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THE MAKING OF THE EARLY MODERN BRITISH FAIRY TRADITION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2014

RONALD HUTTON*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
*
Department of Historical Studies, Bristol University, 13 Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1TBr.hutton@bristol.ac.uk

Abstract

This review is intended to examine the development of representations of elves and fairies in British culture between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries. It will argue that a very clear two-stage evolution in those representations can be found in literary sources, from an inchoate range found in different kinds of text, with no apparent collective identity, to a coherent sense of a kingdom, to which the common word ‘fairy’ could be applied, to an intense interest in, and discussion of, the nature of fairies. The first development occurred in the late middle ages, and the second after the Reformation, and both were pan-British phenomena. These literary changes were, moreover, paralleled at each stage, and perhaps responsible for, changes in perception in culture at large. The alterations in representations of these non-human beings, with no clear status in Christian theology, may have wider implications for an understanding of late medieval and early modern cultural history.

Type
Historiographical Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

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29 All three versions of the story were helpfully edited by A. J. Bliss for Oxford University Press in 1966.

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31 Chaucer, ‘Sir Thopas’, lines 784–803.

32 Chaucer, ‘The merchant's tale’, lines 2225–318.

33 Purkiss, Troublesome things, pp. 81–2.

34 All three versions were helpfully edited in a single volume by A. J. Bliss in London, 1960.

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55 This is my own view, but none of the other scholars of British fairy tradition, noted above, have claimed that the tradition concerned developed in more than details during the late seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries.

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57 VI, James, Daemonologie (Edinburgh, 1597), pp. 73–4Google Scholar; Alexander Montgomerie, ‘Ane flytting or invective … against the Laird of Pollart’, Book 2, lines 14–26; Warner, William, Albions England (London, 1602), p. 85Google Scholar; Florio, John, A world of words (London, 1598), pp. 401–2Google Scholar; Jackson, Thomas, A treatise concerning the originall of unbeliefe (London, 1625), p.178Google Scholar; Burton, Robert, The anatomy of melancholy, ed. Faulkner, Thomas et al. (Oxford, 1989), pp. 185–8Google Scholar; Heywood, Thomas, The hierarchie of the blessed angels (London, 1635), pp. 567–8Google Scholar; The wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll (London, 1600), passim.

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61 They have been studied by Briggs, The anatomy of Puck, pp. 120–248; Latham, The Elizabethan fairies, pp. 162–74; Purkiss, Troublesome things, pp. 162–74; Henderson and Cowan, Scottish fairy belief, pp. 54–131; and Wilby, Emma, Cunning folk and familiar spirits (Brighton, 2005)Google Scholar.

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64 It does not seem present in the medieval grimoires studied by Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the middle ages (Cambridge, 1989); idem, Forbidden rites (Stroud, 1997); and Fanger, Claire, ed., Conjuring spirits (Stroud, 1998)Google Scholar.

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67 William Shakespeare, The merry wives of Windsor, Act 4, Scene 4, and Act 5, Scene 5; Jonson, Ben, The alchemist (London, 1619)Google Scholar, Act 1, Scene 2, and Act 3, Scene 5; The buggbears (London, c. 1564–5), passim; The valiant Welshman (London, 1663), Act 2, Scene 5; Wily beguilde (London, 1606), passim; Munday, Fidele and Fortunio, passim.

68 The brideling, saddling, and ryding, of a rich churle in Hampshire (London, 1595); The several notorious and lewd cousnages of John West, and Alice West (London, 1613); Historical Manuscripts Commission, Hatfield House MSS, vol. 5 (1894), pp. 81–3; Sisson, C. J., ‘A topical reference to “The alchemist”’, in McManaway, James, ed., Joseph Quincy Adams: memorial studies (Washington, DC, 1948), pp. 739–41Google Scholar.

69 Purkiss, Troublesome things, pp. 152–6; Wilby, Cunning folk and familiar spirits, pp. 1-119.

70 A famous Scottish example is that of Agnes Sampson; for English cases involving fairies, see the well-known one at Rye: East Sussex Record Office, Rye Corporation MSS 13/1–21; and The wonderful discoverie of the witchcrafts of Margaret and Philip Flower (London, 1618), sig. E3.

71 See Sharpe, James, ‘The witch's familiar in Elizabethan England’, in Bernard, G. W. and Gunn, S. J., eds., Authority and consent in Tudor England (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 219–32Google Scholar.

72 Hutton, Ronald, The stations of the sun (Oxford, 1996), pp. 4253CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 For classic transmutations, see Middleton, Christopher, The famous historie of Chinon of England (London, 1597)Google Scholar; and more famously, Shakespeare's A midsummer night's dream.

74 This is especially reflected for a popular audience in the chapbook Tom Thumbe (London, 1630).

75 Spenser, Edmund, The faerie queene (London, 1596)Google Scholar; Dekker, Thomas, The whore of Babylon (London, 1607)Google Scholar; Latham, The Elizabethan fairies, pp. 143–4; Jean Wilson, Entertainments for Elizabeth I (Woodbridge, 1980), pp. 99–118, 122, 126–42; Churchyarde, Thomas, A handeful of gladsome verses (Oxford, 1593)Google Scholar, sig. B4. See also Woodcock, Fairy in the ‘Faerie queene’.

76 Jonson, Ben, The entertainment at Althrope; and Oberon (both London, 1616)Google Scholar.

77 For translations, see Latham, The Elizabethan fairies, pp. 59–73. The English pastoral references are too numerous for a footnote: see especially the poetry of Thomas Campion, Michael Drayton, and Thomas Ravenscroft, and, in drama, that of John Fletcher and The lamentable tragedy of Locrine.

78 It features in these roles in Shakespeare's A midsummer night's dream; John Lyly's Gallathea; The maydes metamorphosis (London, 1600); Samuel Rowlands, More knaves yet? (London, 1600); The cobler of canterburie (London, 1590); Churchyarde, A handeful of gladsome verses; and John Selden, Table talk (London, 1898).

79 First in Rowlands, More knaves yet?; Jonson, Entertainment at Althrope; and John Marston, The mountebanks masque (n.d.).

80 These works are reprinted in Halliwell, James Orchard, Illustrations of the fairy mythology (London, 1845), pp. 120–70Google Scholar.

81 Aubrey, Three prose works, p. 203.

82 See Latham, The Elizabethan fairies, pp. 176–218; Briggs, Anatomy of Puck, pp. 44–70; Purkiss, Troublesome things, pp. 181–3.

83 See the references to Bartlett's work earlier.

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87 For recent general summaries, see Behringer, Wolfgang, Witches and witch-hunts (Cambridge, 2004)Google Scholar; Levack, Brian, The witch-hunt in early modern Europe (3rd edn, Harlow, 2006)Google Scholar; and Levack, Brian, ed., The Oxford handbook of witchcraft in early modern Europe and colonial America (Oxford, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.