in ancient traditions and romances, signifies a sort of deity, or imaginary genius, conversant on the earth, and distinguished by a variety of fantastic actions either good or bad.
They were most usually imagined to be women of an order superior to human nature, yet subject to wants, passions, accidents, and even death; sprightly and benevolent while young and handsome; morose, peevish, and malignant, if ugly, or in the decline of their beauty; fond of appearing in white, whence they are often called the white ladies.
Concerning these imaginary beings, no less a person than Jervaise of Tilberry, marshal of the kingdom of Arles, who lived in the beginning of the 13th century, writes thus in a work inscribed to the emperor Otho IV. "It has been asserted by persons of unexceptionable credit, that fairies used to choose themselves gallants from among men, and rewarded their attachment with an affluence of worldly goods; but if they married, or boasted of a fairy's favours, they as severely smarted for such indiscretion." The like tales still go current in Languedoc; and, throughout the whole province, there is not a village without some ancient seat or cavern which had the honour of being a fairy's residence, or at least some spring where a fairy used to bathe. This idea of fairies has a near affinity with that of the Greeks and Romans, concerning the nymphs of the woods, mountains, and springs; and an ancient scholiast on Theocritus says, "The nymphs are demons which appear on the mountains in the figure of women;" and what is more surprising, the Arabs and other orientals have their ginn and peri, of whom they entertain the like notions.
But fairies have been likewise described as of either sex, and generally as of minute stature, though capable of assuming various forms and dimensions. The most charming representation imaginable of these children of romantic fancy, is in the Midsummer-night's Dream of Shakespeare; in referring to which, we will no doubt have been anticipated by the recollection of almost every reader.
Spenser's Fairy Queen is an epic poem, under the persons and characters of fairies. This sort of poetry raises a pleasing kind of horror in the mind of the reader, and amuses his imagination with the strangeness and novelty of the persons who are represented in it; but, as a vehicle of instruction, the judicious object to it, as not having probability enough to make any moral impression.
The belief of fairies still subsists in many parts of our own country. The "Swart fairy of the mine," (of German extraction), has scarce yet quitted our subterranean works; (vid. next article.) Puck, or Robin Good-Fellow, still haunts many of our villages. And in the highlands of Scotland, new-born children are watched till the christening is over, lest they should be stolen or changed by some of these phantastical existences.
Fairy of the Mine; an imaginary being, an inhabitant of mines. The Germans believed in two species; one fierce and malevolent; the other a gentle race, appearing like little old men dressed like the miners, and not much above two feet high. These wander about the drifts and chambers of the works; seem perpetually employed, yet do nothing; some seem to cut the ore, or fling what is cut into vessels, or turn the windmills; but never do any harm to the miners, unless provoked; as the sensible Agricola, in this point credulous, relates in his book de Animantibus Subterraneis.