From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 08:45:12 -0700
Fwd Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 17:46:38 -0400
Subject: Lewis On Mediaeval & Renaissance Fairies Or


Date: Thu, 06 May 2004 11:52:00 -0700
From: "T. Peter Park" <tpeterpark.nul>
  To: forteana.nul
Subj: FWD [forteana] C.S. Lewis on mediaeval & Renaissance fairies or=
 "Longaevi"


Dear Friends, Forteans, and Listmates,

As G.K. Chesterton once noted, "There is something sinister
about putting a leprechaun in the workhouse. The only solid
comfort is that he certainly will not work."

C.S. Lewis used Chesterton's remark as the opening motto for his
chapter on mediaeval and Renaissance beliefs about the
"Longaevi" ("long-livers") or fairies in 'The Discarded Image:
An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature'
(Cambridge: At the University Press, 1964).

C.S. Lewis is now remembered mostly as a Christian apologist and
as the author of the "Narnia" children's fantasies and the 'Out
of the Silent Planet' science-fiction trilogy. However, he was
also a scholar of mediaeval and Renaissance literature. Lewis
wrote 'The Discarded Image' as a handbook on the philosophical,
cosmological, and historical world-picture or "Model," often
quite unfamiliar to us moderns, underlying mediaeval and
Renaissance literature. In his chapter on the "Longaevi" (pp.
122-138), Lewis treated a literary and folkloric theme of
interest not only to students of mediaeval literature but also
to "Fortean" students of curious contemporary phenomena. Not
only do rural folk in Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia, and
elsewhere still claim first-hand sightings of fairies, gnomes,
trolls, and leprechauns in our own time, but UFO "close
encounter" witnesses and "abductees" report "aliens" curiously
reminiscent of the 'Longaevi'. Lewis treated the 'Longaevi' as a
quaint mediaeval folk-belief and literary device, with little
awareness of them as precursors of an eerie modern reality.

Lewis put the "'Longaevi' or longlivers" into a separate chapter
as their "place of residence" in the mediaeval cosmology was
"ambiguous between air and Earth." Paradoxically, Lewis felt,
"their unimportance is their importance" in the mediaeval world-
view, as "marginal fugitive creatures." They were "perhaps the
only creatures" to whom the mediaeval "Model" did "not assign,
as ii were, an official status."There lay their "imaginative
value" for Lewis. They helped "soften the classic severity of
the huge design." They intruded a "welcome hint of wildness and
uncertainty into a universe that is in danger of being a little
too self-explanatory, too luminous." (C.S. Lewis, 'The Discarded
Image', p. 122). In other words, though Lewis may have been
unaware of the anthropological concept, the mediaeval 'Longaevi'
were Trickster figures, more properly Tricksters than the
solemnly malevolent Satan and his demons of official Christian
theology. As Tricksters, the 'Longaevi' recall the Tricksterly,
"liminal," "anti-structural," boundary- and category-crossing
qualities found in all paranormal phenomena (ESP, ghosts,
poltergeists, UFO's, "aliens," Bigfoot, etc.) by
parapsychologist George P. Hansen in 'The Trickster and the
Paranormal' (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2001).

Lewis took the name 'Longaevi' from the late 4th and early 5th
century A.D. North African literary scholar Martianus Capella.
In his 'De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii' ("On the Marriage of
Philology and Mercury," ca. 400 A.D.), Capella mentioned
"dancing companies of 'Longaevi' who haunt woods, glades, and
groves, and lakes and springs and brooks; whose names are Pans,
Fauns...Satyrs, Silvans, Nymphs. ..' (Martianus Capella, 'De
Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae', ed. F. Eyssenhardt (Leipzig,
1866), II, 167, p. 45, quoted by Lewis, p. 122). Lewis also
quoted the mediaeval scholar Bernardus Silvestris, who without
using the word 'Longaevi', described similar creatures -
 "Silvans, Pans, and Nerei" - as having "a longer life" than
ours, though they were not immortal. Bernardus considered them
innocent - "of blameless conversation" - with bodies of
elemental purity.(Bernardus Silvestris, 'De Mundi Universitate'
(ed. Barach and Wrobel, Innsbruck, 1876) . II Pros. VII, p. 50,
quoted by Lewis, p. 122).

