Robed as with angry clouds; he stands between
Thyself and me—but I do fear him not.”
The emperor Julian was struck with a spectre clad in rags, yet bearing in his hands a horn of plenty, which was covered with a linen cloth. Thus emblematically attired, the spirit walked mournfully past the hangings of the apostate’s tent[[57]].
We may now advert to the superstitious narratives of the middle ages, which are replete with the notices of similar marvellous apparitions. When Bruno, the Archbishop of Wirtzburg, a short period before his sudden death, was sailing with Henry the Third, he descried a terrific spectre standing upon a rock which overhung the foaming waters, by whom he was hailed in the following words:—“Ho! Bishop, I am thy evil genius. Go whether thou choosest, thou art and shalt be mine. I am not now sent for thee, but soon thou shalt see me again.” To a spirit commissioned on a similar errand, the prophetic voice may be probably referred, which was said to have been heard by John Cameron, the Bishop of Glasgow, immediately before his decease. He was summoned by it, says Spottiswood, “to appear before the tribunal of Christ, there to atone for his violence and oppressions.”
“I shall not pursue the subject of Genii much farther. The notion of every man being attended by an evil genius, was abandoned much earlier than the far more agreeable part of the same doctrine, which taught that, as an antidote to this influence, each individual was also accompanied by a benignant spirit. “The ministration of angels,” says a writer in the Athenian oracle, “is certain, but the manner how, is the knot to be untied.” ’Twas generally thought by the ancient philosophers, that not only kingdoms had their tutelary guardians, but that every person had his particular genius, or good angel, to protect and admonish him by dreams, visions, &c. We read that Origin, Hierome, Plato, and Empedocles, in Plutarch, were also of this opinion; and the Jews themselves, as appears by that instance of Peter’s deliverance out of prison. They believed it could not be Peter, but his angel. But for the particular attendance of bad angels, we believe it not; and we must deny it, till it finds better proof than conjecture.”
Such were the objects of superstitious reverence, derived from the Pantheon of Greece and Rome, the whole synod of which was supposed to consist of demons, who were still actively bestirring themselves to delude mankind. But in the West of Europe, a host of other demons, far more formidable, were brought into play, who had their origin in Celtic, Teutonic, and even Eastern fables; and as their existence, as well as influence, was not only by the early Christians, but even by the reformers, boldly asserted, it was long before the rites to which they had been accustomed were totally eradicated. Thus in Orkney, for instance, it was customary, even during the last century, for lovers to meet within the pale of a large circle of stones, which had been dedicated to the chief of the ancient Scandinavian deities. Through a hole in one of the pillars, the hands of contracting parties were joined, and the faith they plighted, was named the promise of Odin, to violate which was infamous. But the influence of the Dii Majores of the Edda was slight and transient, in comparison with that of the duergar or dwarfs, who figure away in the same mythology, and whose origin is thus recited. Odin and his brothers killed the giant Ymor, from whose wound ran so much blood that all the families of the earth were drowned, except one that saved himself on board a bark. These gods then made, of the giant’s bones of his flesh and his blood, the earth, the waters, and the heavens. But in the body of the monster, several worms had in the course of putrefaction been engendered, which, by order of the gods, partook of both human shape and reason. These little beings possessed the most delicate figures, and always dwelt in subterraneous caverns or clefts in the rocks. They were remarkable for their riches, their activity, and their malevolence[[58]]. This is the origin of our modern faries, who, at the present day, are described as a people of small stature, gaily drest in habiliments of green[[59]]. They possess material shapes, with the means, however, of making themselves invisible. They multiply their species; they have a relish for the same kind of food that affords sustenance to the human race, and when, for some festal occasion, they would regale themselves with good beef or mutton, they employ elf arrows to bring down their victims. At the same time, they delude the shepherds with the substitution of some vile substance, or illusory image, possessing the same form as that of the animal they had taken away. These spirits are much addicted to music, and when they make their excursions, a most exquisite band of music never fails to accompany them in their course. They are addicted to the abstraction of the human species, in whose place they leave substitutes for living beings, named Changelings, the unearthly origin of whom is known by their mortal imbecility, or some wasting disease. When a limb is touched with paralysis, a suspicion often arises that it has been touched by these spirits, or that, instead of the sound member, an insensible mass of matter has been substituted in its place.
