“Fairies, black, grey, green, and white.”
The fairies of the moors were often clad in heath-brown or lichen-dyed garments, whence the epithet of “Elfin-grey.”[33]
The legends of most countries are unanimous in ascribing to the fairies an inordinate love of music; such harmonious sounds as those which Caliban depicts in “The Tempest” (iii. 2) being generally ascribed to them:
“The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again.”
In the “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 3), when Titania is desirous of taking a nap, she says to her attendants:
“Come, now a roundel, and a fairy song.”
And further on (iii. 1) she tells Bottom:
“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep.”
The author of “Round About our Coal Fire”[34] tells us that “they had fine musick always among themselves, and danced in a moonshiny night, around, or in, a ring.”
They were equally fond of dancing, and we are told how they meet—