The "alternative," Lewis admitted, would have been to call them
"Fairies" as a chapter title. That word, however, was "tarnished
by pantomime and bad children's books with worse illustrations."
It "might," he feared, "encourage us to bring to the subject
some ready-made, modern concept of a Fairy and to read the old
texts in the light of it." Lewis, rather, felt that we "must go
to the texts with an open mind and learn from them what the word
=91fairy' meant to our ancestors." (Lewis, p. 123) To introduce
the original mediaeval and Renaissance significance of "fairy,"
Lewis quoted three passages from Milton:

(I) No evil thing that walks by night
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen,
Blue meagre Hag or stubborn unlaid ghost
No goblin or swart Faery of the mine.
('Comus', 432 seq.)

(2) Like that Pigmean Race
Beyond the Indian Mount, or Faery Elves,
Whose midnight Revels, by a Forest side
Or Fountain some belated Peasant sees. ..
('Paradise Lost', I, 780 seq.)

(3) And Ladies of th ' Hesperides, that seem' d
Fairer than feign'd of old, or fabl'd since
Of Fairy Damsels met in Forest wide
By Knights of Logres, or of Lyones -
('Paradise Regained', II, 357 seq.)

Milton "lived too late to be direct evidence for medieval
beliefs." Still, these passages showed the "complexity of the
tradition which the Middle Ages had bequeathed to him and his
public" about "fairies." (Lewis, p. 123). Another, earlier
"witness to this complexity" was that "within the same island
and the same century Spenser could compliment Elizabeth I by
identifying her with the Faerie Queene and a woman could be
burned at Edinburgh in 1576 for 'repairing with the fairies and
the 'Queen of Elfame.'"(M. W. Latham, 'The Elizabethan Fairies'
(Columbia, 1940), p. 16, quoted in Lewis, 'The Discarded Image',
p. 124.)

The "swart Faery" in 'Comus' was "classified among horrors."
This was "one strand in the tradition." 'Beowulf' ranked the
elves ('ylfe', III) along with "ettins" and giants, "as the
enemies of God." In the ballad of 'Isabel and the Elf-Knight',
the "elf-knight" was "a sort of Bluebeard." In Gower, Constance
was slandered as "of faierie" because she had given birth to a
monster ('Confessio', II, 964 sq.). The 'Catholicon Anglicum' of
1483 gave 'lamia' and 'eumenis' (fury) as the Latin for "elf";
Horman's 'Vulgaria' (1519), 'strix' and 'lamia' for "fairy". We
might ask, "Why not 'nympha'?" But 'nymph'., according to Lewis,
"would not have mended matters." It "also could be a name of
terror to our ancestors."Corsites cried "What are these so fayre
fiendes that cause my hayres to stand upright?" in John Lyly's
'Endymion' (IV, iii), "Hags! Out alas! Nymphs!". Michael Drayton
spoke in 'Mortimer to Queen Isabel' of "the dishevelled gastly
sea-Nymph" (77). (C.S. Lewis, p. 124). Athanasius Kircher said
to an apparition "Aie ! I fear ye be one of those daemons whom
the ancients called Nymphs," and received the reassurance, "I am
no Lilith nor lamia." (Kircher, 'Iter Extaticum II qui et Mundi
Subterranei Prodromos dicitur' (Rome: Typis Mascardi, 1657), II,
I, quoted in Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', pp. 124-125) Reginald
Scot listed "fairies" and "nymphes" among bugbears used to
frighten children: "Our mothers' maids have so terrified us"
with "spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs,
pans, faunes, sylens, tritons, centaurs, dwarfs, giants,
nymphes, Incubus, Robin good fellow, the spoom, the man in the
oke, the fire-drake, the puckle, Tom Thombe, Tom tumbler
boneles, and such other bugs."(Reginald Scot, 'Discouerie of
Witchcraft' (1584), VII, xv, quoted in Lewis, 'The Discarded
Image', p. 125).

This "dark view" of the Fairies "gained ground," Lewis thought,
in the 16th and early 17th centuries, "an unusually hag-ridden
period." Raphael Holinshed suggested that Macbeth's three
temptresses might be "some nymphs or fairies". Nor "has this
dread ever since quite disappeared," Lewis felt. Lewis himself
once stayed at a lonely place in Ireland said to be haunted both
by a ghost and by the so-called "good people." He gathered "it
was the fairies rather than the ghost" that led his neighbors to
"give it such a wide berth at night." (C.S. Lewis, 'The
Discarded Image', p. 125).