In England, the opinions originally entertained relative to the duergar or dwarfs, have sustained considerable modifications, from the same attributes being assigned to them as to the Persian peris, an imaginary race of intelligences, whose offices of benevolence were opposed to the spightful interference of evil spirits. Whence this confusion in proper Teutonic mythology has originated, is doubtful; conjectures have been advanced, that it may be traced to the intercourse the Crusaders had with the Saracens; and that from Palestine was imported the corrupted name, derived from the peris, of faries; for under such a title the duegar of the Edda are now generally recognized; the malevolent character of the dwarfs being thus sunk in the opposite qualities of the peris, the fairies. Blessing became in England, proverbial: “Grant that the sweet fairies may nightly put money in your shoes, and sweep your house clean.” In more general terms, the wish denoted, “Peace be to the house[[60]].
Fairies, for many centuries, have been the objects of spectral impressions. In the case of a poor woman of Scotland, Alison Pearson, who suffered for witchcraft in the year 1586, they probably resulted from some plethoric state of the system, which was followed by paralysis. Yet, for these illusive images, to which the popular superstition of the times had given rise, the poor creature was indicted for holding communication with demons, under which light fairies were then considered, and burnt at a stake. During her illness, she was not unfrequently impressed with sleeping and waking visions, in which she held an intercourse with the queen of the Elfland and the good neighbours. Occasionally, these capricious spirits would condescend to afford her bodily relief; at other times, they would add to the severity of her pains. In such trances or dreams, she would observe her cousin, Mr. William Sympsoune, of Stirling, who had been conveyed away to the hills by the fairies, from whom she received a salve that would cure every disease, and of which the Archbishop of St. Andrews deigned himself to reap the benefit. It is said in the indictment against her, that “being in Grange Muir with some other folke, she, being sick, lay downe; and, when alone, there came a man to her clad in green, who said to her, if she would be faithful, he would do her good; but she being feared, cried out; but nae bodie came to her, so she said, if he came in God’s name, and for the gude of her soul, it was all well; but he gaed away; he appeared another tyme like a lustie man, and many men and women with him—at seeing him she signed herself, and pray and past with them, and saw them making merrie with pypes, and gude cheir and wine;—she was carried with them, and when she telled any of these things, she was sairlie tormented by them, and the first time she gaid with them, she gat a sair straike frae one of them, which took all the poustie (power) of her side frae her, and left an ill-far’d mark on her side.
“She saw the gude neighbours make their saws (salves) with panns and fyres, and they gathered the herbs before the sun was up, and they cam verie fearful sometimes to her, and flaire (scared) her very sair, which made her cry, and threatened they would use her worse than before; and at last, they tuck away the power of her haile syde frae her, and made her lye many weeks. Sometimes they would come and sit by her, and promise that she should never want if she would be faithful, but if she would speak and telle of them, they would murther her. Mr. William Sympsoune is with them who healed her, and telt her all things;—he is a young man, not six yeares older than herself, and he will appear to her before the court comes;—he told her he was taken away by them; and he bid her sign herself that she be not taken away, for the teind of them are tane to hell every yeare[[61]].”
Another apparition of a similar kind may be found on the pamphlet which was published A. D. 1696, under the patronage of Dr. Fowler, Bishop of Glocester, relative to Ann Jefferies, “who was fed for six months by a small sort of airy people, called fairies.” There is every reason to suppose, that this female was either affected with hysteria, or with that highly excited state of nervous irritability, which, as I have shewn, gives rise to ecstatic illusions. The account of her first fit is the only one which relates to the present subject. In the year 1695, says her historian, “she then being nineteen years of age, and one day knitting in an arbour in the garden, there came over the hedges to her (as she affirmed) six persons of small stature, all clothed in green, and which she called fairies: upon which she was so frightened, that she fell into a kind of convulsive fit: but when we found her in this condition, we brought her into the house, and put her to bed, and took great care of her. As soon as she was recovered out of the fit, she cries out, ‘they are just gone out of the window; they are just gone out of the window. Do you not see them?’ And thus, in the height of her sickness, she would often cry out, and that with eagerness; which expressions we attributed to her distemper, supposing her light-headed.” This narrative of the girl seemed highly interesting to her superstitious neighbours, and she was induced to relate far more wonderful stories, upon which not the least dependance can be placed, as the sympathy she excited eventually induced her to become a rank impostor[[62]].