Where we must observe, as Sir Walter Scott seems not to have been aware of it, that the four last substantives bear the same relation to each other as those in the two first verses do.
Me bifel a ferly
Of faërie, me thought.
Vision of Piers Plowman, v. 11.
Maius that sit with so benigne a chere,
Hire to behold it seemed faërie.
Chaucer, Marchante's Tale.
It (the horse of brass) was of faërie, as the peple semed,
Diversè folk diversëly han demed.—Squier's Tale.
The Emperor said on high,
Certes it is a faërie,
Or elles a vanité.—Emare.
With phantasme and faërie,
Thus she bleredè his eye.—Libeaus Disconus.
The God of her has made an end,
And fro this worldès faërie
Hath taken her into companie.—Gower, Constance.
Mr. Ritson professes not to understand the meaning of faerie in this last passage. Mr. Ritson should, as Sir Hugh Evans says, have 'prayed his pible petter;' where, among other things that might have been of service to him, he would have learned that 'man walketh in a vain shew,' that 'all is vanity,' and that 'the fashion of this world passeth away;' and then he would have found no difficulty in comprehending the pious language of 'moral Gower,' in his allusion to the transitory and deceptive vanities of the world.
2. From the sense of illusion simply, the transition was easy to that of the land of illusions, the abode of the Faés, who produced them; and Faerie next came to signify the country of the Fays. Analogy also was here aiding; for as a Nonnerie was a place inhabited by Nonnes, a Jewerie a place inhabited by Jews, so a Faerie was naturally a place inhabited by Fays. Its termination, too, corresponded with a usual one in the names of countries: Tartarie, for instance, and 'the regne of Feminie.'