Ther in her maister king sete,
And her quen fair and swete;
Her crounes, her clothes schine so bright,
That unnethe bihold he hem might.
Orfeo and Heurodis, MS.
It was perhaps from such a description that Ariosto adopted his idea of the Lunar Paradise, containing every thing that on earth was stolen or lost.
Orfeo, as a minstrel, so charms the Fairy King with the music of his harp, that he promises to grant him whatever he should ask. He immediately demands his lost Heurodis; and, returning safely with her to Winchester, resumes his authority; a catastrophe, less pathetic indeed, but more pleasing, than that of the classical story. The circumstances, mentioned in this romantic legend, correspond very exactly with popular tradition. Almost all the writers on daemonology mention, as a received opinion that the power of the daemons is most predominant at noon and midnight. The entrance to the Land of Faëry is placed in the wilderness; a circumstance, which coincides with a passage in Lindsay's Complaint of the Papingo:
Bot sen my spreit mon from my bodye go,