The fairy may be defined as a species of being partly material, partly spiritual, with a power to change its appearance, and be, to mankind, visible or invisible, according to its pleasure. In the old song, printed by Peck, Robin Goodfellow, a well-known fairy, professes that he had played his pranks from the time of Merlin, who was the contemporary of Arthur.
Chaucer uses the word faërie as well for the individual as for the country or system, or what we should now call fairy-land, or faryism. He knew nothing, it would seem, of Oberon, Titania, or Mab, but speaks of—
“Pluto, that is the King of Faerie,
And many a ladie in his compagnie,
Folwing his wif, the quene Proserpina, etc.”
(The Marchantes Tale, i. 10101.)
From this passage of Chaucer Mr. Tyrwhitt “cannot help thinking that his Pluto and Proserpina were the true progenitors of Oberon and Titania.”
In the progress of The Wif of Bathes Tale, it happed the knight,
“——in his way ... to ride
In all his care, under a forest side,
Whereas he saw upon a dance go
Of ladies foure-and-twenty, and yet mo.
Toward this ilke dance, he drow ful yerne,
In hope that he som wisdom shulde lerne,
But, certainly, er he came fully there,
Yvanished was this dance, he wiste not wher.”
These ladies appear to have been fairies, though nothing is insinuated of their size. Milton seems to have been upon the prowl here for his “forest-side.”