ROMANCE OF THE FAIRY BRIDE.
The Peris of Eastern romance are most likely the source from which sprang the tales of romantic fancy with which our legendary lore abounds.
In the enunciation of the Arabic language the word "Peri" would sound "Fairy," the letter P not occurring in its alphabet, and would be so pronounced by the Crusaders in their early intercourse with the Arabs.
In the wreck of Gothic mythology consequent on the introduction of Christianity, the amiable characteristics of the Peris or Fairies became degraded amid the mischievous attributes ascribed to subordinate spirits, more unamiable in their persons and practices, yet more congenial to the habits of thought of the northern peoples.
In Eastern tales, however vaguely they are described, the females are uniformly represented as beings of great beauty, amiability, and beneficence—the fairest creatures of romantic fancy.
With the early troubadours and minstrels, those nymphs formed the subject of many a lay, and the fate of their amours, of many a wild romaunt.
The fondness of female fays for human society were fertile themes of Persian poetry and early European romances, such as "Sir Launfal and Sir Gruelan," wherein the Fairies of Normandy and Bretagne are endowed with all the splendour of Eastern description.
The Fairy Malusina, who married Guy de Lusignan under condition that he should never intrude on her privacy, was of this class. She bore him many children, and erected for him a magnificent castle by her art. They lived in uninterrupted harmony until the prying husband concealed himself to behold his wife in her enchanted bath. When discovered, Malusina fled in great sorrow, and was never again seen. A humiliating tale, which, if true, would seem to show that men are quite as curious and inquisitive as women are popularly supposed to be.
So common was the idea of the union of human beings with the females of Fairyland in early times, that it was firmly believed the ancestor of the English monarchs, Geoffrey Plantagenet, had married one of these beings.