Scene 1. Page 140.
Pro. Ye elves of hills——
The different species of the fairy tribe are called in the Northern languages ælfen, elfen, and alpen, words of remote and uncertain etymology. The Greek ολβιος, felix, is not so plausible an original as the Teutonic helfen, juvare; because many of these supernatural beings were supposed to be of a mischievous nature, but all of them might very properly be invoked to assist mankind. Some of the northern nations regarded them as the souls of men who in this world had given themselves up to corporeal pleasures, and trespasses against human laws. It was conceived therefore that they were doomed to wander for a certain time about the earth, and to be bound in a kind of servitude to mortals. One of their occupations was that of protecting horses in the stable. See Olaus Magnus de gentibus septentrionalibus, lib. iii. cap. xi. It is probable that our fairy system is originally derived from the Fates, Fauns, Nymphs, Dryads, Deæ matres, &c., of the ancients, in like manner as other Pagan superstitions were corruptedly retained after the promulgation of Christianity. The general stock might have been augmented and improved by means of the crusades and other causes of intercourse with the nations of the East.
Scene 1. Page 141.
Pro. ... you demy-puppets, that
By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites——
Green sour, if the genuine reading, should be given, as in the first folio, without a hyphen; for such a compound epithet will not elsewhere be easily discovered. Though a real or supposed acidity in this kind of grass will certainly warrant the use of sour, it is not improbable that Shakspeare might have written greensward, i. e. the green surface of the ground, from the Saxon ꞅƿeaꞃꝺ, skin.
Scene 1. Page 158.
Pro. His mother was a witch; and one so strong
That could control the moon.
So in a former scene, Gonzalo had said, "You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would lift the moon out of her sphere, &c." In Adlington's translation of Apuleius 1596, 4to, a book well known to Shakspeare, a marginal note says, "Witches in old time were supposed to be of such power that they could pul downe the moone by their inchauntment." In Fleminge's Virgil's Bucolics is this line, "Charms able are from heaven high to fetch the moone adowne;" and see Scot's Discoverie of witchcraft 1584, 4to, pp. 174, 226, 227, 250.