to order by Oberon's threat of turning him into a Luyton de Mer[72]), Huon is crowned king of all Faerie "tant du pais des Luytons comme des autres choses secretes reservÉes dire aux hommes." Arthur gets the kingdom of Bouquant, and that which Sybilla held of Oberon, and all the Faeries that were in the plains of Tartary. The good king Oberon then gave Huon his last instructions, recommending his officers and servants to him, and charging him to build an abbey before the city, in the mead which the dwarf had loved, and there to bury him. Then, falling asleep in death, a glorious troop of angels, scattering odours as they flew, conveyed his soul to Paradise.

Isaie le Triste is probably one of the latest romances, certainly posterior to Huon de Bordeaux, for the witty but deformed dwarf Tronc, who is so important a personage in it, is, we are told, Oberon, whom Destiny compelled to spend a certain period in that form. And we shall, as we have promised, prove Oberon to be the handsome dwarf-king Elberich. In Isaie the Faery ladies approach to the FÉes of Perrault, and Madame D'Aulnoy. Here, as at the birth of Oberon and of Ogier le Danois, they interest themselves for the new-born child, and bestow their gifts upon it. The description in this romance of the manner in which the old hermit sees them occupied about the infant Isaie is very pleasing. It was most probably Fairies of this kind, and not the diminutive Elves, that Milton had in view when writing these lines:

The description of the Vergier des FÉes in Isaie le Triste, and of the beautiful valley in which it was situated, may rival in richness and luxuriancy similar descriptions in Spenser and the Italian poets.[73]

We have now, we trust, abundantly proved our position of the Fairies of romance being, at least at the commencement, only 'human mortals,' endowed with superhuman powers, though we may perceive that, as the knowledge of Oriental fiction increased, the Fairies began more and more to assume the character of a distinct species. Our position will acquire additional strength when in the course of our inquiry we arrive at France and Italy.

Closely connected with the Fairies is the place of their abode, the region to which they convey the mortals whom they love, 'the happy lond of Faery.'