ON FAIRIES.
39
They never ate:
"But that it eats our victuals, I should think,Here were a fairy,"
says Belarius at the first sight of Imogen, as Fidele.[1]
They were humanely attentive to the youthful dead. Thus Guiderius at the funeral of the above lady:
"With female fairies will his tomb be haunted."
Or, as in the pathetic dirge of Collins on the same occasion:
"No wither'd witch shall here be seen, No goblins lead their nightly crew;The female fays shall haunt the green, And dress thy grave with pearly dew."
This amiable quality is, likewise, thus beautifully alluded to by the same poet:
"By fairy hands their knell is rung,By forms unseen their dirge is sung."
- ↑ They, nevertheless, sometimes haunted the buttery: "Have you nothing to do [quoth the widow to her husband Jack, after she had, by a trick, got him to the wrong side of the door, and locked him out] but dance about the street at this time of night, and, like a spirit of the buttery hunt after crickets?" (Jack of Newbury.)