The second Miltonic passage quoted by Lewis illustrated to a
different, less sinister and terrifying, conception of the
Fairies as "little people." It was more familiar to us because
Shakespeare, Michael Drayton, and William Browne made a literary
use of it. From their use "descend the minute and almost
insectal fairies of the debased modern convention with their
antennae and gauzy wings."(Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', p.
127). Milton's "Faery Elves" were compared to the "Pigmean
Race". So in the ballad of 'The Wee Wee Man',

<<When we came to the stair foot
Ladies were dancing jimp and sma.>>
(Quoted in Lewis, p. 127)

Richard Bovet spoke in his 'Pandaemonium' (1684) of the fairies
"appearing like men and women of a stature generally near the
smaller size of man." Robert Burton mentioned "places in Germany
where they do usually walk in little coats, some two feet
long."(Burton, 'Anatomy of Melancholy', Pt. I, 2., M. I, subs.,
quoted in Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', p. 127). A housemaid
Lewis' own family had when he was a boy, who had seen them near
Dundrum in County Down, described them ('The Discarded Image',
p. 127) as "the size of children" (age unspecified).

However, Lewis noted, "when we have said 'smaller than men' we
can define the size of these Fairies no further." Discussions as
to whether they were "merely dwarfish, or Lilliputian, or even
insectal," were "quite out of place;" as "the visual imagination
of medieval and earlier writers never for long worked to scale,"
medieval artists and writers being quite indifferent to
perspective and scale. Mediaeval writers mentioning the size of
fairies, giants, dwarfs, or gods were vague and often
inconsistent from one line or passage to another. Thus, Michael
Drayton in 'Nimphidia' made Oberon "big enough to catch a wasp
in his arms at line 201 and small enough to ride on an ant at
line 242." Popular belief about the exact size of fairies "was
probably itself as incurably vague and incoherent as the
literature."(Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', pp. 127-128).

In this kind of Fairy the small size, however, was "less
important than some other features." Milton's "Faery Elves" were
"on thir mirth and dance Intent" (I, 786). The peasant had
"blundered upon them by chance." They had "nothing to do with
him nor he with them." The previous kind, the "swart Faery of
the Mine," might "meet you intentionally, and, if so, his
intentions would certainly be sinister; this kind not." They
appeared, "often with no suggestion that they are smaller than
men" (Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', pp. 128-129), in places
where they might have expected no mortal to see them:

<<And ofte in forme of womman in moni deorne [secret] weie Me
sicth [i.e., one sees] of hom gret companie bothe hoppe and
pleie>> (Burton, 'Anatomy of Melancholy', Pt. I, 2., M. I,
subs., quoted in Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', p. 129).

In Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale," Lewis noted, "we have the
dance again, and it vanishes at the approach of a human
spectator" (D 991 sq). Spenser took over the motif and made his
dancing graces vanish when Calidore intruded upon their revels
('Faerie Queene', VI, x). Thomson in 'The Castle of Indolence'
(I, xxx) also mentioned the vanishing ('The Discarded Image',
(p. 129).

Lewis saw a vast difference between such Fairies and those
mentioned in 'Comus' or Reginald Scot's 'Discouerie of
Witchcraft'. Even the second sort might be "slightly alarming,"
of course: "the heart of Milton's peasant beats 'at once with
joy and fear'." The vision "startles by its otherness." However,
there was "no horror or aversion on the human side." These
"creatures flee from man, not man from them." The "mortal who
observes them (only so long as he remains unobserved himself)
feels that he has committed a sort of trespass." His "delight"
was "that of seeing fortuitously - in a momentary glimpse - a
gaiety and daintiness to which our own laborious life is simply
irrelevant."(Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', p. 129). Writers like
Drayton and Shakespeare developed these gay, dainty fairies
"into a comic device which, from the first, has lost nearly all
the flavour of popular belief " From Shakespeare, modified by
Pope's sylphs, they descended "with increasing prettification
and triviality, till we reach the fairies whom children are
supposed to enjoy" (Lewis, pp. 129-130).

With the "Fairy Damsels" of Lewis' third Miltonic passage we
reach a kind of :Fairy "more important for the reader of
medieval literature and less familiar to modern imagination."
The "Fairy Damsels" were "met in forest wide." 'Met' was "the
important word," as the "encounter is not accidental." They
"have come to find us, and their intentions are usually (not
always) amorous."Modern Fortean readers will immediately
recognize here the foreshadowing of contemporary UFO abductions
with their "alien" sexual, reproductive, and cross-breeding
activities. The "Fairy Damsels" were the 'f=E9es' of French
romance, the 'fays' of English romance, and the 'fate' of the
Italians. Launfal's mistress, the lady who carried off Thomas
the Rymer, the fairies in 'Orfeo', Bercilak in 'Gawain' (called
"an alvish man" on line 681), were "of this kind." Malory's
Morgan le Fay had "been humanised," but "her Italian equivalent
'Fata Morgana' is a full Fairy." Merlin, "only half human by
blood and never shown practising magic 'as an art',"was "almost"
of this order. They were "usually of at least fully human
stature," with "beauty, gravity, and almost numinous character."
Lewis called this type the "High Fairies" ('The Discarded
Image', p. 130). In modern terms, they perhaps foreshadowed the
handsome, fully-human-looking "Nordics" reported by some UFO
abductees and "close encounter" witnesses.

