(4) The individual in Fairyland, the fairy Knight, or Elf.
The word was used in the fourth sense before the time of Chaucer. After the appearance of Spenser's Faerie Queene distinctions became confused, and the name of the real fairies was transferred to "the little beings who made the green, sour ringlets whereof the ewe not bites." The change adopted by the poets gained currency among the people. Fairies were identified with nymphs and elves. Shakespeare was the principal means of effecting this revolution, and in his Midsummer Night's Dream he has incorporated most of the fairy lore known in England at his time. But the tales are older than their name.
The origin of fairy tales is a question which has kept many very able scholars busy and which has not yet been settled to the satisfaction of many. What has been discovered resolves itself mainly into four different origins of fairy tales:—
I. Fairy tales are detritus of myth, surviving echoes of gods and heroes. Against this theory it may be said that, when popular tales have incidents similar to Greek heroic myths, the tales are not detritus of myth, but both have a more ancient tale as their original source. There was:—
(1) A popular tale which reflected the condition of a rude people, a tale full of the monstrous and the miraculous.
(2) The same tale, a series of incidents and plot, with the monstrous element modified, which survived in the oral traditions of illiterate peasantry.
(3) The same plot and incidents, as they existed in heroic epics of cultivated people. A local and historical character was given by the introduction of known places and native heroes. Tone and manners were refined by literary workmanship, in the Rig Veda, the Persian King-book, the Homeric Epics, etc.
The Grimms noted that the evolution of the tale was from a strongly marked, even ugly, but highly expressive form of its earlier stages, to that which possessed external beauty of mold. The origin is in the fancy of a primitive people, the survival is through Märchen of peasantry, and the transfiguration into epics is by literary artists. Therefore, one and the same tale may be the source of Perrault's Sleeping Beauty, also of a Greek myth, and also of an old tale of illiterate peasantry. This was the opinion held by Lang, who said, "For the roots of stories, we must look, not in the clouds but upon the earth, not in the various aspects of nature but in the daily occurrences and surroundings, in the current opinions and ideas of savage life."
In the savage Märchen of to-day, the ideas and incidents are the inevitable result of the mental habits and beliefs of savages. We gain an idea of the savage mind through Leviticus, in the Bible, through Herodotus, Greek and Roman geographers, Aristotle, Plutarch, Pliny, etc., through voyagers, missionaries, and travelers, and through present savage peoples. Savage existence is based on two great institutions:—
(a) The division of society into clans.—Marriage laws depend on the conception that these clans descend from certain plants, animals, or inorganic objects. There was the belief in human descent from animals and kinship and personal intercourse with them.