In fact we meet with them of all colours; as in the same play—
“Fairies black, grey, green, and white.”
That white, on some occasions, was the dress of a female, we learn from Reginald Scot. He gives a charm “to go invisible by [means of] these three sisters of fairies,” Milia, Achilia, Sibylia: “I charge you that you doo appeare before me visible, in forme and shape of faire women, in white vestures, and to bring with you to me the ring of invisibilitie, by the which I may go invisible at mine owne will and pleasure, and that in all hours and minutes.”
It was fatal, if we may believe Shakespeare, to speak to a fairy. Falstaff, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, is made to say, “They are fairies. He that speaks to them shall die.”
They were accustomed to enrich their favourites, as we learn from the clown in A Winter’s Tale—
“It was told me I should be rich by the fairies.”
They delighted in neatness, could not endure sluts, and even hated fibsters, tell-tales, and divulgers of secrets, whom they would slily and severely bepinch when they little expected it. They were as generous and benevolent, on the contrary, to young women of a different description, procuring them the sweetest sleep, the pleasantest dreams, and, on their departure in the morning, always slipping a tester in their shoe.
They are supposed by some to have been malignant, but this, it may be, was mere calumny, as being utterly inconsistent with their general character, which was singularly innocent and amiable.
Imogen, in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, prays, on going to sleep—