These "High Fairies" showed a "combination of characteristics
which. we do not easily digest." On the one hand, they had a
"hard, bright, and vividly material splendour." Where a "modern
might expect the mysterious and the shadowy he meets a blaze of
wealth and luxury." The Fairy King in Sir Orfeo came "with over
a hundred knights and a hundred ladies, on white horses." His
crown was "a single huge gem as bright as the sun "(142-52).His
own country, too, had "nothing shadowy or insubstantial," but "a
castle that shines like crystal, a hundred towers, a good moat,
buttresses of gold, rich carvings" (355 seq.). In 'Thomas the
Rymer' the Fairy wore "green silk and a velvet mantle," and "her
horse's mane jingles with fifty-nine silver bells." Bercilak's
clothes and equipment were "described with almost fulsome detail
in 'Gawain' (151-220)." The Fairy in 'Sir Launfal' "dressed her
waiting women in 'Inde sandel', green velvet embroidered with
gold, and coronets each containing more than sixty precious
stones (232-9)." Her pavilion was of "Saracenic work," the knobs
on its tent-poles were of crystal, and the whole was "surmounted
by a golden eagle so enriched with enamel and carbuncles that
neither Alexander nor Arthur had anything so precious (266-76)."
(Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', pp. 130-131).

However, "despite this material splendour, shown to us in full
light and almost photographically detailed," the High Fairies
could "at any moment be as elusive as those =91Faerie Elves' who
are glimpsed dancing =91by a forest side or fountain.'" Orfeo
awaited the Fairy King "with a guard of a thousand knights, but
it is all no use." His wife was "carried off, no one sees how" -
 abducted "with fairi forth ynome" and "men wist never wher she
was bicome" (193-4). Before we see the Fairies again, in their
own realm, they have "faded to a =91dim cri and blowing' heard far
off in the woods." Launfal's mistress could be "met only in
secret, in =91deme stede' ; there she will come to him, but no one
will see her coming (353 sq.)." (Lewis, 'The Discarded Image',
p. 132).

Still, Launfal's mistress was "very palpable flesh and blood
when she is there." The High Fairies were "vital, energetic,
wilful, passionate beings". Launfal's Fairy lay "in her rich
pavilion naked down to the waist, white as a lily, red as a
rose." Her "first words demand his love." An "excellent lunch
follows, and then to bed (289-348)." Modern abductees, alas, are
no longer treated to the "excellent lunch," and undergo
operating-table artificial insemination or sperm-collection more
often than "to bed."Thomas the Rymer's Fairy showed herself "a
stirring and sportive creature, =91a lady gay come out to hunt in
her follee.' Bercilak was "the best of all in his mingled
ferocity and geniality , his complete mastery of every
situation, his madcap mirth." Two descriptions of fairies, from
a later and an earlier period, came "far nearer to the High
Fairies of the Middle Ages than anything our modern imaginations
would be likely to produce." A "'rowdy' High Fairy" might "seem
to us a kind of oxymoron." However, Robert Kirk called some of
them "wights like furious hardie men" in his 'Secret
Commonwealth' (1691).('The Discarded Image', pp. 132-133). An
old Irish poet described them as "routing battalions of enemies,
devastating every land they attack, great killers, noisy in the
beer-house, makers of songs."(L. Abercrombie, 'Romanticism'
(1926), p. 53, quoted in Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', p. 133.)

If we call the High Fairies "spirits," Lewis noted, we must
recall Blake's warning that "a Spirit and a Vision are not, as
the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a nothing,"
but "are organised and minutely articulated beyond all that the
mortal and perishing nature can produce." ('Descriptive
Catalogue', IV, quoted in 'The Discarded Image', p. 133). If we
call them "supernatural," we must also recall that "their life
is, in one sense 'more' =91natural' - stronger, more reckless,
less inhibited, more triumphantly and impenitently passionate -
 than ours."They were "liberated both from the beast's perpetual
slavery to nutrition, self-protection and procreation, and also
from the responsiblities, shames, scruples. and melancholy of
Man," and "perhaps also from death." (Lewis, 'The Discarded
Image', pp. 133-134)..

