“I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born.”
In the days of chivalry, the champion’s arms were ceremoniously blessed, each taking an oath that he used no charmed weapon. In Spenser’s “Fairy Queen” (book i. canto 4) we read:
“he bears a charmed shield,
And eke enchanted arms, that none can pierce.”
Fairies were amazingly expeditious in their journeys. Thus, Puck goes “swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow,” and in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” he answers Oberon, who was about to send him on a secret expedition:
“I’ll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.”
Again, the same fairy addresses him:
“Fairy king, attend, and mark:
I do hear the morning lark.
Oberon. Then, my queen, in silence sad,
Trip we after the night’s shade:
We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wand’ring moon.”
Once more, Puck says:
“My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,
For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger,” etc.