FATIS
DERVONIBUS
V. S. L. M. M. RVFNVS
SEVERVS.
Just as the Scotch Fairies are euphemistically styled 'The Good Folks,' 'The People of Peace,' the 'Good Ladies,' so it befell the daughter of Faunus. She was styled 'The Good Goddess,' and her real name was tabooed[27].
It was natural that when Christianity reached Gaul, where the native spirits of woods and wells had acquired the name of Fata, these minor goddesses should survive the official heathen religion. The temples of the high gods were overthrown, or turned into churches, but who could destroy all the woodland fanes of the Fata, who could uproot the dread of them from the hearts of peasants? Saints and Councils denounced the rural offerings to fountains and the roots of trees, but the secret shame-faced worship lasted deep into the middle ages[28]. It is conjectured by Maury, as by Walckenaer (Lettres sur les Contes de Fées; Paris, 1826), that the functions of prophetic Gaulish Maidens and Druidesses were confused with those of the Fairies. Certainly superstitious ideas of many kinds came under the general head of belief in Fata, Faes, Fadae, and the Fées of the forest of Broceliande. The Fées answered, as in the Sleeping Beauty, to Greek Moirai or Egyptian Hathors[29]. They nursed women in labour: they foretold the fate of children. It is said that when a Breton lady was giving birth to a child, a banquet for the Fées was set in the neighbouring chamber[30]. But, in popular superstition, if not in Perrault's tales, the Fées had many other attributes. They certainly inherited much from the pre-Christian idea of Hades. In the old MS. Prophesia Thomae de Erseldoun[31] the subterranean fairy-world is the under-world of pagan belief. In the mediæval form of Orpheus and Eurydice (Orfeo and Heurodis), it is not the King of the Dead, but the king of Fairy that carries off the minstrel's bride. Fairyland, when Orpheus visits it, is like Homer's Hades.
'And sum thurch the bodi hadde wounde Wives ther lay on childe bedde Sum dede and sum awedde.'
In the same way Chaucer calls Pluto 'King of Fayrie,' and speaks of 'Proserpine and all her fayrie,' in the Merchant's Tale. Moreover Alison Pearson, when she visited Elfland, found there many of the dead, among them Maitland of Lethington, and one of the Buccleughs. For all this dealing with fairies and the dead was Alison burned (Scott, Border Minstrelsy, ii. 137-152).
Because the mediæval Fairies had fallen heir to much of the pre-Christian theory of Hades, it does not follow, of course, that the Fairies were originally ancestral ghosts. This origin has been claimed for them, however, and it is pointed out that the stone arrow-heads of an earlier race are, when found by peasants, called 'elf-shots,' and attributed to the Fairies. Now the real owners and makers were certainly a race dead and gone, as far as a race can die. But probably the ownership of the arrows by elves is only the first explanation that occurs to the rural fancy. On the other hand, it is candid to note that the Zulu Amatongo, certainly 'ancestral ghosts,' have much in common with Scotch and Irish fairies. 'It appears to be supposed,' says Dr. Callaway, 'that the dead become "good people," as the dead among the Amazulu become Amatongo, and, in the funeral processions of the "good people" which some profess to see, are recognised the forms of those who have lately died, as Umkatshana saw his relatives among the Abapansi,' and as Alison saw Maitland of Lethington and Buccleuch in Elfland. This Umkatshana followed a deer into a hole in the ground, where he found dead men whom he knew[32]. Compare Campbell, Tales from the West Highlands, ii. 56, 65, 66, 106, where it is written, 'the Red Book of Clanranald is said not to have been dug up, but found on the moss. It seemed as if the ancestors sent it.'
Those rather gloomy fairies of the nether-world have little but the name in common with the fairies of Herrick, of the Midsummer Night's Dream, and of Drayton's Nymphidia. The gay and dancing elves have a way, in Greece, of making girls 'dance with the Nereids' till they dance themselves to death. In the same way it is told of Anne Jefferies, of St. Teath in Cornwall (born 1626), that one had seen her 'dancing in the orchard, among the trees, and that she informed him she was then dancing with the Fairies.' She lived to be seventy, in spite of the Fairies and the local magistrates who tried her case (Scott, B.M. ii. 156).
Perrault's fairies do not wed mortal men, in this differing from the Indian Apsaras, and the fairies of New Zealand and of Wales. (Taylor's New Zealand, p. 143. Compare story of Urvasi and Pururavas, Max Müller, Selected Essays, i. 408. A number of other examples of Fairy loves, including one from America, is given in Custom and Myth, pp. 68-86.)
On a general view of the evidence, it appears as if the fashion for fairy tales, in Perrault's time, had made rather free with the old Fata or Fées. Perrault sins much less than the Comtesse d'Aulnoy, or the Comtesse de Murat, but even he brings in a Fatua ex machina where popular tradition used other expedients.
As to the Ogres in Perrault, a very few words may suffice. They are simply the survival, in civilised folklore, of the cannibals, Rakshasas, Weendigoes, and man-eating monsters who are the dread of savage life in Africa, India, and America. Concerning them, their ferocity, and their stupidity, enough will be said in the study of Le Petit Poucet. As to the name of Ogre, Walckenaer derives it from Oigour, a term for the Hungarian invaders of the ninth century, a Tartar tribe[33]. Hence he concludes that the Ogre-stories are later than the others, though, even if 'Ogre' meant 'Tartar,' only the name is recent, and the Cannibal tales are of extreme antiquity. Littré, on the other hand, derives ogre from Orcus, cum Orco rationem habere meaning to risk one's life. Hop o' my Thumb certainly risked his, when he had to do 'cum Orco,' if Orcus be Ogre (Lettres sur les Contes de Fées, p. 169-172).