These, basically, were "the three kinds of Fairies or
'Longaevi'" Lewis found "in our older literature." How far,
widely, or consistently they were believed in by mediaevals,
Lewis did not know. Still, "there was sufficient belief to
produce rival theories of their nature; attempts, which never
reached finality, to fit even these lawless vagrants into the
Model" (Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', p. 134). Lewis listed and
outlined four such theories:

"(1)That they are a third rational species distinct from angels
and men." (Lewis, p. 134)

"(2 ) That they are angels. but a special class of angels who
have been. in our jargon, 'demoted." (Lewis, p.135)

"(3) That they are the dead, or some special class of the dead."
(Lewis, p. 136)

"(4) That they are fallen angels; in other words, devils."
(Lewis, p. 137).

The first mediaeval theory, that the Fairies were a "third
rational species distinct fro m angels and men," recalls the
Muslim view of the 'jinn', and modern Fortean discussions of
"Hairy Hominids," UFO "aliens," and Earth's possible hidden
inhabitants. This third species was variously conceived by
mediaeval and Renaissance writers. The "Silvans, Pans and Nerei"
of Bernardus, who lived longer than ourselves, but not forever,
were "clearly a rational (and terrestrial) species distinct from
our own, and such figures, for all their classical names, could
be equated with Fairies." Thus, Gavin Douglas in his 'Eneados'
glossed Virgil's 'Fauni nymphaeque' (VIII, 314) with the line
"Quhilk fair folkis or than elvis cleping we". Boiardo's 'fata'
who explained that she, like all her kind, could not die till
Doomsday comes ('Orlando lnnamorato', II, xxvi, 15, quoted in
Lewis, p. 134), implied the "same conception." Another view
found the third species "among those spirits which, according to
the principle of plenitude, existed in every element" (Ficino,
'Theologia Platonica de Immortalitate'. IV, I, cited in Lewis,
p. 134) - the "spirits of every element" in 'Faustus' (151), the
"Tetrarchs of Fire, Air, Flood, and on the Earth" in 'Paradise
Regained' (IV, 201). Shakespeare's Ariel "would be a tetrarch of
air." The "most precise account of the elementals," however,
would "leave only one of their kinds to be strictly identified
with the Fairies."(Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', pp. 134-135).

Paracelsus ('De Nymphis', etc., I, 2, 3, 6, cited in Lewis, p.
135) enumerated: (a) 'Nymphae' or 'Undinae', of water, who were
human in stature, and talked; (b) 'Sylphi' or 'Silvestres', of
air, who were larger than men and did not speak; (c) 'Gnomi' or
'Pygmaei', of earth, about two spans high and very taciturn; (d)
'Salamandrae' or 'Vulcani', of fire. The Nymphs or Undines were
"clearly Fairies" for Lewis. The Gnomes were "closer to the
Dwarfs of 'm=E4rchen'." Paracelsus was a comparatively late
author, but was still "in part anyway, using much earlier
folklore." In the 14th century, the Lusignan family "boasted a
water-spirit among their ancestresses." (S. Runciman, 'History
of the Crusades' (1954), vol. II, p. 424, cited in Lewis, p.
135). Later still, "we get the theory of a third rational
species with no attempt to identify it." The 'Discourse
concerning Devils and Spirits', added in 1665 to Reginald Scot's
'Discouerie of Witchcraft', said "their nature is middle between
Heaven and Hell... they reign in a third kingdom, having no
other judgement or doom to expect forever." Finally, Robert Kirk
in his 'Secret Commonwealth' identified them with those aerial
people "of a middle nature between Man and Angel, as were
Daemons thought to be of old" (Lewis,'The Discarded Image', p.
135).

The view of Fairies as "demoted" or semi-fallen angels was
developed in the 'South English Legendary'.('South English
Legendary', Vol. II, pp. 408-410, cited in Lewis, 'The Discarded
Image', pp. 135-136) When Lucifer rebelled, he and his foIlowers
were cast into Hell. There were also angels, however, who
"somdel [somewhat, in some degree] with him hulde": "fellow-
travellers" who did not actually .join Lucifer's rebellion.
These were "banished into the lower and more turbulent levels of
the airy region," to "remain there till Doomsday after which
they go to Hell." Thirdly, there was also "a party of the
centre," angels who were only "somdel in misthought" - waverers
"almost, but not quite, guilty of sedition." These were
banished, "some to the higher and calmer levels of air, some to
various places on earth, including the Earthly Paradise." Both
the second and the third group sometimes communicated with men
in dreams. Of those 'eluene' seen dancing by mortals, many would
return to Heaven at Doomsday (Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', p.
136).

