Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844   By: Various

BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCXLIV. JUNE, 1844. VOL. LV.

CONTENTS.

TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA. NO. I. THE FAIRIES' SABBATH, 665

COLUMBUS. (A PRINT AFTER A PICTURE BY PARMEGGIANO.) BY B. SIMMONS, 687

TO SWALLOWS ON THE EVE OF DEPARTURE. BY THE SAME, 690

THE DILIGENCE. A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL, 692

WHO WROTE GIL BLAS? 698

MICHAEL KALLIPHOURNAS, 725

AFRICA SLAVE TRADE TROPICAL COLONIES, 731

NARRATION OF CERTAIN UNCOMMON THINGS THAT DID FORMERLY HAPPEN TO ME, HERBERT WILLIS, B.D. 749

BEAU BRUMMELL, 769

THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE GREEK STATE, 785

INDEX, 797

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BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No CCCXLIV. JUNE, 1844. VOL. LV.

TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA.

No. I.

THE FAIRIES' SABBATH.

WHAT is a fairy?

READ!

[" A Wood near Athens. Enter a Fairy on one side, and Puck on the other. {A}]

" Puck. How now, Spirit! whither wander you?

Fairy. Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander ever where, Swifter than the moones sphere; And I serve the Fairy Queen, To dew her orbs upon the green: The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours: I must go seek some dewdrops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll begone; Our queen and all our elves come here anon.

Puck. The King doth keep his revels here to night; Take heed, the queen come not within his sight. For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, Because that she, as her attendant, hath A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king; She never had so sweet a changeling. And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild: But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy: Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: And now they never meet in grove, or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, But they do square; that all their elves, for fear, Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there."

And there, then, they are! The blithe and lithe, bright and fine darlings of your early bewitched and for ever enamoured fancy! There they are! The King and the Queen, and the Two royal Courts of shadowy, gorgeous, remote, and cloud walled Elf land: The fairies of the vision once wafted, "by moon or star light," upon the "creeping murmur" of the Avon! THE FAIRIES IN ENGLAND! YOUR fairies!

Nevertheless you, from of old, are discreet. And you mistrust information which discountenances itself, by borrowing the magical robe of verse! Or you misdoubt this medley of our English blood, which in the lapse of ages must, as you deem, have confounded, upon the soil, the confluent streams of primitively distinct superstitions! Or your suspicious inquisition rebels against this insular banishment of ours, which, sequestering us from the common mind of the world, may, as you augur, have perverted, into an excessive individuality of growth, our mythological beliefs: Or Southwards then!