First, Acknowledging, as in these latter days our more delicate psychologists have called upon us to do, the names fancy and imagination as designating two faculties, the fairies belong rather to the fancy.
Secondly, Accepting for a legitimate thought, legitimately and cogently signified, the High Marriage which one of these finer Metaphysicians[I]—instructed no doubt by his personal experience—prophesies to his kind, between the “intellect of man” and “this goodly universe,” we may say that, regularly, this marriage must have its antecedent possessing and agitating Love; that this love must, like all possessing agitated love, have its attendant Reverie. Now, might one venture to surmise that this reverie breathes into the creating of a fairy?
Does the jealous reader perchance miss in the above proposed eight several elements the unity of notion, which he has all along seemed to feel in his own spirit and understanding? Let him at once conceive, as intensely joined, the two permanent characters of tenuity and mythological displacement, and take this compound for the nucleus of the unity he seeks. About these two every other element will easily place itself. For a soul, he shall infuse into the whole, after in like manner inseparably blending them—fancy, and that love-inspired reverie which won its way to us from Grassmere.
And so take, reader, our answer to your question, “What is a fairy?” THIS is a Fairy. Are you still unsatisfied? Good. The field of investigation lies open before you, free and inviting. On, in your own strength, and Heaven speed you!
The eight or nine tales of sundry length, and exceedingly diversified matter, contained in the two little volumes of Herr Ernst Willkomm,[J] which have put us a-journeying to Fairy-land, have begun to produce before the literary world the living popular superstitions of a small and hidden mountainous district, by which Cis Eidoran Germany leans upon Sclavonia: hidden, it would seem, for any thing like interesting knowledge, until this author began to write, from the visiting eye of even learned curiosity. Nor this without a sufficient reason; since the mountains do, of themselves, shut in their inhabitants, and, for a stranger, the temper of the rugged mountaineer, at once shy and mailing himself in defiance, is, like the soil, inaccessible. To Ernst Willkomm this hinderance was none. He discloses to us the heart of the country, and that of the people which have born him, which have bred him up; and he will, if he is encouraged, write on. Three of these tales, or of these traditions—for the titles, with this writer, appear to us exchangeable—regard the fairies properly so called. They are, “The Priest’s Well,” “The Fairies’ Sabbath,” here given, and “The Fairy Tutor,” being the first, the third, and the seventh, of the entire present series. Upon these three tales the foregoing attempt at fixing the generic notion of a fairy was intended to bear. Should pretty Maud, the stone-mason’s daughter, our heroine for to-day, find the favour in English eyes which her personal merit may well claim, the remaining two are not likely to be long withheld.
The illustrations which shall now follow, drawn from distinguished authorities, aim at showing the consonancy of Herr Willkomm’s pictures with authentic representations of Elfin superstition already known to the world. If, however, the criteria which have been proposed, have been rightfully deduced, the illustrations should as materially serve us in justifying these by proof.
Amongst the numerous points of analogy which strikingly connect our tale with popular tales and traditions innumerable, three are main to the structure of the tale itself. They may be very briefly described as—
I. The Heathenism of the Fairies.
II. Their need, thence arising.