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قراءة كتاب Legends of the North: The Guidman O' Inglismill and The Fairy Bride
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Legends of the North: The Guidman O' Inglismill and The Fairy Bride
Highlanders refused to eat or drink at funeral assemblages in apprehension of elfin interference. Their habits were joyous. They constructed harps and pipes which emitted delicious sounds. They held musical processions and conducted concerts in remote glens and on unfrequented heaths. In their processions, they rode on horses fleeter than the wind. Their coursers were decked with gorgeous trappings: from their manes were suspended silver bells which rang with the zephyr, and produced music of enchanting harmony. The feet of their steeds fell so gently that they dashed not the dew from the ring-cup, nor bent the stalk of the wild rose." Their haunts on the surface of the earth were groves, mountains, wooded dells, by springs, the southern sides of hills, and verdant meadows, where their diversions were dancing in circles, hand in hand. The traces left by their tiny feet were supposed to remain visible on the grass, and were called fairy rings, but are now discovered to be the production of an agaric or mushroom.
Science, alas! sadly interferes with these fanciful old legends, but not always without leaving some doubtful explanation of her own.
The unfortunate wight who turned up a fairy ring with the ploughshare became the victim of a wasting sickness—
Nae luck again sall hae,
And he wha spoils the fairy ring
Betide him want and wae,
For weirdless days and weary nichts
Are his till his deeing day."
The protector of the fairy ring was proportionally recompensed—
Nae dule or pains sall dree,
And he wha cleans the fairy ring
An easy death sall dee."
The kingdom of Fairyland was supposed to be peculiarly beautiful, somewhere in the interior of the earth. The Ettrick Shepherd's description of this fair land is, perhaps, unequalled in Scottish poetry. It occurs in his ballad of "Bonny Kilmeny," embodying the tradition of the removal, to Fairyland, of the daughter of a labourer at Traquair, and her restoration to earth a few weeks after:—
Where the rain never fell, and the wind never blew;
But it seemed as the harp of the sky had rung,
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue,
When she spake of the lovely forms she had seen,
And a land where sin had never been;
A land of love, and a land of light,
Withouten sun, or moon, or night;
Where the river swa'd a living stream,
And the light a pure celestial beam:
The land of vision it would seem,
A still, an everlasting dream.
And she walked in the light of a sunless day:
The sky was a dome of crystal bright,
The fountain of vision, and fountain of light:
The emerald fields were of dazzling glow,
And the flowers of everlasting blow.
Then deep in the stream her body they laid,
That her youth and beauty never might fade;
And they smiled on heaven, when they saw her lie
In the stream of life that wandered bye.
And clouds of amber sailing bye;
A lovely land beneath her lay,
And that land had glens and mountains gray;
And that land had valleys and hoary piles,
And marled seas and a thousand isles;
Its fields were speckled, its forests green,
And its lakes were all of the dazzling sheen,
Like magic mirrors, where slumbering lay
The sun and the sky and the cloudlet gray;
Which heaved and trembled, and gently swung,
On every shore they seemed to be hung."
Scottish fairies had a king and queen and royal court, which, in pomp and pageantry, far exceeded that of any earthly monarch. In Poole's "Parnassus," the principal persons are named Oberon, the emperor; Mab, the empress; Perriwiggin, Periwincle, Puck, Hobgoblin, Tomalin, Tom Thumb, courtiers; Hop, Mop, Drop, Pip, Drip, Skip, Tub, Tib, Tick, Pink, Pin, Quick, Gill, Jim, Tit, Wap, Win, Nit, the maids of honour; Nymphidia, the mother of the maids.
At one time, the Queen seems to have chosen Thomas of Ercildoune—better known as The Rhymer—with whom to share her royalty. Whether from infidelity to her royal spouse, or from his having fallen into temporary disgrace, tradition sayeth not, but her offer is celebrated in ballad lore—
My han', but an' my crown;
An' thou shalt reign o'er Fairylan'
In joy, an' gret renown.
To live for evermair;
Thine arm sall never feckless grow,
Nor hoary wax thy hair.
Nae wastin' pine we dree;
An endless life's afore thee placed
O' constant luve an' lee."
But, after seven years' residence, he was suddenly dismissed by her majesty, his mistress, and for a very sufficient reason, as told also in ballad lore—
For here no longer may'st thou be;
Hie thee fast, with might and main;
I shall thee bring to the Eildon tree.'
'Lovely ladye, thou lat me be;
For certainly I have been here
Nought but the space of dayes three!'
Thou hast been here seven year and more;
But longer here thou may not dwell,
The skyl I will thee tell wherefore.
Among these folks shall choose his fee;
Thou art a fair man and a hend,
I trow full well he wil choose thee!
Frae heaven unto the