Mr. Douce[22] quotes from the romance of “Lancelot of the Lake,” where the author, speaking of the days of King Arthur, says, “En celui temps estoient appellees faees toutes selles qui sentre-mettoient denchantemens et de charmes, et moult en estoit pour lors principalement en la Grande Bretaigne, et savoient la force et la vertu des paroles, des pierres, et des herbes, parquoy elles estoient tenues et jeunesse et en beaulte, et en grandes richesses comme elles devisoient.”
“This perpetual youth and beauty,” he adds, “cannot well be separated from a state of immortality;” another characteristic ascribed to the fairy race. It is probably alluded to by Titania in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1):
“The human mortals want their winter here.”
And further on (ii. 1), when speaking of the changeling’s mother, she says:
“But she, being mortal, of that boy did die.”
Again, a fairy addresses Bottom the weaver (iii. 1)—
“Hail, mortal!”
—an indication that she was not so herself. The very fact, indeed, that fairies “call themselves spirits, ghosts, or shadows, seems to be a proof of their immortality.” Thus Puck styles Oberon “king of shadows,” and this monarch asserts of himself and his subjects—
“But we are spirits of another sort.”
Fletcher, in the “Faithful Shepherdess,” describes (i. 2)—