They are either not mortal, or their date of life is indeterminately long; they are of a nature superior to man, and speak with contempt of human follies. By night they revel beneath the light of the moon and stars, retiring at the approach of "Aurora's harbinger,"[391] but not compulsively like ghosts and "damned spirits."
But we (says Oberon) are spirits of another sort;
I with the morning's love have oft made sport,
And like a forester the groves may tread,
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams.
In the Merry Wives of Windsor, we are introduced to mock-fairies, modelled, of course, after the real ones, but with such additions as the poet's fancy deemed itself authorised to adopt.
Act IV., Scene IV., Mrs. Page, after communicating to Mrs. Ford her plan of making the fat knight disguise himself as the ghost of Herne the hunter, adds—
Nan Page, my daughter, and my little son,
And three or four more of their growth, we'll dress
Like urchins, ouphes,[392] and fairies, green and white,
With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads,
And rattles in their hands.
Then let them all encircle him about,
And, fairy-like, to-pinch[393] the unclean knight,
And ask him why that hour of fairy revel
In their so sacred paths he dares to tread
In shape profane.
And
My Nan shall be the queen of all the fairies,
Finely attired in a robe of white.