Britannia's Pastorals furnish the following passages:[405]
Near to this wood there lay a pleasant mead,
Where fairies often did their measures tread,
Which in the meadows made such circles green,
As if with garlands it had crowned been;
Or like the circle where the signs we track,
And learned shepherds call 't the Zodiac;
Within one of these rounds was to be seen
A hillock rise, where oft the fairy-queen
At twilight sate, and did command her elves
To pinch those maids that had not swept their shelves;
And, further, if, by maiden's oversight,
Within doors water was not brought at night,
Or if they spread no table, set no bread,
They should have nips from toe unto the head;
And for the maid who had perform'd each thing,
She in the water-pail bade leave a ring.
Song 2.
Or of the faiery troops which nimbly play,
And by the springs dance out the summer's day,
Teaching the little birds to build their nests,
And in their singing how to keepen rests.
Song 4.
As men by fairies led fallen in a dream.
Ibid.
In his Shepherd's Pipe, also, Brown thus speaks of the Fairies:—
Many times he hath been seen
With the fairies on the green,
And to them his pipe did sound
While they danced in a round.
Mickle solace they would make him,
And at midnight often wake him
And convey him from his room
To a field of yellow-broom;
Or into the meadows where
Mints perfume the gentle air,
And where Flora spreads her treasure;
There they would begin their measure.
If it chanced night's sable shrouds
Muffled Cynthia up in clouds,
Safely home they then would see him,
And from brakes and quagmires free him.
But Drayton is the poet after Shakespeare for whom the Fairies had the greatest attractions. Even in the Polyolbion he does not neglect them. In Song xxi., Ringdale, in Cambridgeshire, says,
For in my very midst there is a swelling ground
About which Ceres' nymphs dance many a wanton round;
The frisking fairy there, as on the light air borne,
Oft run at barley-break upon the cars of corn;
And catching drops of dew in their lascivious chases,
Do cast the liquid pearl in one another's faces.
And in Song iv., he had spoken of
The feasts that underground the faëry did him (Arthur) make,
And there how he enjoyed the Lady of the Lake.