The view of the Fairies as the dead also had its devotees. In
the late 12th century, Walter Map twice told the story of the
"Dead Woman's Sons" in his 'De Nugis Curialium' (II, xiii; IV,
viii, cited by Lewis, p. 136). There was in Map's time a family
known as The Dead Woman's Sons ('filii mortuae'). A Breton
knight had buried his wife, who was "really and truly dead" -
 're vera mortuam'. Later, passing at night through a lonely
valley, he saw her "alive amidst a great company of ladies." He
was frightened, and wondered what was being done "by the
Fairies" ('a fatis'), but he snatched her from them and carried
her off. She lived happily with him for several years and bore
him children. Similarly in John Gower's story of Rosiphelee (
IV, 1245 seq, cited by Lewis, p. 136) "the company of ladies,
who are in all respects exactly like High Fairies, turn out to
be dead women."(Lewis, 'The Discarded Image', p. 136).

Boccaccio told the same story , and Dryden borrowed it from him
in his 'Theodore and Honoria'. In 'Thomas the Rymer', the Fairy
took Thomas to a place where the road divided into three,
leading respectively to Heaven, Hell, and "fair Elfland." Of
those who reached the latter some would finally go to Hell, as
the Devil had a right to 10 % of them every seventh year. In
'Orfeo' the poet could not make up his mind whether the place to
which the Fairies took Dame Heurodis was or was not the land of
the dead. At first sight, it was "full of people who had been
supposed dead and weren't (389-90)." That was "imaginable," as
"some whom .we think dead are only =91with the faerie.'" At the
next moment, however, it appeared "to be full of people who had
really died; the beheaded, the strangled, the drowned, those who
died in childbed (391-400)." Then we meet "those who in their
sleep were taken thither by Fairies (401-4)." ('The Discarded
Image', p. 137).

The "identity or close connection" between the Fairies and the
dead was "certainly believed in," as witches confessed to seeing
the dead among the Fairies.(M.W. Latham, The Elizabethan Fairies
(1940), p. 46, cited by Lewis, p. 137) Answers to leading
questions under torture "naturally tell us nothing about the
beliefs of the accused," Lewis admitted, but "they are good
evidence for the beliefs of the accusers." ('The Discarded
Image', p. 137).

Finally, the view of Fairies as devils "becomes almost the
official view" after the accession of James I. "That kinde of
Devils conversing in the earth," James wrote ('Daemonologie',
III, I, quoted by Lewis, pp. 137-138) , "may be divided in foure
different kindes. ..the fourth is these kinde of spirites that
are called vulgarlie the Fayrie." Burton included "Lares, Genii,
Fauns, Satyrs, Wood-Nymphs, Foliots, Fairies, Robin Good-fellow,
Trulli, etc." among terrestrial devils (Burton, 'Anatomy of
Melancholy', Pt. I, s. 2; M 1, subs. 2, quoted in Lewis, 'The
Discarded Image', p. 138).

This view, which was "closely connected with the later
Renaissance phobia about witches," went "far" to explain the
"degradation of the Fairies from their medieval vitality into
the kickshaws of Drayton or William Browne." "A churchyard or a
brimstone smell" came to "hang about any treatment of them which
was not obviously playful." Shakespeare, Lewis suggested, might
have had "practical as well as poetical reasons" for making
Oberon assure us that he and his fellows are "spirits of another
sort" than those who have to vanish at daybreak ('Dream', III,
ii, 388). "One might have expected the High Fairies to have been
expelled by science," Lewis noted; but he thought "they were
actually expelled by a darkening of superstition" in the late
16th and 17th centuries.('The Discarded Image', p. 138).

Such, C.S. Lewis concluded, "were the efforts to find a socket
into which the Fairies would fit." No agreement was achieved by
mediaeval or Renaissance writers. "As long as the Fairies
remained at all they remained evasive" ('The Discarded Image',
p. 138)

--Pax vobiscum,
T. Peter <tpeterpark.nul>
Garden City South, L.I., NY.


 -  "Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright
1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
fortean1.nul