[690] P. 98.
[691] Skeat believed pun meant something punched out of shape. Is it not more probably connected with the Hebrew pun meaning dubious?
[CHAPTER XI]
THE FAIR MAID
“We could not blot out from English poetry its visions of the fairyland without a sense of irreparable loss. No other literature save that of Greece alone can vie with ours in its pictures of the land of fantasy and glamour, or has brought back from that mysterious realm of unfading beauty treasures of more exquisite and enduring charm.”—Alfred Nutt.
“We have already shown how long and how faithfully the Gaelic and Welsh peasants clung to their old gods in spite of all the efforts of the clerics to explain them as ancient kings, or transform them into wonder-working saints, or to ban them as demons of Hell.”—Charles Squire.
In the preceding chapter it was shown that the number eleven was for some reason peculiarly identified with the Elven, or Elves: in Germany eleven seems to have carried a somewhat similar significance, for on the eleventh day of the eleventh month was always inaugurated the Carnival season which was celebrated by weekly festivities which increased in mirthful intensity until Shrove Tuesday.[692] Commenting upon this custom it has been pointed out that “The fates seem to have displayed a remarkable sense of artistry in decreeing that the Great War should cease at the moment when it did, for the hostilities came to an end at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month”.[693]
Etymologists connect the word Fate with fay; the expression fate is radically good fay, and it is merely a matter of choice whether Fate or the Fates be regarded as Three or as One: moreover the aspect of Fate, whether grim or beautiful, differs invariably to the same extent as that of the two fairy mothers which Kingsley introduces into The Water Babies, the delicious Lady Doasyouwouldbedoneby and the forbidding Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid.
